Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group

Health group airs ad backing Obama EPA nominee

Jacob Fenton — Tue, 21 May 2013 15:52:05 -0400

The American Public Health Association has begun airing a new TV ad supporting Gina McCarthy, President Barack Obama's nominee for administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. It's the first time the nonprofit group has aired an ad backing a specific nominee, according to a spokeswoman.

McCarthy was okayed by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in a party line 10-8 vote last Thursday, but will still need a floor vote to become the country's top environmental regulator. Republicans had previously threatened to boycott a vote on her nomination, and all eight Republicans on the committee voted against her.

McCarthy is currently the EPA’s assistant administrator in charge of air and radiation, and has worked in state government in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Republican opposition centered on general complaints about EPA's practices rather than specific grievances about McCarthy.

Health association spokeswoman Audrey Pernik said the ad backing McCarthy wasn't political. It features images of asthmatic children, and lauds McCarthy's work on clean air issues. A press release from the association calls McCarthy "instrumental" in developing rules to limit mercury emissions from power plants that are expected to prevent 11,000 premature deaths each year.

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Apple lobbies on taxes more than any other subject

Bill Allison — Mon, 20 May 2013 17:33:14 -0400

Ahead of a hearing at the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations tomorrow at which its CEO, Tim Cook, is the star witness, computer, tablet and smartphone manufacturer Apple has preemptively released his prepared remarks defending the company's tax practices, which include pooling $100 billion overseas, away from the grasping hand of the Internal Revenue Service.

The prepared testimony does not mention the more than $14.5 million Apple has spent on lobbying the federal government since 1998, nor that taxes top the list of issues the company has raised, according to data in Influence Explorer. One of the bills appearing most frequently in its lobbying reports is the Freedom to Invest Act, introduced by Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, that would allow U.S. companies to bring home some of the cash they hold overseas without facing tax on it.

The biggest recipient of contributions from Apple employees and their family members is President Barack Obama, whose campaign committess have gotten more than $514,000, a total that eclipses the second biggest recipient, Hillary Clinton, who got $46,800. Among sitting members of Congress, the top recipient is Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., whose gotten $22,625. Boxer is not a member of the committee looking into Apple, but Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz, the ranking member, is; Apple employees and their family members have contributed $10,100 to his campaigns.

The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a report of its own on Apple's practices, claiming that the company exploits differences between tax law in the United States and Ireland, where the company maintains a subsidiary, to avoid taxes.

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Reporter's notebook: How we came up with that campaign finance maze

Kathy Kiely — Mon, 20 May 2013 10:29:38 -0400

If it makes you all feel any better, campaign finance is hard for us too.

At the Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group, we make a speciality of money in politics reporting, so when the dark money groups that we often cover burst into the headlines -- on reports that the Internal Revenue Service was denying the coveted tax exempt status to Tea Party groups -- we figured it was time to put what we know about the campaign finance ecosystem out there.

The process turned out to be revealing, if painful.

You can see the final product here. But we learned a lot getting there and wanted to share some of that with you.

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2016 preview? Three videos by GOP groups all target Hillary Clinton

Keenan Steiner — Thu, 16 May 2013 15:50:13 -0400

As the White House released long-sought documents on the Benghazi affair and Republican lawmakers have renewed their criticism of the Obama administration's handling of it, three big Republican groups have all produced videos on the episode that led to the death of an American ambassador. All strike a similar tone and focus on the same target: Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state whose strong polling numbers make her an early favorite in the 2016 presidential election.

One video comes from the Republican National Committee and two from outside spending groups: American Crossroads, a super PAC, and American Future Fund, a 501(c)4 group, the type of nonprofit receiving heavy attention this week in light of the admission by the Internal Revenue Service that it delayed granting tax exempt status to some Tea Party groups.

All of the videos suggest that President Barack Obama and Clinton covered up the truth about the 2012 terrorist attack at the U.S. mission in Libya that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. The Crossroads and AFF videos are both produced in the style of spy thrillers and flash across the screen the date of the attack, Sept. 11, 2012, with its reminders of the even more deadly terror attacks that occurred in New York and Washington 11 years earlier.

The Crossroads ad appears to be the only one to have aired on TV so far, running during CBS' Face the Nation last Sunday, according to documents collected in Political Ad Sleuth. Unusually long for a TV ad at 90 seconds, the ad cost $18,000 to air.

All of the videos harken back to an RNC video from the last presidential campaign that never aired. A phone call goes to the White House from Benghazi on the night of the attack. Nobody answers. Then the line dies. It's a thinly veiled attack on Obama's leadership. It also employs the method of flashing the date September 11, while going a step further: It momentarily delays the appearance of the year 2012. The ad never aired because the Romney campaign nixed it, ABC News reported.

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How ex-Det. Guy Bowers became the biggest campaign donor of all

Keenan Steiner — Thu, 16 May 2013 10:00:58 -0400

One of the most prolific donors to political candidates running for federal office has no idea that’s his status.

Guy Bowers, a 66-year-old ex-detective who says he owes his fortune to an inheritance and some savvy investing, is not your typical corporate executive often associated with fattening politicians’ campaign accounts.

Yet Bowers was such an enthusiastic donor that he tops a list of perhaps hundreds who appear to have broken a campaign finance law that caps the total amount of money individuals can give federal political candidates and committees in the course of a two-year election cycle. For 2011 and 2012, that limit was set at $117,000. Bowers ended up spending about three times that amount -- about $360,000 -- according to Influence Explorer.

How Bowers came to top a list of apparent campaign finance scofflaws and how Sunlight found him speaks volumes about the problems in enforcing campaign finance law.

Reached for an interview in Lubbock, Texas, where he has a home, he had no idea that aggregate limits on campaign contributions existed.

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Tangled web: The IRS role in campaign finance

Nancy Watzman — Wed, 15 May 2013 10:28:44 -0400

With the burgeoning scandal about the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) singling out small conservative nonprofit groups for scrutiny, upcoming hearings, and a Justice Department investigation, the public is getting a quick schooling in the byzantine ways tax exempt "social welfare" groups get involved in the political game.

A long list of nonprofit groups spend big on politics. They run the gamut from well known organizations of long standing, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to Crossroads GPS, the brainchild of Republican strategist Karl Rove. As reported in the New York Times, even as it was apparently targeting small Tea Party groups for added scrutihy, the IRS did not respond to requests by reform groups to investigate the bigger political nonprofits, such as Crossroads or Priorities USA, which has close ties to President Barack Obama,

The truly curious universe of politically-oriented nonprofits demonstrates how murky the line has become between groups whose primary focus is issue advocacy and those that target candidates in political races. Since the 2010 Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court opened the door to unlimited campaign spending by incorporated entities, more and more groups (the IRS told the Washington Post its caseload doubled) applied for the 501(c)4 status enjoyed by issue advocacy groups.

Here is a quick tour through some of Sunlight's reporting on the role political nonprofits have played in recent elections that shows what a tangled web the campaign finance system has become and how difficult that makes it to follow the money: Whether they are large or small, conservative or liberal, or something in between, all of these nonprofits have three things in common is, first, they are tax exempt, second, they are not required to disclose their donors and third, even though they are heavily involved in spending on elections, they

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What's wrong with this picture? Greenhouse gas at all-time high

Fri, 10 May 2013 10:31:50 -0400

Environment-watchers have elsewhere noted that planet Earth is about to hit a dubious milestone: Sometime very soon, the levels of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, will reach 400 parts per million. [EDIT: It has been reported that levels of carbon dioxide have surpassed 400 PPM.] That's the highest ever recorded according to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which is providing daily updates of the atmospheric measurements that have been taken every day at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii since 1958.

Here at the Sunlight Foundation, we decided to take a look at what the Mauna Loa graph looks like compared to some of the political datapoints we like to follow. What it suggests is that we citizens of the world like to talk the talk about improving the environment but have a hard time moving from words to action.

As you can see, the concentrations of CO2, implicated in global warming, have continued to climb inexorably despite increased attention on the environment, beginning with the first Earth Day in 1970. The upward trajectory didn't slow when NASA scientist James Hansen told Congress in 1988 that global warming had begun, or when voters replaced President George H.W. Bush, a Texan with close ties to the oil industry, by Bill Clinton, a Democrat whose vice president, Al Gore, had just published Earth in Balance, his alarm about the state of the planet's environmental health.

It continued through three major international summits on the climate and a 2007 Nobel Prize to Gore, which he won after producing a movie about climate change, An Inconvenient Truth.

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Whom Mark Sanford owes

Kathy Kiely — Wed, 08 May 2013 10:20:32 -0400

Some big investors got a nice payoff Tuesday when Mark Sanford, South Carolina's disgraced former governor, won back his old House seat.

As Sanford acknowledged in his victory speech Tuesday night in Charleston, he's got a lot to be thankful for. The list could include more than $200,000 in late donations from big Republican donors and interests who bet that the ex-South Carolina governor could overcome a sex scandal and get his political career on track. The group includes 47 organizations and out-of-state givers -- a number of them with ties to the financial industry and libertarian causes.

Their support came as party leaders were shunning Sanford after revelations that his ex-wife was suing him for trespassing -- a charge the congressman-elect has a Thursday court date to answer. Two corporations with facilities in South Carolina, MeadWestVaco, and Boeing, gave $5,000 each from their political action committees. The National Rifle Association gave $2,000 and CTIA, the trade association for the wireless industry, $1,000.

But Sanford's most intriguing pool of late support came from the investment community. He received $5,200 donations -- the maximum permitted under federal law -- from a number of out-of-state givers with ties to financial firms.

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Key elements of food safety law stuck at White House regulatory agency

Nancy Watzman — Tue, 07 May 2013 11:20:46 -0400

OIRA's Cass Sunstein with President Obama and adviser Valerie Jarrett

The postponement of regulatory measures that would put a much ballyhooed food safety law into effect has focused attention on a little known White House agency that reviews regulations.

Among a series of regulations that has been the focus of heavy lobbying by the food industry, three rules remain stuck at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), where they have been awaiting action for more than a year. The trio is part of a package of five rules that implement the 2011 Food Safety and Modernization Act. The other two were released for publication earlier this year by OIRA, and now are stalled at the FDA, which under industry pressure recently announced that it was extending the public comment period until August.

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Mayors Against Illegal Guns hits the airwaves in N.H and Pa.

Kathy Kiely — Mon, 06 May 2013 18:23:21 -0400

Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the pro-gun control group backed by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is not giving up the fight.

Three weeks after the Senate rejected legislation offered in the wake of the December shooting massacre that left 26 people dead at a Connecticut elementary school, the group is launching what appears to be a high-priced ad campaign to keep the pressure on lawmakers.

The ad seen above attacks Sen. Kelly Ayotte, a New Hampshire Republican who was the lone lawmaker from the Northeast to vote against the gun control measure; another advertisement praises Sen. Pat Toomey, a Pennsylvania Republican who helped craft failed compromise bill, but urges voters to keep the pressure on by calling him to declare their support for universal background checks for gun buyers.

Both ads appeared today on Ad Hawk, Sunlight's tool for tracking political advertising on television. Meanwhile, Political Ad Sleuth, Sunlight's tracker for political ad purchases, shows a large buy at one of the Boston TV stations that broadcasts into New Hampshire: $138,000 for 88 spots to air over the next two weeks on WCVB.

Reading the big green tea leaves in Sanford-Colbert Busch race

Mon, 06 May 2013 16:45:51 -0400

(Updated 4:45 p.m. ET)

Despite his capacity for self-sabotage and the public shunning of his own party, some well-heeled Republicans continue to believe that it's worth investing in former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's comeback bid in Tuesday's special election for a vacant congressional seat in the Palmetto State.

During the last three weeks of the campaign, the unexpectedly competitive contest in a heavily GOP district between Sanford and Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch has become a magnet for big political spenders. Sanford, attempting a redemption run after a headline-making sex scandal that cost him his marriage and derailed his once-promising political career, has received more than $226,000 in last-minute donations of $1,000 or more, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission. As the race comes down the wire, Sanford has picked up the support of some prominent Republican women: Cosmetics executive Georgette Mosbacher, the ex-wife of former President George H.W. Bush's commerce secretary, Robert Mosbacher and a GOP bundler, chipped $2,600. Independent Women's Voice, a political non-profit whose directors include prominent conservative Midge Decter, has spent more than $160,000 supporting Sanford and attacking Colbert Busch, Sunlight's Follow the Unlimited Money tracker shows.

As of Friday, the two candidates were tied in last-minute, big dollar fundraising, but Colbert Busch pulled ahead again with a haul of more than $90,000 in four-figure checks that day. She's now further ahead of Sanford in big contributors than she has been at any time in the last two weeks, including the days immediately after news of Sanford's trespass charges broke. The Democratic upstart's big contributors included labor unions and a political action committees of several Democratic members of Congress. All told, Colbert Busch, sister of TV satirist Stephen Colbert, has pulled more than $296,000 in four-figure checks in the closing two weeks of the campaign. Moreover, she has benefitted from nearly $900,000 in spending by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic House Majority PAC.

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In the Kentucky Derby of political giving, one horse laps the field

Louis Serino — Fri, 03 May 2013 11:35:16 -0400

While bettors will be spending big on the 20 thoroughbreds racing to win Saturday's 139th Kentucky Derby, many of the horses' owners have been making their own high-stakes bets -- the kind that could pay off in much more than roses.

In honor of America's premier horse race, Sunlight took a look at the political giving records of the owners behind the field's ten favorites on Influence Explorer, and found some heavy political bets: Members of the elite group gave almost $4.5 million to political causes and campaigns since 1990.

In this derby, however, the winner looks like Secretariat at the Belmont: The place and show ponies don't even come close to Kenny Troutt, a telecom mogul whose net worth Forbes puts at $1.2 billion. Owner of the horse Revolutionary, Troutt has contributed a staggering $4.1 million. Of that, 96 percent went to conservative causes. On 12 occasions Troutt made a donation of more than $100,000, including contributions to Karl Rove's super PAC American Crossroads ($500,000) and the pro-GOP Progress for America Voter Fund ($250,000 on two instances) and to the Red, White and Blue Fund ($150,000) that backed former Sen. Rick Santorum's 2012 presidential bid. But Troutt's prized pony is Texas Gov. Rick Perry: He has contributed $740,000 campaigns and last year gave $150,000 to Make Us Great Again, the super PAC that backed Perry's unsuccessful presidential campaign.

Troutt has generously supported other GOP candidates from his home state of Texas. He has dropped $825,000 for Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and $450,000 to Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst (who ran unsuccessfully for Senate last year). Several other Lone Star state Republicans have received thousands from Troutt, including Rep. Pete Sessions as well as Sens. Ted Cruz (who beat Dewhurst in the GOP primary) and John Cornyn, the chief deputy to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Other owners of this year's Derby contenders who have made political contributions are lagging far behind Troutt, though most share his tendency to list to the right. Of the $273,000 in donations made by other of this year's Derby owners, 55 percent of the funds went to support Republicans. This compares to 27 percent for Democrats and 17 percent to other causes, which include third party candidates and non-partisan groups.

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Mel Watt's ties to the banking industry

Keenan Steiner — Thu, 02 May 2013 11:25:27 -0400

(CORRECTION: This post has been updated to eliminate the name of the American Bankers' Association's Michael Hunter, incorrectly identified in earlier versions as an alumnus of Watt's office. Hunter worked for former Rep. J.C. Watts, R-Okla.)

Rep. Mel Watt, President Barack Obama's pick to lead the agency that regulates Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, insurers of most of the country's mortgages, is getting strong support from his party's liberal wing despite close ties to an industry with a big stake in how -- or if -- the controversial quasi-government entities are wound down.

The North Carolina Democrat who was tapped Wednesday to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency received more contributions from the banking sector than any other during the course of his more than two decades in Congress. In addition, at least two former Watt staffers are working for big banking interests with a stake in the future of Fannie and Freddie -- and in an issue that Watt would have to decide if he is confirmed as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency: Will Fannie Mae engage in "principal reduction," or banks forgiving part of the loans, for people with underwater mortgages, a proposal advocated in the last Congress by more than 100 House Democrats -- including Watt.

The American Banking Association opposes principal reduction, as does the FHFA's acting director Edward DeMarco.

The Watts staffers now on banking industry payrolls are:

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There he goes again: Larry Flynt backs Mark Sanford

Keenan Steiner — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 18:56:04 -0400

If Mark Sanford accepts the endorsement of Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and the $2,600 that goes along with it, the South Carolina Republican congressional hopeful will be joining a list of well-known Democrats and breaking a long streak for the pornographer-turned-political activist.

A check of political donations in Sunlight's Influence Explorer reveals that his promised donation to Sanford would be Flynt's first to a Republican since 1993, when he wrote a check to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. In all, Flynt's political contributions total $111,175 at the state and federal level, according to Influence Explorer.

His new favorite candidate is attempting a political comeback after a badly mismanaged attempt to cover up an extramarital affair while he was governor derailed a once promising career. "No one has done more to expose the sexual hypocrisy of traditional values in America today. He is the man of the hour—the midnight hour," Flynt said in making his endorsement. "He has demonstrated by his words and deeds that traditional values are shameful and that he will not live by such rules. As the Bible teaches us: 'Ye shall know them by their fruits.," Flynt said.

Flynt's other recent politicial beneficiaries include former President Bill Clinton, his infamously wronged wife, former Secretary of State and former Sen. Hillary Clinton, as well as President Barack Obama. A complete list of Flynt's contributions to federal and state candidates is below.

The outspoken sex magazine mogul has a history of making political mischief. Last year, he offered a $1 million bounty for any one who could produce then-GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney's tax returns. He's also attempted to out gays in high office. But in 1998, he earned the sobriquet "investigative pornographer" when his revelations about extramarital affairs by Rep. Bob Livingston forced the Louisiana Republican to resign his congressional seat just as he was about to become speaker of the House.

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New appointees are long overdue but is the FEC broken?

Keenan Steiner — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 18:25:41 -0400

Is the Federal Election Commission broken? That's the question a watchdog group asked a panel of experts on the day that the last of the current commissioners' terms expired, leaving the agency that oversees campaign finance law with one vacancy and five holdovers. Campaign finance reformers used the occasion to call on President Barack Obama to appoint new commissioners, something the president hasn't bothered to do since the Senate refused to act on his last nominee.

Unsurprisingly, the campaign finance lawyers -- from hard line advocate of decreasing regulation Brad Smith to the liberal activist Larry Noble and the somewhere-in-the-middle private practice attorney Laurence Gold -- were just as polarized as the Federal Election Commission members themselves. The event was put on by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) at the George Washington University Law School.

The Federal Election Commission

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Stanley Cup runneth over with political cash: NHL owners scored big for GOP

Louis Serino — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 15:41:16 -0400

The puck drops tonight for the start of the Stanley Cup playoffs, and while hockey's bigwigs will be watching from afar in their box suites, they certainly took the ice during last year's election -- scoring big for the GOP. According to data from Sunlight's Influence Explorer, National Hockey League owners provided more than $3 million to politicians, PACs and independent expenditure groups during the 2012 election cycle.

Owners contributed more than three times as much to Republicans: More than $2.7 million of the contributions by hockey moguls went to conservative causes compared to $680,000 to Democratic causes. In fact, five teams -- the Tampa Bay Lightning, Philadelphia Flyers, Minnesota Wild, Columbus Blue Jackets and Buffalo Sabres -- gave exclusively to conservative campaigns. Only the Colorado Avalanche and Anaheim Ducks did the same for liberal causes -- but their combined donations amounted to a relatively paltry $7,500.

It's not entirely suprising to see the Republican tilt amongst the NHL's wealthy owners, a group that had battled the players' union in a months long lockout that almost led to the cancellation of the entire season.

Sunlight's survey, which examined political contributions of American NHL ownership groups (We excluded the NHL's Canadian teams becase it'sillegal for non-citizens to underwrite U.S. campaigns), found 10 clubs whose owners or employees gave more than $100,000 during 2012 election cycle and four teams that breached the $200,000 mark, including: the St. Louis Blues ($674,518); the Los Angeles Kings ($413,300); the Buffalo Sabres ($266,600); and the San Jose Sharks ($244,453). Four teams didn't contribute anything -- the Dallas Stars, the New Jersey Devils, the New York Islanders, and the league-owned Phoenix Coyotes. All of the teams who stayed on the bench during the 2012 politiccal season missed the playoffs this year. Coincidence?

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Sanford continues to draw big money in S.C. race versus Colbert Busch

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 15:24:57 -0400

How many political lives does former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford have? Even though much of the Republican establishment abandoned him after news broke that his ex-wife is suing him for trespass, a stream of last-minute contribution reports shows that the bottom has not fallen out completely for the once-rising and now badly tarnished political star.

As he heads into the final week of this effort to win back his old House seat in a race against Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch, Sanford continues to reel in support from some prominent party mavericks, as well as some deep-pocketed donors. The two candidates in the special election to replace Tim Scott, a Republican appointed earlier this year to the U.S. Senate, meet tonight for their only debate of the campaign and many more late, large donations could be riding on their respective performances.

The most promising sign for Sanford, who is hoping for a miracle comeback after an embarrassingly public sex scandal that ended his marriage: South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is slated to appear with him at a fundraiser Wednesday, giving him a potential boost with a constituency where he's having trouble, namely, women.

Political Party Time: Sanford leans on his successor for some last-minute support.

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As summer growing season starts, produce safety rules delayed

Nancy Watzman — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 09:02:20 -0400

As the nation's farmers enter a new growing season two years after 33 people died and 147 people were sickened in 28 states after eating listeria-infested canteloupe from a Colorado farm, the produce industry has effectively delayed implementation of a law intended to improve food safety.

The United Fresh Produce Association, which describes itself as "industry's leading trade association committed to driving the growth and success of produce companies and their partners" spearheaded the push for more time to comment on a pair of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rules toughening safety standards for farms and processors.

The group was the lead signatory on a letter requesting the delay sent to the FDA earlier this month. Other signers include more than 80 produce groups, from the American Mushroom Institute to the Chilean Avocadan Importers Association.

The push for a extension of the comment period--will postpone implementation of a 2011 law known as the Food Safety and Modernization Act. The two rules at issue are available here and here on Docket Wrench, Sunlight's tool for tracking federal regulations and the comments on them.

"Based on our current analysis, it would be impossible for any interested party to meaningful comment on these two proposed rules by the current deadline...the sheer size of the regulations lengthens the time necessary for analysis," the letter from the produce group says.

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11th Hour SC-1 Fundraising Plummets for Sanford

Louis Serino — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 01:33:45 -0400

While the Republican establishment has deserted former Gov. Mark Sanford in his bid for South Carolina’s first district, a dedicated few are still giving thousands to his campaign at the 11th hour. Even with these last minute gifts, however, his Democratic opponent Elizabeth Colbert Busch is still raking in double the cash in the days leading up to the special election on May 7.

According to FEC reports covering April 18 to April 23, Sanford's campaign has received $40,600 in contributions while Colbert Busch has raised $85,400. Per FEC rules, candidates must disclose donations of $1,000 or more within two days of receiving them. And while the campaigns have disclosed some donations made in the last five days, the public doesn't yet know who donated throughout early April [update: both committees have filed]. Each candidate is set to file pre-general election finance reports today, which will include all contributions from the last day of February through April 17.

Only contributions of $1,000 or more are reported for this period. As of April 17, Sanford reported having $284,000 on hand; Colbert Busch had $254,000. From April 16 - April 23, outside Democratic groups spent at least $430,000 on negative ads against Sanford.

Contributions of $200 and up are reported during this period. Sanford won a Republican runoff election on April 2. On April 16, the Associated Press reported that Sanford's wife had accused him of trespassing in a court filing.

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FEC denies same-sex appeal

Keenan Steiner — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 16:22:47 -0400

The question of marriage equality for same-sex couples became a campaign finance issue on Thursday, as Federal Election Commission members addressed the application of a little-known rule that allows someone to contribute to a federal campaign from the checking account of his or her spouse.

That way, a spouse with the lion's share of the income can effectively double his or her contribution without hitting the cap on how much individuals can give to each candidate.

Federal election commissioners at today's regular open meeting denied the request from Massachusetts Senate candidate, Dan Winslow, to treat donations from same-sex couples the same as opposite sex couples. The commissioners cited the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines a spouse as being of the opposite sex. The constitutionality of DOMA is currently being reviewed by the Supreme Court.

However, the commissioners noted that the same-sex couples have another avenue to contribute just as much money to candidates as opposite-sex couples -- they just have to set up joint checking accounts, something that has been allowed by election law since 1987. Contributions from a joint account can be attributed to each member of the couple regardless of whether they are married or not, the commissioners noted.

Winslow's attorney said he appreciated the FEC's quick response to his request and said he will be back for a different answer if the Supreme Court overturns DOMA.

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Obama dedicates Bush library; will he disclose donors to his own?

Keenan Steiner — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 08:25:55 -0400

George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum

When he attends today's dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, along with four of his predecessors, President Barack Obama will have a chance to look at the wall of million-dollar donors -- more than 160 of them.

The identities of those donors, who helped provide the more than $500 million raised to build and endow the new library and institute honoring the nation's 43rd president, were unknown until recently. Even now, the Bush foundation isn't releasing names of all of its donors, and there is no law requiring it to do so.

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Real estate investment trusts increasing lobbying profile

Nancy Watzman — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 11:16:57 -0400

As more businesses opt for a legal status known as "real estate investment trusts" (REITS) to qualify for tax breaks, they have an active champion in Washington, the trade group known as the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts.

The group may not have the name recognition of some of the larger financial lobbies, such as the American Bankers Association or the Real Estate Roundtable, but it has a very active lobbying profile, primarily on tax bills. This week the group, known as NAREIT, reported spending more than $1 million during the first quarter of this year, almost doubling the amount it spent during the first three months of last year. Since 1991, the group has reported spending more than $27 million on lobbying and $8.7 million on campaign contributions, according to a search on Influence Explorer. The contributions are almost evenly split between Democrats and Republicans.

NAREIT employs a stable of in-house lobbyists as well as a long list of lobbyists for hire--a total of 41 in 2012, according to a search on Influence Explorer. Robert Dibblee, senior vice president of government relations for the group, is a fixture at Washington fundraisers for members of Congress.

Traditionally REITS are entities that invest in and own properties and are traded on the open market. However, as the New York Times reported this week, more corporations in diverse businesses are beginning to reorganize as REITs because of the tax advantages involved--they are largely exempt from federal taxes. For example, the Corrections Corporation of America, which operates for-profit prisons, recently received approval from the Internal Revenue Service to reorganize as a REIT and, according to the Times, hopes to save $70 million in taxes as a result. The company justified the change by arguing that the money it collects from governments for holding prisoners is effectively rent.

Among the tax issues top on NAREITs agenda is to amend law to make investment in REITs more attractive to foreign investors by easing their taxes. The group is a strong supporter of legislation known as the Real Estate Jobs and Investment Act and continues to work actively to change the law both in Congress and through the federal agencies, under the banner of "FIRPTA Reform."

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Max Baucus announces retirement plans with $5 million in campaign bank account

Louis Serino — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 16:50:46 -0400

The retirement of Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus comes as a surprise because the veteran Montana Democrat appeared to be doing everything necessary to prepare for a tough race in a Republican-leaning state; from covering his right flank on gun control to amassing a nearly $5 million campaign warchest -- $1.6 million of it raised during the first three months of this year.

While it is illegal for senators to use campaign funds for their own personal expenses, there are many avenues available to Baucus for spending the funds, such as contributing to other politicians or charities -- even charities set up by the candidates themselves as former Rep. Allen West has done.

Though Election Day isn't until November of 2014, the Montana Senate race had already drawn its first instance of outside spending. Last week, Sunlight's Ad Hawk picked up a spot from the National Association for Gun Rights urging voters to tell Baucus to vote against the Manchin-Toomey amendment to expand background checks on gun transfers. (He did, becoming one of only four Democrats to oppose the measure, which failed on what President Barack Obama called "a pretty shameful day for Washington.")

As the head of the Finance committee, Baucus has been at the epicenter of tax other important monetary legislation -- and financial industries have courted him with millions in campaign contributions because of it. Since 1989, securities and investment groups have given almost $1.8 million to Baucus, while commercial banks have contributed more than $575,000 and miscellaneous financial interests have chipped in over $500,000.

Instrumental in the congressional effort to craft Obama's health care law, Baucus received millions more from the medical industry. Big insurance companies doled out more than $1.5 million, health professionals over $1.2 million, pharmaceuticals almost $1 million, hospitals nearly $800,000 and health services/HMOs gave over $780,000. Sunlight reported the influx of cash Baucus received for his version of healthcare reform as it happened in 2009.

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Obama's 'voluntary' inaugural disclosure left out some big corporate checks

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 13:06:51 -0400

President Barack Obama's second inaugural committee promised to disclose who underwrote the festivities, but a new campaign finance report reveals that the now-defunct website of the 2013 Presidential Inaugural Committee, omitted the names of two million-dollar corporate donors -- Boeing and Chevron -- among others.

Federal law doesn't require inaugural committees to report their donors until 90 days after the presidential swearing-in, but Obama's committee said it would voluntarily disclose names on its website "in keeping with [the committee's] commitment to transparency." But an examination by the Sunlight Foundation found that the committee failed to update its web page after Jan. 18, excluding big checks that arrived after that date and also leaving off some that were received before then.

The Sunlight Foundation recorded copies of the PIC donors page every twelve hours from January through April 20, the day the campaign reports were due. Although the committee planned to "regularly post" donors names, an examination of the archived pages shows the donors list was updated just twice--around January 11, and then around Jan. 18--and the page was erased entirely around April 6. You can see a copy of the page, as it appeared on April 6. You can also see the donors page as it appeared on Jan. 26 on the Internet Archive.

Dress rehearsal of the 2013 inaugural parade

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Democratic establishment betting heavily on Colbert Busch upset in S.C.

Kathy Kiely — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:58:35 -0400

The shifting political tides in a coastal South Carolina congressional district are vividly apparent from the first look at last-minute big donations to Mark Sanford and Elizabeth Colbert Busch, rival candidates for the House seat left vacant when Republican Tim Scott was promoted to the U.S. Senate earlier this year.

Under federal law, any donations of $1,000 or more made during the final days before the May 7 election must be reported to the Federal Election Commission. Over the weekend, both campaigns filed their first reports, and they showed the late money breaking strongly in favor of Democrat Colbert Busch, a political rookie whose chances have suddenly improved on the heels of Sanford's latest stumbles.

The sister of comedian Stephen Colbert filed two reports with the FEC listing $33,000 in contributions. Her donors are a who's who of powerful Democrats and Democratic constituencies, including the leadership PAC of Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., his party's top-ranking member on the Homeland Security Committee ($1,000); former Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes ($2,600), and D.R.I.V.E., the political action committee of the Teamsters ($2,500).

In addition, VoteVets appears poised to become the latest outside spending group to enter the contest on Colbert's behalf with the ad seen above, which makes a clear reference to the sex scandal that engulfed Republican Sanford's closing term as South Carolina governor.

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Big tech, big oil and defense help underwrite Obama inaugural

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:56:51 -0400

President Barack Obama raised more than $43 million for his second inaugural, including seven-figure donations from some of the nation's biggest tech, defense and energy companies, a report filed on Saturday with the Federal Election Commission shows.

The top donor to the 2013 presidential inaugural was AT&T, which gave $4.6 million in equipment and services. That single donation equalled more than all of the inaugural committee's smallest donors (those who gave $200 or less than therefore did not have contributions itemized in the FEC report) combined.

Other members of the seven-figure check club: Microsoft, which gave more than $2 million, along with Boeing and Chevron, each of which chipped in $1 million. Four years ago, Obama refused to accept corporate donors and capped contributions at $50,000. This time around, his inaugural committee collected nearly 180 donations above that amount. Unions and corporations were responsible for $17.9 million of the money the Obama inaugural committee raised, a Sunlight analysis found.

And while the president refused to accept donations from lobbyists, he took plenty from individuals and entities with lobbying agendas before Congress, as Influence Exporer profiles show.

AT&T has spent more than $205 million lobbying on issues ranging from homeland security and privacy issues, Internet access and taxes;
Microsoft has spent more than $100 million to influence Congress on a range of matters, including the immigration bill now coming before the Senate, which tech companies are hoping will provide them with more access to highly skilled computer experts from overseas.
Chevron has spent $97 million lobbying, mostly on tax and energy issues. The company made headlines last year by donating $2.5 million to a super PAC linked to House Speaker John Boehner.
Boeing's lobbying tab is more than $167 million; the defense contractor will be looking to stop losses from sequestration. Late last week, it received a green light from the federal government to begin flying its troubled 787 aircraft again.

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Billionaire green dumps at least $750,000 into Bay State special election

Keenan Steiner — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 16:25:01 -0400

The super PAC funded by a former hedge fund manager turned environmental activist has made its latest move in the Massachusetts special Senate election, donating $250,000 to another super PAC run by the League of Conservation Voters, which supports the primary campaign of Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., according to Federal Election Commission reports.

Tom Steyer, a billionaire based in San Francisco, has shaken up the race by giving at least $750,000 to the NextGen super PAC, to which he is the sole donor so far. Steyer's ire is aimed at Markey's opponent, Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., for his support of the Keystone Pipeline. If approved, the pipeline would deliver heavy crude oil derived from tar sands from Canada to refineries in Texas.

The pipeline is under review by the Obama administration but faces intense criticism from environmental activists, including Steyer.

Nextgen has barraged Lynch for backing the pipeline in a series of ads -- including snarky aerial banners at sporting events including the Boston Marathon. Steyer suspended the ad campaign after the explosions at the Boston Marathon Monday, according to MSNBC. So did the candidates, who will resume their campaigns Saturday.

SEE THE DATA: All of the outside spending in the special election

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In years before Waco explosion, fertilizer trade groups lobbied for lax oversight

Lindsay Young — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 12:58:09 -0400

Photo source: istockphoto

The tragic explosion north of Waco, Texas, was preceded by years of lax oversight. As Reported by Bloomberg, OSHA had not inspected Adair Grain’s West Fertilizer Company facility since 1985. Mark Drajem and Jack Kaskey also reported that when other agencies—including the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency—did swing by, they found violations and issued thousands of dollars in fines. With a dubious track record, how did the Texas plant avoid regulation?

Part of the blame rests with Congress and the special interests that target it. Consider the Agricultural Retailers Association, a trade group whose members include suppliers of pesticides and fertilizers, and the Fertilizer Institute, which bills itself as the voice of the fertilizer industry. Since 1998, the specific issues that appear most frequently in their lobbying disclosure reports are bills dealing with the safety and security of chemical facilities. During that period, the Agricultural Retailers Association has spent a cumulative $2.9 million on lobbying while the Fertilizer Institute has spent even more, some $14.4 million, according to data in Influence Explorer.

In a lobbying disclosure on file with the Senate, the Agricultural Retailers Association clearly states its opposition to EPA regulation of fertilizer safety. The group listed, “Work with EPA to clarify their new Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act interpretation of fertilizer retailer to exclude facilities that blend fertilizer,” among its specific lobbying issues, adding that it “Oppose[d] EPA's efforts to consider agricultural retailer who custom blend fertilizer as fertilizer manufacturers for the purposes of EPCRA.” J.B. SMITH, a Reporter at the Waco Tribune-Herald, emailed Sunlight to say that West Fertilizer did file an EPCRA listing with the Texas Department of Health Services. Smith obtained a copy of the filing.

West Fertilizer Co. was a retailer that blended fertilizer, according to a report from Reuters.

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Why are efforts to regulate potentially hazardous plastics stalled?

Nancy Watzman — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 09:51:03 -0400

In late 2009, when Lisa Jackson, at the time President Barack Obama's new head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), invoked a long-existing but never-before-used power to to create a list of "chemicals of concern," the administration appeared to be putting chemical companies on notice that it planned to be aggressive about regulating risks from exposure to the industry's product. Jackson's list included eight of the common plasticizers known as "phthalates" that have been shown to cause to reproductive abnormalities in animal studies and that have also been linked to health problems in humans. They are used in products from vinyl flooring to cable wiring to backpacks, raincoats, and other products -- even sex toys.

Three years later, Jackson, seen at right, is no longer in office, and the proposal has never gotten out of the draft stage. Instead it languishes in regulatory purgatory in the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), an obscure but extremely powerful division of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). OIRA is charged with reviewing regulations before they take effect. No other EPA regulation has been under review longer, according to a search of records hosted by OIRA.

Government records show that over a 15-month period following EPA's submission of the draft proposal to OIRA, agency officials conducted eight meetings with outside groups concerning the proposal. As the spreadsheet below shows, industry representatives outnumbered those from nongovernmental organizations -- for the most part, environmentalists -- by a ratio of nearly two to one. Prominent among the industry groups are the American Chemistry Council (ACC), the organization that represents large chemical manufacturers, ExxonMobil, BASF, the Vinyl Institute, and others. The industry groups maintain that danger posed by these chemicals has not been definitively proven.

In this letter submitted to OMB by ExxonMobil in conjunction with a June 2010 meeting, the company defends two phthalates in particular, DINP and DIDP. "A proposal to list these chemicals...will have significant impact on public and industry perceptions and would send a signal to the market place that these substances are the highest priority for elimination through regulation and/or voluntary actions...[I]t is our belief that such a listing may offer no improvement to health and environmental protection; and would be costly to U.S. businesses, lead to a competitive disadvantage with other industrial countries, and have a detrimental effect on U.S. exports and jobs."

On the other side are environmental and consumer groups that are pushing for stronger regulation of phthalates, such as the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council. They have backup by two Democratic senators, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. The two wrote this letter to Cass Sunstein, then OIRA Administrator, urging the agency to release the chemicals of concern list. "[EPA] should be permitted to take the modest step of signaling its concern about these chemicals to the public and the market," they wrote. The two senators have enjoyed financial support from environmental groups, collecting more than $270,000 combined for their campaigns over the years, according to a search on Influence Explorer.

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Pro-CISPA forces spend 140 times more lobbying than opponents

Keenan Steiner — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 08:54:41 -0400

Interests supporting a controversial bill aimed at improving cyber security, set for a House vote Thursday, spent 140 times as much lobbying Congress as those on the other side of the debate and have dozens of former Capitol Hill insiders working on their behalf, an analysis by the Sunlight Foundation's Reporting Group shows.

Sunlight's review of lobbying disclosures from the last session of Congress in Influence Explorer shows that backers of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act had $605 million in lobbying expenditures from 2011 through the third quarter of last year compared to $4.3 million spent by opponents of the bill. While it's impossible to say how many of those dollars were devoted to trying to influence votes on the CISPA bill (many of those entities have multiple interests before Congress), it provides some measure of the lopsidedness of the resources available to each side.

SEE THE DATA: Here are the lobbying totals for the CISPA supporters and opponents.

Despite that, the fight is far from over. While the bipartisan bill is expected to pass the House, critics believe they have the advantage when the debate moves to the Senate. Moreover, the Obama administration announced Wednesday that the president will veto the bill in its current form because of privacy concerns.

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Why pro-gun groups still have the upper hand in Congress

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 16:47:59 -0400

To understand why the Senate voted today to reject a bipartisan deal on gun control, despite emotional -- and heavily broadcast appeals -- by parents of children gunned down in the Newtown, Conn. massacre, it helps to take a look at the influence profiles of groups on both sides of the debate.

Although Mayors Against Illegal Guns, one of the groups pressing for stricter regulation of firearms, dominated the airwaves in the weeks leading up to the vote, groups opposed to such measures have spent far more money over a far longer period of time to win friends and intimidate people on Capitol Hill, a survey of Sunlight Foundation resources shows. The six-figure buys in some major TV markets by MAIG look paltry when compared to the National Rifle Association's campaign spending in the 2012 campaign cycle. The gun rights organization dropped more than $14 million during the last two years on negative ads against lawmakers and candidates who opposed its agenda through its Political Victory Fund and its Institute for Legislative Action.

Click here to see a list of how influence peddlers on the guns issue stack up.

To compile our chart, Sunlight's Reporting Group drew from Influence Explorer, our independent expenditure tracker Follow the Unlimited Money, as well as Political Ad Sleuth, which tracks political advertising in major TV markets, and Ad Hawk, which monitors and archives ads by politicallly active organizations.

Because election law does not require the disclosure of most expenditures made on issue-oriented campaigns, it's impossible to quantify how much each side in the fight has spent. We know anecdotally, for instance, that some groups have been spending heavily on mailing prior to the Senate vote, but that spending does not have to be disclosed.

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GOP dominates list of top House fundraisers in 2013

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 22:42:36 -0400

On the heels of the most expensive campaign in the nation's history, members of the House and the candidates who want to replace them are already raking in cash for the 2014 mid-terms. In the first three months of 2013, they collected a total of $68 million, records just submitted to the Federal Election Commission show.

Most of the biggest fundraisers are party leaders, topped by House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va. Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., a senior member of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, came in third. But Aaron Schock, a three-term Illinois Republican seen at right, also rocketed to the top of the leaderboard.

Sunlight has been able to analyze and aggregate records for House candidates because they must file campaign finance reports electronically. Filings for Senate candidates won't be available until much later because the Senate continues to exempt itself from electronic disclosures.

SUNLIGHT'S VIEW: Senate should save taxpayer dollars and join the 21st century

This data is current as of noon, April 16 and will be updated with new filings or amendments as they are reported. Here's a look at who's on top -- and who's not -- as the candidates make the first turn in the 2014 race.

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Looking back at mega donor Bob Perry's political giving

Lindsay Young — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 10:38:02 -0400

Houston homebuilder Bob Perry, who passed away over the weekend at the age of 80, poured millions into conservative causes during his lifetime. He was part of an elite cohort of people able to write million-dollar checks, and over the course of his lifetime contributed to candidates, PACs, party committees and super PACs. Overall, he contributed $53 million, according to data in Influence Explorer.

Though he was overshadowed in the 2012 campaign by megadonors Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, there were times during the contest when Perry “lead the pack” of super PAC donors, giving hefty amounts to Restore Our Future, which supported the presidential campaign of Mitt Romney, and to American Crossroads, which invested heavily in defeating President Barack Obama and a host of Democratic Senate candidates. The Texan gave more than $15 million to American Crossroads and $10 million to Restore our Future, Influence Explorer records show.

Perry’s last minute donations to Restore our Future, Club for Growth Action and Independence Virginia PAC kept the conservative groups on the air during the final days of the campaign. His name appears again and again during the 2012 election.

Former Minnesota Republican Senator Norm Coleman’s American Action Network, Inc. gained major support from Perry's donations. Perry and his wife were also large donors for NRA spokesman Asa Hutchinson’s gubernatorial run.

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Tax preparers lobby heavily against simple filing

Louis Serino — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 09:38:13 -0400

As Americans struggle through complex rules and messy paperwork to meet today's deadline for filing their income taxes, it might be somewhat comforting to know that making the whole arduous process simpler and more transparent has long been a goal of President Barack Obama as well as prominent Republicans in Congress, and that it's being discussed again this year.

But, as we all know, it's one thing to talk the talk and another thing to walk the walk. If so many people agree on the need for making taxes easier to figure out and file, how come it's not happening? The recent story that ProPublica's Liz Day did about how Intuit, the parent company behind TurboTax, has lobbied extensively against a so-called "return-free filing" system inspired us to take a broader look at a sector that has a vested interest in keeping taxes complicated. Lo and behold: Companies that prepare taxes are throwing millions at Congress to oppose making tax filing easier.

Since 1998, major tax preparers have spent almost $28 million lobbying Congress. The vast majority of that spending -- more $20 million -- came in just the past five years, according to data obtained from the Center for Responsive Politics. And that's not all -- high powered advocacy groups that oppose tax reforms like return free filing, such as Americans for Tax Reform (which favors scrapping the current progressive tax system for a flat tax) and the Coalition for Taxpayer Rights have poured in millions more fto lobby Congress. Although this money is used to influence a variety of issues, many of the lobbying disclosures the groups have filed explicitly target tax simplification and pre-filled returns.

MORE: Untangling the webs of tax lobbying

Tax simplification has long been an overarching goal for politicians of both parties. President Obama advocated for IRS-prepared tax returns in 2007, and recent bills have been introduced which would significantly simplify tax filings, such as former Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, in 2008 and Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., in 2010.

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The list: who gave to Obama's new political non-profit

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 17:39:31 -0400

(Updated: 6:44 p.m. ET)

Organizing for Action, the committee formerly known as Obama for America, released its first list of donors today, inconveniently organized alphabetically on 26 separate pages.

Sunlight has parsed the data and put this in table format for your convenience. Click here to see a Google spreadsheet of reported donors. The second tab gives you state-by-state totals for the committee's contributions.

We have done this quickly to be helpful and we are reasonably confident that this data is correct. If you see any errors or problems, email us here.

The list includes some familiar names. Half of the two dozen donors who gave at least $10,000 to OFA were major Obama bundlers -- collecting more than $500,000 each -- for the president's reelection campaign last year. A list of the bundler donors is here. The $10,000+ club represented 27 percent of OFA's haul in the first quarter.

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FEC deadlocks on whether fundraising firm gave improper benefit to California GOP

Keenan Steiner — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 09:11:57 -0400

Members of the Federal Election Commission deadlocked Thursday on whether a fundraising firm's decision to forgive an estimated $138,000 in interest owed by the California Republican Party constituted an improper political contribution.

The failure to reach a decision, which means the California GOP will not be penalized, came despite a finding by the commission's professional staff that the write-off by the Minnesota-based Strategic Fundraising Inc. (SFI) was not "in its ordinary course of business," which would amount to breaking campaign finance law.

The commission deadlocked, as usual, along partisan lines: The two Democratic commissioners found that it did while the three Republicans disagreed. Four votes are required for approval.

An FEC audit revealed that SFI and the California GOP reached an agreement in 2008 to waive the interest on more than $1.1 million owed to the fundraising firm as long as the party repaid the principal. SFI is a political donor in its own right, with the company contributing $10,000 to the California GOP in 2008, which is among the tens of thousands of dollars that the company and its executives have given to national and state GOP party committees in recent years, according to Influence Explorer.

An extension of credit is allowed as long as it is done so "in the ordinary course of the commercial vendor's business" and the terms are similar to those extended to similar nonpolitical debtors, according to campaign finance regulations.

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Gun legislation in states forecasts close fight in Congress

Anupama Narayanswamy — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 00:01:38 -0400

As the Senate opens debate on gun control after a last-minute bipartisan deal, a review of legislation now before state lawmakers gives a striking evidence of how difficult it will be to enact restrictions on firearms into law, even given the political momentum such measures have received following the December shooting tragedy that left 26 people -- most of them young children -- dead at the Sandy Hook elementary school at Newtown, Conn.

A review of nearly 1,500 firearms-related bills introduced in the 50 state legislatures since the beginning of the year by Sunlight reveals that the post-Newtown push for stronger gun control has been countered by an almost equally vigorous effort on the other side. Barely half the bills would strengthen gun laws; the other half would weaken them.

Still, getting to parity with the anti-gun-control forces represents political progress for gun control advocates. Last year, just 35 percent of gun bills introduced in state legislatures would have strengthened regulations, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence; in 2011, the figure was 43 percent.

“This year, we've seen an increase in volume of legislation and an increase in the number of bills to strengthen gun laws (which are the majority of 2013 bills),” Ben Van Houten attorney with the Law Center said via email.

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Obama phones go by another name in Congress

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 11:06:33 -0400

Washington Post reporter Karen Tumulty's intriguing story today about the coining of a term and its political impact got us to wondering just how far the term "Obama phone" had embedded itself into the political culture. We've written before about how compounds of President Barack Obama's name have become politically charged.

We took a look via Capitol Words, Sunlight's tool that scans the Congressional Record and allows users to analyze speech patterns.

So far, no recorded mentions of "Obamaphone" or "Obama phone" on the floor of the House or Senate.

However, we did find a number of mentions of "free cell phone," starting in late 2012, when, according to Tumulty's story, conservative talk radio began to bus with the term. The first mention was on the last day of 2012, when Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul inveighed against the government providing a "free cell phone." Since then two other stalwart Republican conservatives, Sen. Dan Coats of Indiana and Rep. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma also have used the term.

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Progressives campaign online, on paper and on the Hill against chained CPI

Keenan Steiner — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 18:47:05 -0400

Liberal groups have launched a multifaceted campaign to oppose a Social Security cut expected to be included in the president's budget Wednesday, coordinating online activism, old-fashioned petition signing and traditional lobbying.

It's an all-hands-on-deck approach in an attempt to send a loud message to the administration, and to congressional Democrats, that any cut to Social Security is off limits. The campaign started Friday when White House officials told reporters that President Barack Obama would include the "chained consumer price index" fix in his budget, which would slow the annual cost-of-living increase that Social Security beneficiaries receive.

A photo from MoveOn.org's new Tumblr

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Obama taps Romney donors for labor board

Kathy Kiely — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 15:16:12 -0400

Whether it's a sign of post-partisanship or sheer exasperation is hard to say, but two of the three nominees that President Barack Obama today tapped for seats on the National Labor Relations Board donated to the Republican who wanted to take his place.

Harry I. Johnson donated $1,500 to Mitt Romney's unsuccessful presidential campaign last year and Philip Miscimarra gave Romney $1,000, according to data downloaded from Sunlight's Influence Explorer.

Both are Republican labor attorneys who, while not prolific donors, have also made other contributions to GOP committees. To view Johnson's donations, click here; Miscimarra's are here. Johnson, from California, has given to former President George W. Bush; Miscimarra, from Illinois, has donated to two losing congressional candidates, both women.

The nominations of the GOP givers may represent a bit of bluff-calling by the president: In making them, the president pointedly noted that he has had difficulty getting the Senate to confirm his choices for the NLRB, an agency that helps mediate labor disputes. A federal panel earlier this year ruled unconstitutional the recess appointments Obama made to end-around the Senate gridlock.

People's splurge: Outside spending in Bay State Senate race tops $1 million

Keenan Steiner — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 10:56:07 -0400

Despite candidates' signatures on the so-called "People's Pledge" to keep outside big money groups out of a special Massachusetts Senate election, the Democratic primary has attracted nearly $1.3 million in outside spending so far.

All but seven percent of that money has been in favor of frontrunner Ed Markey -- either in support of the veteran Democratic congressman or in opposition to his rival (and House colleague) Stephen Lynch. Lynch has only seen help from one group -- the firefighters union, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Group	Amount
League of Conservation Voters (PACs and 501c4)	$ 546,405
SEIU (PACs)	$ 368,580
NextGen Super PAC	$ 196,498
International Association of Firefighters PAC	$ 85,348
NARAL Pro-Choice America	$ 40,398
350.ORG Action Fund	$ 15,572

The special election is to replace former Sen. John Kerry, who became President Barack Obama's secretary of state earlier this year.

The big spending so far has been on voter mobilization, mainly from various arms of the League of Conservation Voters and the influential Service Employees International Union. Technically, that money doesn't violate the pledge, in which Markey and Lynch swore off advertising and direct mail.

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Super PACs next for Sanford and Colbert Busch?

Keenan Steiner — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 16:49:37 -0400

Updated: 7:53 p.m.

With the race for a special House election in South Carolina now set, and polls showing it could be close, the outcome may partly hinge on who has the most money.

Both former Gov. Mark Sanford, who became the Republican nominee by winning a runoff Tuesday, and his Democratic opponent, Elizabeth Colbert Busch, a businesswoman who is the sister of TV satirist Stephen Colbert, are proving to be successful fundraisers in what could become a money dead heat. So whichever side gets more outside help may have the advantage.

Former Gov. Mark Sanford is vying for a seat in Congress

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Start your engines: GOP makes first 2014 ad buys against Democratic House members

Kathy Kiely — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 14:03:23 -0400

(Updated: 2:25 p.m.)

The National Republican Congressional Committee is making its first ad buy of the 2014 season with a blitz against seven vulnerable House Democrats.

Sunlight's Ad Hawk, which allows mobile phone users identify the sources of political advertising, picked up new spots aimed at the incumbents overnight. The early ads underscore the already-intensifying battle for the House, which President Barack Obama has vowed to put back in Democratic control. The president is travelling to the West Coast today for a series of fundraisers benefiting the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Read the details on Political Party Time.

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As NRA pushes Congress, states consider bills to put guns in schools

Nancy Watzman — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 02:25:55 -0400

Even as the National Rifle Association (NRA) announced a new push today to put armed guards in schools across the country, state lawmakers across the country are considering similar proposals. So far, legislation related to guns on school grounds has come up in at least three dozen states. The vast majority of these bills would make it easier for school personnel, guards, and volunteers to carry guns on campus, while a handful would toughen laws prohibiting firearms at schools.

MORE:

At least two states--South Dakota and Virginia--have enacted such laws to date and in one state, Alabama, the governor in March vetoed a bill that would allow armed voluteer security forces on school grounds. To track state legislation in progress using Sunlight's Scout notification service, click here.

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Baseball's (political) heavy hitters

Louis Serino — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 12:34:40 -0400

While MLB players will be taking the field for Sunday's and Monday's opening day games in hopes of winning a World Series title in October, team owners may have their sights set on winning a different sort of Fall Classic. According to data from Sunlight's Influence Explorer, MLB organizations pumped in over $24 million to politicians, PACs and independent expenditure groups throughout the 2012 election cycle. No wonder presidents like to toss out the season's first pitch; you can see President Barack Obama at right, practicing for a 2010 appearance on the mound.

Our survey, which looked at contributions by club employees and members of ownership groups, showed five clubs surpassing the million dollar mark for campaign contributions in the 2011-2012 political cycle: the Chicago Cubs blew the rest of the teams away with a staggering $13.9 million, followed by the Baltimore Orioles with $1.8 million, the San Francisco Giants with $1.5 million, the Boston Red Sox with $1.3 million and the Milwaukee Brewers, whose employees gave slightly more than $1 million.

MLB drives to right field

And unlike the great Pete Rose, Major League Baseball is definitely not a switch-hitter in its giving; more than 75 percent of contributions tied to teams went to conservative causes. In fact, ball clubs gave four times more to Republicans than Democrats. On the extreme right were the Pittsburgh Pirates, Cincinnati Reds, the Kansas City Royals and the Texas Rangers. all of whom gave exclusively to the GOP. The Cubs organization, whose billionaire owner Joe Ricketts went on an "ending spending" spree, maintained the highest overall donation rate to Republicans with an astounding $12.7 million, mostly going to super PACs. On the other end of the spectrum, the Baltimore Orioles and Minnesota Twins gave 99 percent and 95 percent, respectively, of their contributions to Democrats. Led by CEO and longtime liberal advocate Peter Angelos, the Os sent $1.8 million to Democratic causes, three times as much as the Twins. The Los Angeles Dodgers are also blue in more ways than their uniforms, and, politically speaking, so are the San Francisco Giants.

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As Congress weighs gun control, many states try Congress control

Keenan Steiner — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 17:35:45 -0400

Updated on April 5 at 1:42 p.m. ET (see below)

While attention is focused on the U.S. Senate, which could begin voting as early as next month on gun control legislation, some state lawmakers are trying to move in the opposite direction.

Bills to nullify any gun control measures that Congress enacts have been introduced in at least 37 states since the beginning of the year, according to an analysis using Scout, Sunlight's legislative alert system. To browse the list and click through to the text of the bills, click here.

Political heavy hitters lining up behind gay marriage

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 11:00:56 -0400

Updated: 1:20 p.m.

As the Supreme Court weighs the issue of equal marriage rights, the political momentum -- and money -- appears to be lining up behind gay rights, an analysis of campaign finance reports for some key organizations involved in the debate indicate.

Gay rights activist rallies outside high court Wednesday

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What's in a name? Republican- versus Democrat-speak on gay marriage

Kathy Kiely — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 11:14:48 -0400

How something is described often affects how people react to it. So it's interesting, as the Supreme Court begins two days of arguments on how to and who can define marriage, to see how the lawmakers across the street have talked about the same issue.
A look through Sunlight's Capitol Words shows a clear partisan divide: Democrats tend to use the term "gay marriage" while Republicans prefer "same-sex marriage." As you can see in the chart above, the latter term occurs more frequently in congressional debate. The full Capitol Words analysis gives us the party breakdown: Democrats account for 73 percent of the utterances of the term "gay marriage," while Republicans account for 62 percent of the useage of "same-sex marriage."
A graph of the usage of the term "gay marriage" shows big spikes during the summers of 2004 and 2006.

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NHL champs LA Kings visit White House; owners wish someone else were in it

Louis Serino — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 10:14:22 -0400

If Los Angeles Kings owners Ed Roski and Phil Anschutz had their way during last year's election, someone other than President Obama would be greeting the Stanley Cup champions Tuesday when they arrive in D.C. for the traditional White House fete. According to Sunlight's Influence Explorer, the Kings organization contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican candidates throughout the 2012 election cycle -- almost all of which came from the pockets of Roski and Anschutz.
Kings' employees donated a combined $413,800 to candidates, political action committees and political independent expenditure groups. That's the second-highest total among National Hockey League teams, behind only the St. Louis Blues. All but $500 came from owners Roski and Anschutz; more than 92 percent of their donations fortified conservative causes -- leaving only a modest $35,000 that went to Democrats.
Kings ownership actively contributed to presidential candidates, giving failed GOP candidate Mitt Romney and his Victory Committee more than $55,000 (the vast majority coming from Roski). However, it doesn't appear as though Romney was the first choice for either owner; Anschutz and his wife, Nancy, previously gave $2,500 to Gov. Rick Perry, R-Texas, and former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., while Roski and his wife, Gayle, each maxed out $5,000 to former Gov. Tim Pawlenty, R-Minn. No one associated with the Kings gave to President Obama.
Republican committees also saw substantial donations from the Kings higher-ups, the biggest recipient being the Republican National Committee which received over $60,000 from the Anschutzes. The couple proved generous for each fundraising arm of the GOP as well, contributing more than $30,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and $25,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee. Democratic committees didn't receive anything from Kings employees.
The Kings owners also spent big on individual candidates for the House and Senate, almost entirely on Republicans. Anschutz dropped a healthy $10,000 for Gov. Scott Walker, R-Wis. Roski supported Gov. Tom Corbett, R-Pa., to the tune of $50,000. Not so coincidentally, Pennsylvania is the state where Roski's Majestic Realty has corporate headquarters. Roski's wife contributed $5,000 to Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., while Roski sent $15,000 to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.
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Newt Gingrich forms joint fundraising PAC

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 10:51:06 -0400

Seems that 2012 is the (fundraising) campaign that just won't die. We already know that President Barack Obama, despite winning what he loudly advertised would be his last campaign, is still hot on the fundraising trail. And Politico is reporting that Obama's unsuccessful GOP rival, Mitt Romney, is going to be feting donors later this spring.
Now Newt Gingrich appears to be getting into the act. Sunlight's Follow the Unlimited Money tracker turned up a registration for the not-so-modestly named "Committee for America," which has been established as a joint fundraising committee for Newt 2012, the ex-speaker's presidential campaign, and the American Legacy Political Action Committee.
So what's Newt up to? Best guess is debt retirement: Newt 2012 ended last year nearly $5 million in debt and had just $75,000 in cash on hand. Sunlight has left a message for one of the principals listed on the Committee for America's registration form and will update this post if we get more information.
The American Legacy PAC, which features a photo of Gingrich and his wife, Callista, on its web page, was formed in 2010 and raised $500,000 last year, most of which it spent on the telemarketing firm Infocision--more than $400,000. The PAC also made donations to Romney ($2,500), Gingrich ($2,500), the leadership PAC of former Rep. Allen West, R-Fla. ($2,000) and the unsuccessful Senate campaigns of GOP candidates Josh Mandel in Ohio ($250) and George Allen in Virginia ($250).