First Privately Funded Election Since Watergate

“With Mitt Romney raising private funds for the fall campaign, this year’s presidential election will be the first since the Watergate scandal in which neither major party’s nominee accepts federal funding,” Bloomberg reports.

“Public financing was enacted by Congress after President Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 amid revelations about his role in covering up a 1972 break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate hotel and office complex in Washington. The investigation uncovered illegal activities funded by some of the unregulated private donations to Nixon’s re-election campaign.”