With limits on campaign contributions by corporations and unions lifted by a key court ruling earlier this year, the 2010 midterm elections are featuring a spending spree by big-money interests who are largely disguising their activities.

 

The U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision erased previous caps on what companies and organized labor could contribute towards campaigns. But federal law still requires these players to disclosure what they spend on elections. So, in order to take advantage of the ruling, big business and labor are using third parties to influence races without having to reveal who gave what to whom.

 

Public Citizen found that in the 2004 elections, 98% of outside groups disclosed the names of donors who paid for their political ads. So far in 2010 only 32% have done so. At the same time, spending by these groups has topped $100 million, as of the end of September. This amount is more than twice that of the election four years ago.

 

The Washington Post has reported that conservative groups are easily outspending their liberal counterparts by 7 to 1. One of the biggest players nationally is “a little-known Iowa group called the American Future Fund, which has spent $7 million on behalf of Republicans in more than two dozen House and Senate races,” wrote the Post.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Fading Disclosure (Public Citizen) (pdf)

The Secret Sponsors (by Mike McIntire, New York Times)

Donor Names Remain Secret as Rules Shift (by Michael Luo and Stephanie Strom, New York Times)

Interest-Group Spending for Midterm Up Fivefold From 2006; Many Sources Secret (by T.W. Farnam and Dan Eggen, Washington Post)