The money poured into Richard M. Nixon’s reelection campaign from all corners: Six-figure checks flown by corporate jet from Texas; bundles of payments handed over at an Illinois game preserve; a battered brown attaché case stuffed with $200,000 in cash from a New Jersey investor hoping to fend off a fraud investigation.
During four pivotal weeks in spring 1972, the president brought in as much as $20 million — about $110 million in today’s dollars — much of it in the form of illegal corporate donations and all of it raised to avoid disclosure rules that went into effect that April. […]
The political world has, in many respects, come full circle since a botched burglary funded by illicit campaign cash brought down an administration. The excesses of the Nixon era ushered in a series of wide-ranging restrictions on the use of money in campaigns, including limits on individual campaign contributions that remain in force today.
But the intervening decades have also brought changes that have undercut many of the political financing rules put in place in response to the Watergate scandal, including a Supreme Court case that freed corporations and unions to spend unlimited money on elections and a public-financing regime that has collapsed into irrelevance.
read more at Washington Post
Tag Archives: campaign financing
Outside Money, Local Elections
In 2010, 74 Senate and House races changed hands. According to Public Citizen’s analysis, in almost every case the outside electioneering was significantly higher on the winning side.
Think that through: that’s OUTSIDE money controlling the vote.
This spending isn’t just a risk for undermining local control–it’s already done it.
Then take a look at this fascinating autopsy of money in a 2010 municipal race. The point, here, isn’t to demonize this candidate or her backers or the author of the piece.
Instead, consider the paradigm money and/in elections in this way is really a system of buying influence. And how when it is virtually unlimited, as it is with Citizens United as the law of the land, the local autonomy of every town and burg is under threat.
Something struck me as unusual. Ninety percent of the money Ms. Roberts raised is from a small group of people who earn their livelihoods buying, selling, and developing land, and belonging to organizations with names like The North Coast Citizens for a Better Economy, headquartered in Petaluma, and The California Real Estate Political Action Committee, located in San Diego. Furthermore, the financial backing for this campaign was uncomfortably familiar to me. (I have been here since 1972).
It appears to me that Ms. Roberts is being financed by the very people who fought against legalizing owner built homes in the 70’s, were for off-shore oil development in the 80’s, were for developing the Ukiah Masonite property by outside developers, were for GMO’s and now, against a modest sales tax increase to help us save much needed county services to the unfortunate amongst us. The list of players in this financial backing is impressive and has the appearance of being orchestrated for a purpose. I made a chart to help me understand the conservative side of Ms. Roberts support a bit more clearly, and I am sharing it with you here in the interests of fair and honest disclosure.
we the people | needham 