Andy Kroll

Third Way/Flickr

The politico in charge of helping Democrats keep control of the US Senate has a message for left-leaning donors: Wake up and open those checkbooks!

In an interview with the Huffington Post, Guy Cecil, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, put Democrats' odds at even to retain the control of the Senate in this year's elections. But Cecil worries about the gap in spending between Democratic and Republican outside spending groups, such as the US Chamber of Commerce and American Crossroads, the independent political juggernaut started by GOP gurus Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie.

"Money" is what keeps Cecil up at night, he said. "Our allies need to wake up," he added. "Our allies need to understand that the majority in the Senate is in danger and that everything from jobs and the economy and women's health and Supreme Court justices, Wall Street reform—all the things that they have worked so hard for—will be for naught if we lose the Senate."

Here's more from HuffPost:

While Democratic Senate candidates have about $50 million more in the bank overall than their Republican counterparts, they have been outspent by a factor of nearly three to one—$29.1 million to $9.3 million—in the advertising wars, largely thanks to the outside groups and super PACs willing to spend unlimited amounts of money.

According to data provided by a Democratic source familiar with ad buys, the biggest spender on Senate races has been the US Chamber of Commerce, which has already pumped in more than $11 million for "issue" ads that benefit the GOP. After that come the Karl Rove-hatched groups American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, with at least $7 million. The group 60 Plus, billed as a conservative alternative to the AARP, has spent more than $4 million.

The biggest spender on the Democratic side, meanwhile, has been the League of Conservation Voters, shelling out some $2.7 million, according to the source. The still-growing Majority PAC, a super-PAC formed by Democratic operatives to sway Senate races, has been good for $1.7 million.

"They need to—and we all need to—step up and make sure that our candidates have the resources they need, that we can push back on these super-PACs, that we can make sure our side of the story is heard," Cecil said. "I am confident that if we can close the gap financially, we will hold the Senate. But it's also a big if."

In related news, Tom Donohue, the US Chamber of Commerce's president and CEO, told members of his organization that the group plans to get involved in as many as a dozen Senate races this year. Donohue wouldn't say exactly how much the Chamber would spend in the 2012 cycle—news reports have put it as high as $50 million—but, as Reuters reported, Donohue promised "it'll be a lot of money."

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Mitt Romney. Newshour/Flickr

Mitt Romney, the GOP's presumptive presidential nominee, won't give out the names of his bundlers, the super-fundraisers who individually rake in anywhere from tens of thousands to millions of dollars for the campaign from an array of donors. But from election records, you can learn that among Romney's biggest rainmakers is a cadre of lobbyists representing some of the biggest industries in America.

A new analysis by the Public Campaign Action Fund finds that at least 25 lobbyists have bundled $3,088,151 for Romney's campaign. Those lobbyists including Patrick Durkin of Barclay's Financial who's bundled $927,160, Ignacio Sanchez of the powerful law firm DLA Piper ($86,700), and Bruce Gates of tobacco company Altria Client Services ($27,500). (Campaigns are required by law to disclose their lobbyist-bundlers.)

As Public Campaign's Adam Smith notes, two of Romney's bundlers—Wayne Berman of Ogilvy Government Relations and Tom Fiorentino of the Fiorentino Group—have reached the campaign's "Stars" level ($250,000 minimum) and one, Barclay's Durkin, has reached the "Stripes" level (minimum $500,000). That's Romney campaign lingo (PDF) for the two most elite levels for fundraisers, each of which give the fundraiser inside access to the campaign with weekly briefings, invitations to exclusive Romney finance committee retreats, and VIP access at this summer's GOP convention.

Of course, we don't know all of Romney's bundlers because, unlike the Obama campaign, Romney's team won't disclose them. None of Obama's bundlers is registered as a lobbyist, though, as the New York Times reported last year, at least 15 of them engage in lobbying without officially registering.

Here's the full list of the Romney campaign's lobbyist-bundlers we know of and the amount they've raised so far:

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Dave Hoefler/Flickr

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has stretched his recall election lead over Democrat Tom Barrett to six percentage points, according to a new poll by Marquette University's Law School. Walker leads 50 percent to 44 percent among likely voters, an increase of five points from Marquette's last poll nearly a month ago.

The poll, Marquette's first since the May 8 Democratic primary, finds voter enthusiasm for the recall highest among Republicans, even though it was progressives and Democrats who triggered the recall election. An overwhelming majority—91 percent—of GOPers surveyed said they're "absolutely certain" to vote in the June 5 election; 8 in 10 Democrats and independents said the same. In addition, 6 in 10 GOP respondents said they'd tried to convince another person to vote in the recall, while just over 5 in 10 Democrats said the same. Democrats, however, are more likely to have been contacted by a campaign than Republicans.

Charles Franklin, Marquette Law School's poll director, said in a statement that a key takeaway is that Republicans hold the crucial edge in voter enthusiasm with the June 5 election weeks away. "In a close election with so few undecided voters," he said, "enthusiasm, turnout, and campaign contact with voters may make the difference."

The poll also found that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney were deadlocked in Wisconsin, 46-46. Last month, Obama held a four point lead over Romney, 49-45.

The Marquette poll surveyed 704 registered voters in Wisconsin. The margin of error for the survey was about 4 percent.

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suravid/Shutterstock

In the annals of loopholes, one that the Federal Election Commission, the nation's election watchdog, created in 2008 could rank as one of the most absurd. The FEC's Republican commissioners decided that shadowy nonprofits running political ads (think: the US Chamber of Commerce) could hide the identities of people who donate more than $1,000, as long as those donors didn't earmark their money for a specific ad. So, for instance, a donor couldn't say, "I want you to run an ad attacking Nancy Pelosi next Monday at 7 p.m. on NBC." Donors and political operatives are not idiots, of course, and figured out how to capitalize on the loophole by just giving that money without specific requests, allowing groups like the Chamber to keep more and more donations in the dark.

But those days could be over. In March, a district judge ruled that the FEC's loophole broke the law, and on Monday night, the Court of Appeals in the DC Circuit rejected a request to stay the ruling. It goes into effect now. The decision deals a blow to dark-money politics, while delivering reformers and transparency lovers a big win. "The American people have a right to know who is bankrolling the ads that are designed to influence their votes," Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), the lead plaintiff in the case challenging the loophole, said in a statement. "In its decision to deny the stay of the lower Court's ruling, the Court of Appeals has signaled that the public interest is best served by increased donor disclosure."

The appeals court's decision on Monday could impact a slew of powerful political nonprofits spending big bucks in the 2012 elections. That includes Crossroads GPS, the brainchild of Karl Rove; Americans for Prosperity, which receives funding from the Koch brothers; and the Chamber of Commerce, which spent $32.9 million on the 2010 elections.

Dragging dark money into the sunlight is no small matter, either. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, conservative nonprofits such as Rove's Crossroads GPS have already spent $121 million in the 2012 cycle without naming who funded the ads. Overall campaign spending by dark money groups has spiked from 1 percent to 47 percent since the 2006 midterm elections. And in the 2010 elections, 72 percent of political ad buys by independent groups came from sources that had been banned from spending any money at all back in 2006. A recent UPI headline summed up the state of things before Monday's ruling quite nicely: "2012 election drowning in secret money." 

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