The New York Times provides “a rare glimpse into the world of pay-for-play social media, where content creators and marketing firms are increasingly compensated to promote candidates or points of view and where there are few requirements for disclosure.”
“The paid advocacy exists outside the realm of traditional lobbying and campaigning, reaching younger, more online audiences unlikely to be swayed by television advertisements or glossy mailers.”
Michael Scherer: “Fifteen years after Mitt Romney stood on an Iowa hay bale and proclaimed that ‘corporations are people, my friend,’ his declaration is no longer mockable. The amount of money corporations spend anonymously to sway federal elections has increased from $359 million in 2012 to $1.4 billion in the most recent presidential cycle. All of that spending by ‘dark money’ nonprofits is protected by the same right to free speech enjoyed by ‘natural persons,’ because the Supreme Court decided in Citizens United v. FEC that U.S. corporations function as citizen associations under the Constitution.”
“But not all of these ‘people’ are created exactly equal. Whereas humans are automatically granted certain rights at birth, corporate personhood comes into existence under state laws that define its powers—a fact that opponents of corporate money in politics hope to use to transform how U.S. elections are funded.”
“Hawaii is the first state to try. Earlier this month, a nearly unanimous and bipartisan majority—well, as bipartisan as it gets in a state with so few Republicans—of Hawaii’s state legislature voted to change the powers of corporations doing business in the state and no longer grant them the ability to spend on most political causes.”
“Republicans have stockpiled well over $100 million more than Democrats in their party committees heading into the midterms, building a cash advantage in an otherwise tough election year,” the Washington Post reports.
“A looming Supreme Court decision could supercharge that fundraising gap.”
“GOP operatives are hopeful that the court’s conservative majority will soon strike down key restrictions on party committees’ coordination with candidates, allowing those committees to get far cheaper advertising rates and make their money go further. The Democratic National Committee’s fundraising woes could become more consequential as a result.”
“For a brief moment in American history, the rich didn’t control politics,” the New York Times reports.
“Back in 1974, in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Congress passed new campaign finance restrictions that would have largely eliminated the ability of wealthy people to buy elections. In addition to donor disclosure rules and contribution limits, the new legislation capped so-called ‘independent expenditures’ on behalf of political candidates at $1,000 a year. There were even curbs on what rich people could spend to get themselves elected…”
“Flash forward to the 2024 presidential campaign. Six of the nation’s wealthiest billionaires spent more than $100 million apiece to help get another billionaire, Donald J. Trump, elected president. Independent expenditures by wealthy outsiders for the first time in history exceeded what the candidates’ own campaign committees spent.”
Wall Street Journal: “The platform that is integral to the Democratic Party’s infrastructure is now enmeshed in controversy, in part fueled by the management of its CEO, Regina Wallace-Jones, whose spending and legal decisions have raised concerns among Democrats and employees, according to people familiar with ActBlue’s operations.”
“Wallace-Jones, a former tech executive, has tried to run the group not like the political nonprofit that it is, but like a Silicon Valley firm that is acquiring startups to stay relevant and offering executives some perks, the people said.”
“Massive amounts of money are flowing into Virginia’s redistricting referendum as Democrats and Republicans from across the nation wrestle for control of the House of Representatives, but the identities of individual contributors — and their agendas — remain cloaked in secrecy,” the Washington Post reports.
“About 95 percent of the total $93 million raised so far in Virginia, as of a Monday night filing deadline, came from nonprofit groups not required to disclose their donors.”
CBS News: “In 2024, ultra-wealthy donors poured more than $3 billion into elections, led by the world’s richest man — Elon Musk. He spent more than $290 million supporting President Trump and other Republicans, a record sum. And overall, that $3 billion was spent overwhelmingly to benefit the GOP — these donors gave five times as much to Republicans and groups aligned with them as they did to Democrats.”
“That trend appears to be continuing: Republican Party committees, super PACs, MAGA Inc. and other Trump-related groups had over $600 million in cash on hand in early February, while Democratic Party committees and congressional super PACs were short of $200 million.”
New York Times: “Three Republican-led House committees investigating the Democratic fund-raising platform ActBlue are increasing their pressure on the organization, sending a letter demanding documents that the committees say ActBlue improperly withheld from a subpoena request.”
“We’re spending a shitpile of money on elections right now, and I don’t think we’re getting a better informed public at the end when they go to the voter’s booth.”
— Former Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), quoted by Issue One.
New York Times: “The ultrawealthy donors who are backing the Democratic Party are increasingly impossible to identify. That’s kind of the point.”
“In the decade and a half since the Supreme Court opened the door to super PACs, which can take in unlimited contributions to support federal candidates, the amount of money coming in from undisclosed donors has grown at a stunning rate.”
“For the first decade after the court’s decision, Republicans dominated the so-called dark money game. But nowadays, it’s the Democrats who are running the table. That’s partly because some of their ultrarich donors fear retribution from President Trump and want to hide the fact that they are together spending hundreds of millions of dollars on liberal candidates and causes.”
New York Times: “Across America, there has been a remarkable shift in the type of people who fund politics.”
“The biggest thing is that they often aren’t people at all.”
“The 10 largest individual donations so far in the midterm elections? They total almost $300 million — and none of them came from a human being. Some of the origins can be deduced, but other checks came from a series of little-known nonprofits whose original donors will most likely never be known.”
A law firm working for ActBlue last year warned the Democratic fundraising giant that its CEO “had given a potentially misleading response to congressional Republican investigators in a 2023 letter explaining how the organization vetted donations to ensure that they were not illegally coming from foreign citizens,” the New York Times reports.
“The memos instigated a meltdown at the highest levels of ActBlue, one of the Democratic Party’s most vital financial organs. A series of top officials resigned in quick succession… Democrats are nervous that any additional upheaval at ActBlue could destabilize the party’s critical fund-raising apparatus ahead of the midterm elections.”
“We’re just one cycle away from AIPAC running ads in favor of their candidates by saying that person rejects AIPAC. It shows just how toxic AIPAC has become to Democratic voters.”
— Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX), quoted by the New York Times.
“Silicon Valley billionaires have been seething over the threat of more taxes and regulations at home. Now, a proposed nine-figure fund aims to give wealthy Californians an unprecedented tool to reshape the state’s politics in their favor,” Bloomberg reports.
“The fund is being pitched to some of the state’s richest residents as an endowment that would operate in California for decades to come… Organizers are seeking $100 million this year, with hopes of reaching at least $500 million and up to $1 billion in the coming years.”
Wired: “Unlike traditional fundraising models like super PACs that pool funds from publicly reported donors, these creator collectives pool audiences and leverage social networks and off-the-shelf tools like Shopify and Tiltify to convert followers into donors.”
The New York Times found that “300 billionaires and their immediate family members donated more than $3 billion — 19 percent of all contributions — in federal elections in 2024, either directly or through political action committees.”
“Five presidential elections ago, before the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling that lifted many remaining campaign finance restrictions, the share of billionaire spending was almost zero — 0.3 percent, to be precise.”
Despite campaign finance laws preventing coordination between campaigns and super PACS, the New York Times found anonymous X accounts with links to Rep. Wesley Hunt’s (R-TX) U.S. Senate campaign sharing strategic information, private polling and messaging advice with outside allies for months.
Texas Tribune: “If Texans want to know who’s funding the deluge of ads in the final stretch of the U.S. Senate primaries, they’ll need to keep guessing.”
“The race is awash with dark money, or contributions from political nonprofits that are not legally obligated to disclose donors, according to campaign finance reports that were due Thursday.”
“A super PAC supporting one of the Democratic candidates, James Talarico, reported $6.1 million in contributions from Jan. 1 through Feb. 11. But more than half that came from a political action committee that was entirely funded by a dark money group on its last monthly report.”
“And as Rep. Wesley Hunt of Houston tries to squeeze into a primary runoff on the Republican side, a group supporting him — and another opposing him — are also being mostly funded by anonymous sources, according to the filings with the Federal Election Commission.”
“Taken together, the reports show that big-money interests are heavily invested in the Texas primaries — but unwilling to reveal their identities at a critical juncture of the race.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
“There are a lot of blogs and news sites claiming to understand politics, but only a few actually do. Political Wire is one of them.”
— Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press”
“Concise. Relevant. To the point. Political Wire is the first site I check when I’m looking for the latest political nugget. That pretty much says it all.”
— Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report
“Political Wire is one of only four or five sites that I check every day and sometimes several times a day, for the latest political news and developments.”
— Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report
“The big news, delicious tidbits, pearls of wisdom — nicely packaged, constantly updated… What political junkie could ask for more?”
— Larry Sabato, Center for Politics, University of Virginia
“Political Wire is a great, great site.”
— Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”
“Taegan Goddard has a knack for digging out political gems that too often get passed over by the mainstream press, and for delivering the latest electoral developments in a sharp, no frills style that makes his Political Wire an addictive blog habit you don’t want to kick.”
— Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post
“Political Wire is one of the absolute must-read sites in the blogosphere.”
— Glenn Reynolds, founder of Instapundit
“I rely on Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire for straight, fair political news, he gets right to the point. It’s an eagerly anticipated part of my news reading.”
— Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.