“I think that, for the moment, it will take money to win the election to get people there who believe in taking the money out.”
— House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), quoted by Politico.
“I think that, for the moment, it will take money to win the election to get people there who believe in taking the money out.”
— House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), quoted by Politico.
“Republicans and outside groups used anonymous Twitter accounts to share internal polling data ahead of the midterm elections, CNN has learned, a practice that raises questions about whether they violated campaign finance laws that prohibit coordination.”
“The Twitter accounts were hidden in plain sight. The profiles were publicly available but meaningless without knowledge of how to find them and decode the information, according to a source with knowledge of the activities.”
“The practice is the latest effort in the quest by political operatives to exploit the murky world of campaign finance laws at a time when limits on spending in politics are eroding and regulators are being defanged.”
Morning Line: “We already know that the $4 billion spent on this midterm election was more than any other midterm in history. It was the most on congressional elections ever, including during a presidential year. What do the numbers really tell us? These two stats jumped out at us from a post-analysis done by the Center for Responsive Politics:
What that means is, as one of us noted on NewsHour Monday night money, more specifically who spends the most, is about as good a predictor that there is of who will win a race. Those numbers, by the way, are pretty close to the incumbent reelection rates.”
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“The 2014 midterm elections mark a new level of collaboration between candidates and independent groups, eroding the barrier that is supposed to separate those running for office from their big-money allies,” the Washington Post reports.
“The vast sums of cash raised by independent groups has reordered the political landscape, compelling campaigns to find new ways to communicate their wants and needs without officially coordinating with outside players. Such direct coordination is prohibited under 40-year-old campaign finance rules.”
“This is not how the system used to work. Just a decade ago, candidates shied away from being too closely associated with ‘soft money,’ for reasons of appearance and for fear of running afoul of election laws.”
New York Times: “In 2010, the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court effectively blew apart the McCain-Feingold restrictions on outside groups and their use of corporate and labor money in elections. That same year, a related ruling from a lower court made it easier for wealthy individuals to finance those groups to the bottom of their bank accounts if they so chose. What followed has been the most unbridled spending in elections since before Watergate.”
“The result was a massive power shift, from the party bosses to the rich individuals who ran the super PACs (as most of these new organizations came to be called)… With the advent of Citizens United, any players with the wherewithal, and there are surprisingly many of them, can start what are in essence their own political parties, built around pet causes or industries and backing politicians uniquely answerable to them. No longer do they have to buy into the system. Instead, they buy their own pieces of it outright, to use as they see fit.”
“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.”
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.”
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.
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