“FSFP Releases Part II of Report On The SpeechNow Case and the Real World of Campaign Finance”

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Part II: Undermining Federal Limits on Contributions to Political Parties“, explores the top 100 donors to six official national party committees (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, National Republican Congressional Committee, Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, National Republican Senatorial Committee, Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee) and then compares how much money those same donors gave to “unofficial” super PACs in the 2012 and 2014 elections.

In the present study, I examine the same universe of top outside money donors to the 2012 and 2014 elections. The analysis focuses on donors who contributed to national party committees in a particular cycle while simultaneously donating to independent, party-linked Super PACs in the same elections. It turns out that a considerable proportion of top individual and organizational donors to independent groups – approximately 40 to nearly 50% – followed a two-track policy of making legally limited 1 Available for download from https://freespeechforpeople.org/research-reports/. 2 contributions to party committees while also providing massive funds to party-linked Super PACs for the same elections.

Weissman’s report found that most of the top donors to “official” national party committees also gave significant amounts to “unofficial”, party-linked super PACs. This is an important distinction because there are federal limits on how much a donor can give to an official party committee per year, but following the SpeechNow ruling, there are no set limits on contributions to party-linked super PACs.

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