Think the campaign season was over? Since Election Day, dozens of TV, web and radio ads have been airing in political battlegrounds, many of them directly naming lawmakers. The Sunlight Foundation has been archiving them on Ad Hawk, a mobile app that allows viewers to help flag political advertising that they are seeing and learn about the funders behind ads .
Many of these ads have popped up just this week. Though the ad content often relates to Congress’s handling of the impending fiscal cliff, in many cases they also have an eye on the 2014 election. Big spending groups ...
Continue readingPro-gun groups’ influence on Connecticut politics
Since 1996, the National Rifle Association has invested about $395,000 to influence elections in Connecticut, the state that is home to the nation's latest mass shooting tragedy. Data downloaded from Sunlight's Influence Explorer show that the nation's premier gun rights lobby has given both to federal and state candidates.
Though the NRA has not had good success in Connecticut's congressional contests, at least 15 sitting members of the state legislature received contributions from the NRA. During the most recent session of the Connecticut state legislature, some 40 pieces of legislation were introduced involving firearms, according ...
Continue readingSens. Ayotte, Menendez continue raising money for their defense funds
While candidates and their supporters wooed donors to bankroll their campaign committees in this year’s elections, two senators continued to maintain legal defense funds that attracted thousands of dollars from deep-pocketed supporters and their parties' leadership.
Sens. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., and Robert Menendez, D-N.J., both filed third quarter reports with the Ethics Committee listing donations to funds set up to provide financial support from lawsuits against political opponents. Ayotte has raised $147,000, and Menendez $120,000 since setting up the legal defense fund.
Documents obtained from ...
Watch dog groups call for Congress, President to fill ethics posts
Government watchdog organizations went to Capitol Hill yesterday to remind the White House and congressional leadership--currently deadlocked in negotiations over avoiding the flscal cliff--that there's a void in some of the critical institutions that police ethics in Washington. 
Representatives from 10 government-accountabilty groups gathered to make sure that House Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi maintain the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) by appointing new board members. They also emphasized that the president needs to take the lead in campaign finance reform by appointing new Federal Election Commission (FEC) commissioners.
Full disclosure: Though it did not participate ...
Continue readingEgyptian military aid still flying high
The planned delivery of 20 Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter planes to Egypt is the perfect symbol of iron triangles at work--special interests and their lobbyists, federal agencies and the lawmakers who fund them.
But in the years since President Dwight Eisenhower delivered his warning about the inertia of defense contracts in 1961, the lobbying has only grown more sophisticated.
The U.S. government gives Egypt foreign aid, which it uses to buy U.S. military hardware. Lobbyists for the Egyptian government and Lockheed Martin (they both used the same firm) arranged meetings between the buyer and the seller, between representatives of Egypt's military and the Defense Department and key members of Congress who provided Egypt with the U.S. taxpayer dollars--some $213 million--to pay for the planes.
Continue readingJim DeMint’s possible successors: influence profiles
Rep. Tim Scott, the frontrunner to replace retiring Sen. Jim DeMint, owned an AllState insurance branch before being elected to congress. His biggest campaign donor has been the conservative Club for Growth.
Continue readingWhy American Crossroads’ millions weren’t enough on Election Day
American Crossroads, the super PAC whose success in the 2010 elections heralded a new era in big money in politics, came nowhere clost to matching that performance in 2012. Of the 30 largest outside spending groups that backed more than one candidate in the general election, it had the second lowest return on investment in the races in which it intervened.
Despite having the second largest pool of money to play with among super PACs--it spent $104.7 million (only Restore Our Future, the organization backing Mitt Romney, spent more), in race after race it bet on the losing side, with the lone exception of former Sen. Bob Kerrey, who sought to reclaim a spot in the Senate he'd left in 2001.
Continue readingA look at online ads in the 2012 election
Super PACs, trade associations and other nonprofit groups that made campaign expenditures spent roughly $46.1 million on web ads. Though the Obama campaign considerably outspent Romney's campaign on web advertising, outside Republican outside spenders ponied up nearly five times more on online advertising than liberal outside groups, according to independent expenditure filings with the FEC.
Continue readingThe 2012 super PAC million dollar club
At least 156 people and entities gave more than $1 million to super PACs, according to an analysis of post-election campaign finance reports filed with the Federal Election Commission. See a list of the top 10 super PAC donors below.
This millionaires club accounted for 59 percent of the total $834 million that went to super PACs, committees that can spend and raise and unlimited amount on elections.
Nine donors gave at least $10 million. The biggest gave to the GOP: Sheldon Adelson, at $49.8 million, followed by his wife Miriam at $42 million. The next biggest givers are ...
Continue readingTallying the Adelsons’ $92 million
The Adelson’s have given a mind-blowing $92.28 million dollars to outside spending groups this election. The Casino mogul and his physician wife were the impetus behind Newt Gingrich’s primary campaign. After Gingrich left the race, donations to “Winning our Future” became donations to “Restore our Future” the pro-Romney group that the Adelson’s would give the most to, $30 in all.
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