When one thinks of who wields behind-the-scenes power during a political campaign, it would be easy to pick out an influential party leader, pollster, fund-raiser or strategist. Not this year. One of the most important people in Campaign 2012 may well be a casino magnate, Sheldon Adelson, who has vowed to spend up to $100 [...]
What is a nonprofit entity and what is a campaign committee? That question is now being put to the Federal Election Commission by Democrats who are taking aim at Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, a nonprofit entity which aims to raise $300 million or so to attack President Barack Obama and other Democrats.
When people talk about political parties, it doesn’t always mean the Republican or Democratic parties. It can actually be something more literal – parties, real parties to raise money for candidates up and down the ticket. Parties are fun and parties are fund-raisers: A way for big-ticket donors to enjoy a night on the town, [...]
What candidate would want to turn down $90 million in free cash to fund a race for the White House? Yet that is exactly what both President Barack Obama and the presumptive challenger, Mitt Romney are expected to do this election year. The money would have come courtesy of civic-spirited American taxpayers who check off [...]
It is a truism of a campaign that “all politics is local.”’ And so it goes with campaign finance. With the excitement of the Presidential race taking center stage, how is a reporter for a regional or local paper able to get a handle on cash coming from their area and flowing to the national [...]
How words can come back to haunt, even with the best of intentions. That lesson is becoming painfully clear to President Barack Obama as he begins to build a war chest for the upcoming presidential race. There was a time was when Obama was clearly on the side of campaign-finance reformists. His rhetoric was clear, [...]
Blue and red. Liberal and conservative. Democrat and Republican. At this time of polarized politics, it seems as though both sides of the political spectrum are as far apart as at any time in recent memory. And if that is true of politics in general, it is also true when it comes to campaign finance. [...]
So much attention in Presidential fund-raising focuses on big dollar donors, especially in this era of SuperPacs and unlimited contributions. But, there’s also a big role for small donors, the grassroots foot soldiers who write small checks and can wield a lot of power. The big donors capture the headlines, and why not? They represent [...]
Each election year brings about a few truisms on the campaign finance front: There will be more money poured into campaigns, there will be new rules of engagement and there will be new loopholes for getting around those rules. Welcome to Campaign 2012. It’s off to the races in the contest for political money. Presidential [...]
