NYT: The most recent round of campaign finance disclosures, filed Saturday, showed that Republican national party committees, candidates in key House and Senate races and their top unlimited-money outside groups, or “super PACs,” had $337 million on hand as of … Continue reading
Category Archives: campaign finance
Nate Silver: The fundraising numbers are so good for Democrats — and so bad for Republicans — that it’s a little bit hard to know quite what to make of them. From a modelling standpoint, we’re extrapolating from years in which fundraising … Continue reading
Open Secrets: This year’s midterm election cycle is slated to become the first and only member of the $5 billion club. The Center for Responsive Politics projects that more than $5 billion will be spent during the 2018 election, making … Continue reading
Back in April, I had a post where I expressed skepticism that Facebook’s plan for voluntary disclosure of who is running political ads will actually work. Here’s a snippet: Here’s a hypothetical to flesh out some issues. Let’s assume that … Continue reading
WaPo: Democratic candidates running for Congress this year collectively raised more than $1 billion for their campaigns — a record-shattering sum that highlights the party’s zeal to retake the House and Senate and underscores the enormous amount of money flowing into … Continue reading
NYT: An army of Democrats giving money over the internet has lifted the party’s House candidates to a strong financial advantage over Republicans in the final weeks of the 2018 midterm election, with Democrats in the most competitive House races … Continue reading
Politico: A series of court orders in September appeared poised to force so-called dark-money groups — which raise and spend unlimited sums from anonymous donors — to reveal some of their funders for the first time. But a month later, … Continue reading
WaPo: President Trump has topped $100 million in fundraising for his 2020 reelection bid — an enormous haul for a president barely two years into his first term, according to new Federal Election Commission filings. Trump pulled in $18.1 million … Continue reading
Looking forward to this: The USC Student Chapter of ACS will be hosting a panel to discuss the current state of money in politics, campaign finance law, and their implications on the 2018 midterm elections. We will explore how SuperPACS … Continue reading
Tiffany Muller oped in The Hill. … Continue reading
The St. Louis-Post Dispatch reports. … Continue reading
Politico: Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson is pumping tens of millions of dollars more into Republican Party coffers in an 11th-hour push to save their congressional majorities, according to two senior Republicans familiar with the donation. The contributions were … Continue reading
LA Times report. … Continue reading
The San Diego Union-Tribune reports. … Continue reading
Justin Elliott for ProPublica: After decades as a major Republican donor, Adelson is known as an ideological figure, motivated by his desire to influence U.S. policy to help Israel. “I’m a one-issue person. That issue is Israel,” he said last … Continue reading
New report from the Campaign Finance Institute. … Continue reading
NYT: The stock market may be booming. Unemployment is hitting record lows. Republicans pushed through $1.5 trillion in tax cuts. But despite all that, for the first time in a decade, the broader financial community is on pace to give … Continue reading
Roll Call: Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh denounced the “millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups” during his testimony Thursday about sexual assault allegations, but he didn’t mention the millions spent by groups backing him. The Judicial … Continue reading
Steve Klein blogs. … Continue reading
Release: Public corporations embracing disclosure and accountability of their political spending are holding fast despite countervailing pressures from Washington. That’s the chief finding to emerge from a non-partisan study released today by the Center for Political Accountability (CPA) and the … Continue reading
JFC. … Continue reading
Marian Currinder Wapo oped. … Continue reading
NYT: Tom Steyer, the billionaire investor and Democratic activist, has directed his political operation to spend more than $5 million aiding Andrew Gillum’s campaign for governor of Florida, an enormous investment that will test whether fired-up Democratic voters can flip control of … Continue reading
Adam Bonica and Gisel Kordestani oped in The Hill: We at Crowdpac are among the 78 percent of Americans who want to see Citizens United overturned. We are well aware that if Crowdpac’s conditional fundraising platform is challenged in court, it … Continue reading
CFI: Independent expenditures (IEs) spending for congressional primaries went up once again. This unsurprising conclusion was based on a Campaign Finance Institute (CFI) analysis of data supplied by the Federal Election Commission for all federal primaries from 2006 through the … Continue reading
NYT: The return on investment for many of the Republican Party’s biggest political patrons has been less than impressive this year. But not for Sheldon Adelson. Mr. Adelson, the billionaire casino magnate, and his wife, Miriam, a physician, have emerged … Continue reading
Interesting Mike Dimino for the Federalist Society Review. … Continue reading
WaPo: As politically active nonprofits scramble to figure out the implications of a recent court decision requiring them to disclose some of their donors, experts said one thing is clear: There will be ways around the new rules. Groups could accept money … Continue reading
Kate Ackley for Roll Call: It’s been a good week for advocates of faster, and more, political money disclosure. With President Donald Trump’s signature Friday, it’s official: Senate candidates now must file their campaign finance reports electronically with the Federal … Continue reading
WSJ: Investors are seeking greater transparency from Nike related to its political spending and putting a proposal demanding regular reporting on political contributions to a vote on Thursday. The vote, at the company’s annual general meeting in Beaverton, Ore., comes … Continue reading
In my post about the Supreme Court’s denial of a stay in the Crossroads campaign disclosure case, I wrote that it “does not solve all of the current disclosure problems, but this is a victory for transparency.” I stand by … Continue reading
Gannett: Sen. Claire McCaskill said Wednesday she will vote against federal appellate judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. Citing “dark money” in politics as the main reason for her opposition, McCaskill released a lengthy statement through her office Wednesday … Continue reading
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy on the Tillman Act. … Continue reading
With no noted dissents, the Supreme Court has turned down Crossroad GPS’s request for emergency relief from an order that will require disclosure of more of its donors who are contributing money to influence federal elections. As I wrote last … Continue reading
Ken Doyle for Bloomberg: The continued secrecy of donors to campaign spending groups may depend on whether and how quickly the Senate can confirm Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Chief Justice John Roberts reinstated in a brief order issued over the weekend a … Continue reading
CFI Release: In the years before the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (CU), independent expenditures (IEs) in state elections were dominated by formal state and local party organizations and labor unions. In the years since … Continue reading
Well this is a long time coming: Congress passed a bill Thursday that would require senators to file campaign finance reports electronically through the Federal Election Commission (FEC). The language was included in a broader appropriations bill sent to the … Continue reading
The stay looks to be an administrative one, pending further action of the Court. Witht 4 Justices strongly in favor of disclosure on the Court, I would guess that this results in an eventual denial of the stay, either by … Continue reading
Paul Waldman for the Plum Line. … Continue reading
Nice to see. … Continue reading
Daily Beast: Before the National Rifle Association dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars to try to flip a competitive, Democratic-held Senate seat, the gun-rights group’s chief lobbyist apparently gave the race’s Republican challenger a heads-up. Chris Cox, the top political … Continue reading
Release: The top 25 special interest groups in 2017 spent more than $74 million trying to influence elections and government policy in New Jersey, according to a new analysis by the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC). The analysis … Continue reading
Release: Just 15 dark money groups in the post-Citizens United era accounted for over 75 percent of the more than $800 million in political dark money spent between January 2010 and December 2016, according to Issue One’s new year-long investigation, “Dark Money … Continue reading
Brendan Fischer blogs. … Continue reading
Jonathan Macey and Leo Strine have posted this draft on SSRN. Here is the abstract: In this Article we show that Citizens United v. FEC, arguably the most important First Amendment case of the new millennium, is predicated on a … Continue reading
A Ninth Circuit panel today unanimously reversed a lower court decision barring California’s collection of IRS Form 990 Schedule B, which lists the top contributors to 501c3 organizations. This was an as-applied claim by the Americans for Prosperity Foundation and … Continue reading
AP gives a thumbs-up to the claim. … Continue reading
Late last week, the FEC unanimously (!) approved an advisory opinion allowing Microsoft to “offer a package of enhanced online account security services at no additional charge on a nonpartisan basis to its election-sensitive customers, including federal candidates and national … Continue reading
The opinion in Free and Fair Election Fund v. Missouri Ethics Commission is here. (h/t Richard Winger) … Continue reading
LA Times: President Trump has agreed to give up his right to pursue millions of dollars in damages against Stormy Daniels in a move to kill litigation over an illegal payoff to the adult-film star. The maneuver marks a sharp … Continue reading