This Week in Dark Money

A quick look at the week that was in the world of political dark money

the money shot

 

quote of the week

“I mean, if somebody here has a $10 million check—I can’t solicit it from you, but feel free to use it wisely.”
—Barack Obama, speaking to guests about donating to outside spending groups at a fundraiser hosted by Beyonce and Jay-Z. As the Huffington Post reported, the remark was “seemingly in jest” but also the latest example of how closely campaigns have flirted with the ban on coordinating their activities with outside groups. That rule is hardly ever enforced, though, and as Campaign Legal Center senior counsel Paul S. Ryan told HuffPo, Obama’s comment was vague enough to not qualify as a direct request for contributions.

 

attack ad of the week 

This week, Mother Jones made waves with the release of a secretly recorded video of Mitt Romney making a pitch to wealthy donors in May at the Boca Raton home of private equity manager Marc Leder. Pro-Obama super-PAC Priorities USA Action has already pounced on one of Romney’s most controversial statements in the video, in which he dismissed 47 percent of the electorate as entitled, government-dependent “victims” who will vote for Obama no matter what. After showing an image of a wealthy home and Romney’s comments, the Priorities ad cuts away to a modest house as a narrator replies, “Behind these doors, middle-class families struggle, and Romney will make things even tougher.”

 

stat of the week

More than 70: The number of dark-money 501(c)(4) groups, ostensibly operating as tax-exempt “social welfare” organizations, that the Internal Revenue Service is investigating. The groups can’t legally make political activities the majority of what they do, although many make little effort to conceal their political spending, and the IRS has had its eye on groups like Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS for several months now. Even so, the agency hasn’t stripped a single group of its 501(c)(4) status in the past six months.

 

chart of the week

The Daily Beast and Center for Responsive Politics dug through tax filings to do their best job to piece together the interconnected world of dark-money 501(c)(4)s. The chart doesn’t paint a complete picture, since numbers from the 2012 election won’t all be released until at least mid-next year, but it does list known grants made by the groups and to whom they were given. (Obscuring sunlight further, a federal appeals court overturned a lower court’s decision, in Van Hollen v. FEC, to require tax-exempt groups to reveal their donors.)

 

more mojo dark-money coverage

Romney Funder’s Israeli Newspaper Buries Video Controversy: Sheldon Adelson spends millions on ads for Mitt, but tries to downplay the GOP candidate’s gaffes.
Crossroads, US Chamber, and Other Dark Money Groups Notch Big Court Win: A federal appeals court has overturned an earlier ruling demanding that nonprofits unmask their donors for certain ads.
Liberal Super-PAC Targets Koch Brothers With Attack Ads in Wisconsin and Iowa: Patriot Majority takes the fight to the Kochs in the state that, for liberals, made them infamous.
Who Was at Romney’s “47 Percent” Fundraiser?: Some possible guests at the $50,000-a-plate Florida event where the candidate cast Obama voters as moochers.
SECRET VIDEO: Romney Tells Millionaire Donors What He REALLY Thinks of Obama Voters: When he doesn’t know a camera’s rolling, the GOP candidate shows his disdain for half of America.

 

more must-reads

• Sen. Bryan Dorgan (D-N.D.) joins the campaign finance reform cause. Center for Public Integrity
• Outside spending groups have accounted for close to half of all political ad spending, according to one analysis. MSNBC
More charts from the Daily Beast and Center for Responsive Politics.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate