Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has long been the Left’s foremost critic of “dark money,” which he’s said “corrupts” politics and poses a “threat to democracy,” the Washington Examiner reports.
“But a Washington Examiner review of the senator’s donors, green energy affiliations, and efforts to transform the Supreme Court tell another story. He has for many years benefited from the influence of dark money and held certain ties to dark money groups.”
Tim Miller: “Super PACs for several GOP candidates challenging Donald Trump have raised hundreds of millions of dollars to help fund efforts to displace him as the party’s nominee—and they have absolutely nothing to show for it.”
“No progress. No signs of life. No movement. Nada.”
“The impotence of the super PAC efforts is an all-the-more-inviting target for ridicule when you consider that this entire strategic approach was discredited in the 2016 and 2020 presidential races.”
“Republicans have waged a decades-long battle to blow up the campaign-finance laws that rein in big-money spending. Now, they are making a play that could end in their biggest victory since the Citizens United ruling in 2010,” Politico reports.
“The GOP is growing increasingly optimistic about their prospects in a little-noticed lawsuit that would allow official party committees and candidates to coordinate freely by removing current spending restrictions. If successful, it would represent a seismic shift in how tens of millions of campaign dollars are spent and upend a well-established political ecosystem for TV advertising.”
Hundreds of college students “were paid $20 a pop for every family member, friend or acquaintance they could persuade to donate $1 to Hutchinson this summer,” Politico reports.
“The texting-for-pay plan was one of several efforts by Republican contenders to beef up their number of unique donors by paying for them.”
Nevada U.S. Senate candidate Sam Brown (R) “created a political action committee to ‘help elect Republicans’ but most of its funds were spent paying down debt from his failed previous campaign,” CNN reports.
“The group donated less than 7% of its funds to the candidates it was set up to support, according to campaign finance records – a move one campaign finance expert likened to using the PAC as a ‘slush fund.'”
“When WinRed, the company that processes nearly all online Republican campaign contributions, recently released its enormous trove of donor data for the first half of the year, donations were conspicuously absent for one presidential candidate: Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida,” the New York Times reports.
“It was no technical glitch. The DeSantis campaign worked with WinRed in a way that prevented the disclosure of donor information, ensuring that the campaign’s small donors would remain anonymous.”
“The arrangement appears to be the first of its kind for a presidential campaign since WinRed’s founding four years ago and could presage a return to an era in which far less information on small donors is made public, at least for Republicans.”
“Special counsel Jack Smith’s probe of efforts by Donald Trump and others to subvert the 2020 election remains ongoing — with at least one interview this week that focused on fundraising and spending by Trump’s political action committee,” Politico reports.
“The special counsel has long been thought to be scrutinizing whether Trump or his PAC violated federal laws by raising money off claims of voter fraud they knew were false.”
“When allies of former President Donald Trump launched his new legal defense fund, they created a group with few restrictions on how much it can raise, even fewer on how much it can spend, and the ability for deep-pocketed donors to remain anonymous,” the Daily Beast reports.
“In essence, Trump’s legal costs have gotten so high that he’s been forced to find a new way around campaign finance laws—a route that will allow him to draw massive donations from megadonors who could not otherwise write checks large enough to replenish his attorney costs.”
“Candidates for office were practically swimming in grassroots money over the last few cycles, as politics increasingly went online and the money followed,” Politico reports.
“This cycle, the well is drying up.”
“A Politico analysis of federal campaign finance data found a dramatic downturn in small-dollar donations across the board.”
“Dan Cox, the rightwinger who lost the Maryland governor’s race last year, has been telling the press that he doesn’t know who was behind a July 3 statement of candidacy in his name. He even said he alerted the Federal Election Commission to the matter,” the Daily Beast reports.
“It should be a short investigation: The person was the treasurer Cox had hired to do just that.”
“The Daily Beast has obtained emails and text messages that show Cox planned a congressional bid since at least mid-June.”
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) “is paying himself back hundreds of thousands of dollars for loans he made to his prior Senate campaigns, despite claiming he wouldn’t seek to recoup the money from donors,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.
“Johnson previously claimed that he wouldn’t seek to repay the $8.4 million in outstanding loans he claimed his campaign owes him for loans in his 2010 and 2016 campaigns.”
“More than seven months after losing his U.S. Senate bid, Republican Herschel Walker’s campaign still has nearly $4.5 million in its account. And some donors are pressing to get their contributions back,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
“The campaign of embattled Rep. George Santos, who is facing federal indictment on fraud and money laundering charges, paid the congressmember $85,000 in the second quarter of this year,” Politico reports.
“Though the New York representative says he is running for reelection, he spent virtually nothing on campaigning.”
“The payments the campaign made to Santos stemmed from hundreds of thousands of dollars that the congressmember previously loaned to his campaign. Those loans had sparked questions about how Santos had so much money to lend his political efforts.”
“An acquaintance of New York City Mayor Eric Adams is at the center of an alleged straw-donor scheme, announced by the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Friday, that funneled tens of thousands of dollars in illicit contributions to the Democratic mayor’s campaign,” Politico reports.
“Dwayne Montgomery is a retired deputy inspector with the NYPD, where he overlapped with Adams before the mayor retired to pursue a political career.”
“According to an indictment unveiled by Bragg Friday, Montgomery was among six people charged with an elaborate scheme to circumvent campaign finance laws and ply the campaign with cash in the hopes of currying favor for future business deals with the city, once Adams was elected.”
Politico: “Super PACs have been growing in strength for more than a decade, but this cycle are swimming in more money than ever. They have started earlier, with more than $14 million in independent expenditures in the primary already… compared with around $950,000 at this time in 2015.”
“The groups are also taking new approaches, deploying staffing at campaign events, paying for door-knocking operations and even sending fundraising texts on candidates’ behalf. Some of the new strategies could test the legal limits on coordination between campaigns and super PACs.”
Mother Jones obtained a list of 36 wealthy contributors who last year wrote big checks to support No Labels’ effort to win 2024 ballot lines in states across the nation.
“Among the No Labels backers are donors who contributed millions of dollars to Republican causes, such as past GOP presidential candidates and super-PACS connected to Republican congressional leadership, and several who have poured money into the Democratic presidential campaigns of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden. One donor provided a big chunk of political cash to Donald Trump.”
“Generally, these No Labels supporters, who mostly made contributions of $5,600 to its 2024 project, appear to favor conservative candidates, though many have played both sides of the aisle, financing Republican and Democratic politicians.”
“Once considered natural political allies, the Republican Party and big business are drifting apart. One sign of their estrangement: GOP lawmakers are weaning themselves off money from corporate political-action committees,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Republicans are now less dependent on corporate and industry PACs than at any time in the past three decades… Instead, they are turning to smaller donations from millions of individuals who tend to be wary of big-businesses priorities such as free trade.”
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.