Back in July, Senate Republicans successfully blocked the DISCLOSE Act, which would have required all organizations spending $10,000 or more to reveal their donors. Now we understand why. Though Nov.1, $213.0 million has been spent by “dark money” groups to influence the 2012 elections. Of that, $172.4 million (81%) has been spent to help Republican candidates, as compared to $35.7 million (19%) to help Democrats. (By “dark money” we mean groups that do not disclose their donors and only are required to disclose their congressional race spending within 60 days of House and Senate elections and their presidential race spending following the national party conventions).
Continue readingMore guns of October: FSA PAC drops $600,000 in final days of election
Another newly formed super PAC, FSA PAC, or Fair Share Action, is dropping late money, this time on the Democrats’ side. The group reported spending $497,000 to buy an ad supporting Obama on the last day of October and more than $119,000 to support Montana Senator Jon Tester.
According to FSA PAC's FEC filing, the pro-Obama ad is airing in Colorado.
FSA is connected to a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit social welfare organization, the Fair Share Alliance, which is not required to disclose its donors. The latter group's executive director is Brad Martin, a former ...
Continue readingThe case of the mystery texter
This Halloween mystery all began on a dark and stormy night, when unsuspecting phones were attacked by political ads via text message. What made this message so scary is that when people went to “unwrap” the text, they realized the organization had no face. When they went searching for the sender’s website, it was dead.
Not until the wee hours of the morning, was the privacy of the sender revoked for violating spamming rules. The Atlantic connected the texts to Jason Flanary and ccAdvertising.
This spooky spending looks like it is taking advantage of a legal loophole by emailing ...
Continue readingDark money group attacks Obama on Benghazi
Special Operations Opsec Education Fund, a dark money group that shares an office with top aides to the 2008 campaign of Republican presidential nominee John McCain, is launching an $397,000 ad buy attacking the President Barack Obama and his administration over last September's Benghazi embassy attack, according to disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission.
The group, which says its members are forrmer members of the Navy SEALs and intelligence officers, already attacked Obama's administration in August for, the group claimed, leaking sensitive intelligence information.
The new ad focuses on the administration's handling of the embassy ...
Continue readingOutside Money in the House: Six Graphs and Seven Takeaways
Outside money is flooding into U.S. House races, primarily from party committees, but also significantly from dark money groups and super PACs. And though Democrats need to win 25 seats to take back the House (which most forecasters deem unlikely), nobody is giving up on anything, judging from the recent cash infusions. We are now at $218.8 million in House outside spending, with almost one-third of that money coming in the last 10 days, and more than half of it coming since October 1. Republicans lead in outside money $119.6 million to $96.7 million, including a two-to-one lead in dark money. Democratic super PACs, meanwhile, have outspent Republican super PACs. What this money all adds up to, we are still waiting to see. For now, the best we can do is to give our best take on the current state of play.
Continue readingOutside political spending crosses $1 billion mark
Outside groups have spent more than $1 billion trying to influence this year's election, and the tidal wave of special interest money so no signs of abating in the 10 days that remain before Election Day.
The total, tabulated by Sunlight's Follow the Unlimited Money, is especially mind-boggling considering that it comes in a campaign that has focused largely on the anemic economy and underscores the changed landscape in the first presidential campaign to be contested following the Supreme Court 2010 decision in Citizens United, which opened the door for deep-pocketed donors to flaunt their wealth in ways ...
Continue readingDead end disclosure: Ohio super PAC lists dark money donors
The Government Integrity Fund Action Network, a Columbus, Ohio-based super PAC that dropped a late $1.1 million ad buy opposing Connecticut House candidate Elizabeth Esty last week, disclosed today the big donors who funded it: A pair of political nonprofits that don't disclose their donors.
New Models LLC contributed $627,000, while the Government Integrity Fund, a nonprofit sister organization of the super PAC, gave $475,000. Because both New Models and the Government Integrity Fund are social welfare organizations, they are not required to disclose their donors.
The three groups show why, in the post-Citizens United world ...
Continue readingThe News Without Transparency: Reports highlight lack of information available on 501(c)4s
Recent reporting and analysis by ProPublica and the Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group have brought a certain dark money group, the Government Integrity Fund, into the light.
The Government Integrity Fund is registered as a 501(c)4, a type of nonprofit permitted to run issue ads to influence the outcome of elections without disclosing the names its donors to the Federal Election Commission.
Thanks to a long-anticipated ruling by the Federal Communications Commission in August, broadcast stations are now required to make information about political ad buys available online. That FCC decision, along with efforts by the Sunlight Foundation’s Political Ad Sleuth and ProPublica’s Free the Files projects to aggregate the more than 30,000 filings on the FCC database so far, have helped to shed more light on the money these groups are spending and the people and interest groups behind the influence.
Continue readingOutside Money in the Senate: One map, four graphs and seven takeaways
Outside money continues to pour in at a record pace this election cycle, and beyond the presidential race, the biggest general election spending totals are all in Senate races: $29.7 million in Virginia; $24.6 million in Ohio; $22.2 million in Wisconsin; $18.5 million in Nevada; $16.3 million in Montana. And counting. All told, outside groups have dropped $189.4 million into Senate races as of October 23.
And no wonder: the Senate remains very much up for grabs, and the parties are very close in their levels of outside spending – unlike both the presidential and House races, where Republicans have the outside spending edge. In the Senate outside money chase, Republicans have a very narrow lead, $97.3 million to $92.1 million.
Of particular interest is that Republicans are relying much more on non-party organizations – primarily Crossroads GPS and the Chamber of Commerce – that don’t have to disclose their donors and only have to report their spending within 60 days of an election. Among these types of groups, Republicans lead Democrats $56.2 million to $24.6 million. And significantly, while party committees are limited in the amount of money they can raise from any one individual ($30,800 per cycle), groups like Crossroads GPS and the Chamber can receive unlimited contributions. By contrast, Democrats are still relying much more on the traditional party structure.
First, an overview of the outside spending, by state:
Corporate, union and nonprofit giving to super PACs tops $167 million
Approximately one-third of the money that super PACs have collected so far in the 2012 campaign come from organizations such as corporations, labor unions and other political committees.
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