“Chevron has funneled nearly $3 million into a trio of campaign committees to influence the Nov. 4 Richmond city election, including a nearly $1.3 million contribution on Aug. 8,” the Contra Costa Times reports.

Rick Hasen: “I know that there have been some hefty sums spent by for-profit corporations on ballot initiatives. But what’s the largest sum that we know of so far given by a for-profit corporation to advocate for the election or defeat of municipal candidates?”

Conservative writer/filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza was spared prison time when a federal judge sentenced him to five years probation for violating campaign finance laws, The Smoking Gun reports.

However, for the first eight months of his probation term, D’Souza will have to live in a “community confinement center” in San Diego. He will also have to pay a $30,000, undergo “therapeutic counseling” and perform one day per week of community service during his probation term.

Mother Jones: “A milestone passed in late August: According to the Center for Responsive Politics, dark-money groups–nonprofits created under the 501(c)(4) and (c)(6) sections of the US tax code–had by then surpassed $50 million on elections. These groups, unlike political action committees and candidates’ campaigns, do not have to disclose their donors. So some of the key players looking to sway election results remain in the shadows. This was a new record and seven times the amount of dark money spent by the same point on House and Senate elections in 2010. And this week, dark-money spending for the 2014 cycle reached $63 million–just shy of the $69 million in dark money spent during the entire 2008 presidential election.”

“Every politician knows that campaign season begins in earnest after Labor Day. If recent history is any guide, there is sure to be an unprecedented last-minute blitz of dark-money spending.”

“Outside liberal groups are running more effective ads in key Senate races by sticking to the script, while conservative groups focus too much on their own agendas, Republican strategists say,” the Washington Examiner reports.

“While many conservative groups focus on their traditional messages, left-leaning super PACs and nonprofits are working together and tailoring their ads to the themes Democrats are campaigning on, allowing them to reinforce the candidates’ messages — and the party’s overall arguments about the election.”

Out next month: Political Mercenaries: The Inside Story of How Fundraisers Allowed Billionaires to Take Over Politics.

The Washington Post notes that “wealthy political contributors have more access than ever to candidates since the ruling in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission. More than 300 donors have seized the opportunity, writing checks at such a furious pace that they have exceeded the old limit of $123,200 for this election cycle.”

“Together, 310 donors gave a combined $11.6 million more by this summer than would have been allowed before the ruling. Their contributions favored Republican candidates and committees over Democratic ones by 2 to 1.”

Washington Post: “The 2010 Supreme Court decision that helped usher in a new era of political spending gave Republicans a measurable advantage on Election Day, according to a new study.”

“The advantage isn’t large, but it is statistically significant: The researchers found the ruling, in Citizens United v. FEC, was associated with a six percentage-point increase in the likelihood that a Republican candidate would win a state legislative race.”

“And in six of the most affected states — Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio and Tennessee — the probability that a Republican would be elected to a state legislative seat increased by 10 percentage points or more. In five other states — Colorado, Iowa, Texas, Wisconsin and Wyoming — Republican candidates were seven percentage points more likely to win.”

A recent lawsuit says investment managers “should be able to donate money to whichever politicians they choose, even if those donations could present a conflict of interest down the line,” Pension 360 reports.

“The lawsuit, filed last week by Republican committees from New York and Tennessee against the SEC, wants the court to affirm that political donations are free speech–and, by extension, current SEC pay-to-play rules are unconstitutional. Under the SEC’s current rules, investment advisors can’t make donations to politicians that have any influence–direct or indirect–over the hiring of investment firms.”

“The most corrupting force in politics, we are repeatedly told, is big money — super PACs, corporate lobbyists, rapacious oligarchs. And there’s plenty of evidence to support the claim,” Matt Bai reports.

“But let’s be clear: It wasn’t big money that drove Republican House members, before they left town last week, to approve the first-ever Congressional lawsuit against a sitting president, when they should have gotten serious about a pressing border crisis. And it wasn’t big money that had gleeful Democrats doing backflips in the streets at calls from the conservative fringe to impeach Barack Obama.”

“What’s really fueling the hyperbole and dysfunction in Washington now isn’t one privileged special interest or another, but rather the mouse clicks of ordinary, angry Americans whose $25 contributions add up to a mountain of influence. And in this way, at least, American politics has finally caught up to where the rest of society is going.”

“Republicans are launching a fundraising effort that will let donors cut six-figure checks to support GOP Senate candidates this fall — a move that capitalizes on the Supreme Court’s landmark McCutcheon v. FEC decision,” Politico reports.

“Senate Republicans have filed paperwork to form the Targeted State Victory Committee, a joint fundraising effort between the National Republican Senatorial Committee and Republican state parties in 13 Senate battleground states.”

Bloomberg Businessweek: “Spending on judicial races has been ticking up along with overall election spending for the past decade, but the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling, which lifted restrictions on political spending by groups unaffiliated with individual campaigns, has driven money into races once run on shoestring budgets.”

“For donors, smaller races offer distinct advantages over presidential or congressional elections. It’s relatively inexpensive to influence the outcome, and voters tend to have less-fixed opinions of municipal or state officials. Judges are particularly attractive targets, because they have authority to rule on ideological issues such as abortion or to set precedents on business regulations.”

Ray LaRaja and Brian Schaffner: “In our forthcoming book, we show that campaign finance laws that empower parties do lead to less polarization. Party organizations do, in fact, behave differently than other partisan groups by mediating ideological sources of money and funneling it to moderate candidates. It may seem counterintuitive to fight polarization by empowering parties, but states with ‘party-centered’ campaign finance laws tend to be less polarized than states that constrain how the parties can support candidates.”

“We are not arguing that campaign finance laws are the underlying cause of polarization. But the rules often advantage the most ideological elements in each party coalition, who have an abiding interest in pushing for candidates who espouse their views of the world.”

Ezra Klein highlights a chart comes from the authors which shows “what most people intuitively know: the small minority of people who fund American politics are much, much more politically polarized than the vast majority of people who don’t contribute to campaigns.”

Phillip Bump: “We’re obviously a few miles down the road from the days when candidates for elected office stood on wooden platforms. But we are perhaps further than you might think. In fact, there is nothing in federal law that would prevent a super PAC or group of PACs from picking out a candidate and taking care of his or her entire campaign. And we’re starting to get a glimpse of what such a campaign might look like…”

“So if you’re a candidate, what is the absolute minimum that you need in order to run for office, the thing that only you can provide? The answer is this: The candidate. And in a world where that candidate is restricted in fundraising and spending but those PACs aren’t, why not let the PACs handle the TV ads and radio and the online marketing and the field and all of that? For years, candidates have been happy to have outside groups run negative ads against opponents. Why not let them do more? The candidate is just himself, and the PACs do everything else.”

For years, President Obama “railed against the surge of unlimited spending flowing into American political campaigns, arguing that average voters were being shut out of a secretive system that lets special interests bankroll elections,” the AP reports.

“Now, as Obama enthusiastically raises money for Democratic super PACs, he’s embracing some of the same secretive elements of that system, drawing charges of hypocrisy from good-governance advocates who say the public deserves to know what Obama’s saying and to whom he’s saying it when donors pay for a few minutes with the president.”

“An explosion of spending on political advertising on television — set to break $2 billion in congressional races, with overall spots up nearly 70 percent since the 2010 midterm election — is accelerating the rise of moneyed interests and wresting control from the candidates’ own efforts to reach voters,” the New York Times reports.

“In the first full midterm cycle where outside groups have developed a sophisticated infrastructure, the consequences are already becoming apparent: a harshly negative tone dictated by the groups and a nearly nonstop campaign season that could cause voters to tune out before Election Day.”

In the mail: Buying the Vote: A History of Campaign Finance Reform by Robert Mutch.

“For all the progress women have made in Congress and in elections, they are practically sitting out the new game that is redefining American politics: big money,” Politico reports.

“It’s not that women want to leave it to men like Sheldon Adelson and Tom Steyer to sidle up to the table to shape important races and party politics. Rather, many fundraisers are learning that successfully collecting cash from women takes a different approach than doing so from men. In interviews, more than a dozen fundraisers, donors and political consultants said that when they reach out to women they bump up against deep cultural, strategic and logistical challenges that contrast markedly with how money has always been extracted from men.”

USA Today has found “dozens of deep-pocketed super PACs financed by a handful of donors — some of which have close ties to the candidates they support. More than 40 super PACs that have raised at least $100,000 since Jan. 1 list fewer than five donors on campaign-finance reports.”

“Federal candidates can’t accept donations larger than $2,600 for a primary or general election. Super PACs can accept unlimited corporate, union and individual donations as long as they operate independently of the candidates they back. It’s perfectly legal for candidates’ mothers, siblings, grandparents and other relatives to finance super PACs. Campaign-finance watchdogs argue the practice demonstrates the broken state of election laws and regulations.”