So far, the 2012 election has been chock full of negative advertising, and most of it has come from innocuous... View Article
Continue readingOutspending peers, Club for Growth helps unseat Lugar
Sen. Richard Lugar's loss in yesterday's Indiana Republican primary — the third such primary loss for a Republican senator since 2010 — was a victory for state treasurer Richard Mourdock and the conservative wing of the Republican Party, which painted the six-term senator as too liberal. But, Lugar's loss may say more about the increasing role of outside money than either of the candidates in the race.
The primary battle was fueled in part by the biggest outside money dump of any congressional race thus far. Leading the money charge was the anti-tax group Club for Growth, which accounted ...
Continue readingAnti-incumbent super PAC backs former incumbent turned lobbyist
The Campaign for Primary Accountability, a super PAC that's raised $2.5 million and has been active in about a dozen races across the country, maintains that long serving incumbents should be ousted because their campaigns are accountable to lobbyists, not district voters. Yet in one district, the challenger it's backing in Tuesday's Indiana primary is a former House member who went on to work as a registered lobbyist.
Recently, the super PAC helped oust Rep. Tim Holden, D-Pa., by calling him a friend to K Street. Part of the problem with incumbents, according the group's ...
Continue readingAd buys mostly outside of FCC’s new disclosure rule
New rules requiring greater online disclosure of political TV advertisements in the country's top 50 markets wouldn't have applied to the majority of ads aired by the Obama campaign during an 11 day period in April, according to a new analysis.
Continue readingKentucky Derby: Owners put money on politicians, not ponies
The real money in the Kentucky Derby isn't in the purse or the pari-mutuel, but in the politics. Horse-focused PACs like the American Horse Council, the National Thoroughbred Racing Association and horse breeders and owners have contributed more than $8.7 million to political candidates and parties since 1989 and spent $2.2 million more lobbying. And some of the top donors to these organizations are mega-donors in their own right, having contributed millions more to politicians, parties, PACs and super PACs.
Far from the finish line, the industry jockeys for tax breaks and other special treatment for big ...
Continue readingBetter off than four years ago? Not when it comes to political ads, report says
More than two thirds of all ads aired in the presidential race so far have been attacks, a drastic increase compared to recent presidential campaigns, according to a new study by the political ad-tracking Wesleyan Media Project that covers the race from the start of 2011 through April 22 of this year.
Of the ads aired during that period, 70 percent were negative, compared to 10 percent in the last presidential campaign. Political scientist Michael Franz, a co-director of the project, called the change "absolutely astonishing."
The negative tone is being driven by outside groups, responsible for 86 percent of ...
Continue readingOops, Never mind! Newt to endorse Romney but can’t erase attack ads
GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is set to officially exit the race Wednesday in Arlington, Va. and is telling USA TODAY that he'll soon endorse Mitt Romney. But can the former speaker make voters forget the millions of dollars worth of attack ads that he and the super PAC supporting him launched against the man Gingrich now says will be the next president?
We have compiled a highlight -- or should we call it lowlight? -- reel of the ads that ran in early primary states when Gingrich was Romney's main rival. It underscores how the intense negativity of this ...
Continue readingFact checking group accuses Romney super PAC of spending $20 million on deceptive ads
Restore Our Future, the super PAC backing presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, spent more than $20 million on deceptive ads in early primary and caucus states, according to a just-released study by the Annenberg Public Policy Center. That figure includes more than $9 million in ads distorting the record of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is set to endorse Romney on Wednesday.
Relying on the spending estimates of commercial ad-tracking company Kantar Media CMAG and the content analysis of Annenberg's own FactCheck.org, the center calculates that outside groups spent a total of $41.1 million through ...
Continue readingSuper PAC profile: Group focused on healthcare repeal has shadowy sister
This week, Restore America's Voice PAC has disclosed its first political spending of the 2012 election cycle--more than $50,000 worth of phone call fundraising pitches that mention President Barack Obama--but a shadowy nonprofit tied to the group has spent millions more attacking Obama and congressional Democrats for the healthcare reform act.
Restore America's Voice Foundation, a social welfare organization that does not have to disclose its donors, ran ads around the country in 2011 featuring former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. On one of its websites, Repealitnow.org, the group claims that the ads were "the only televised ...
Continue readingPresidential campaign donors moving to super PACs
A few weeks after some individual donors hit their campaign contribution limits to President Obama’s reelection campaign, they made donations to the super PAC supporting him, extending their financial support to the shadow campaign that's backing his bid for another four years in the White House.
This new trend has just begun to emerge in the most recent super PAC financial disclosures filed over the weekend with the Federal Election Commission. It's another impact of the sweeping changes in campaign finance law set off by the 2010 Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United, which opened the door ...
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