Earlier this week this blog reported on a mystery corporation that was created, donated a million dollars to help elect Mitt Romney, and then dissolved — all done to keep the donor’s identity secret. That story was somewhat defused when the actual donor decided to reveal himself.
But now we find that there are at least two other mystery companies that did the same thing. Two companies ostensibly located in Provo, Utah each donated a million dollars (coincidentally on the same day), yet neither corporation appears to do anything other than make political donations and their reported address is an accounting firm whose employees weren’t aware of either companies’ activities.
So how common is this practice? We now know that at least $3 million of the $12 million raised by Restore Our Future (the Super-PAC whose sole aim is to elect Romney) came from mystery corporations. I would not be surprised to find out that more than half the money that will be spent in the upcoming 2012 elections will come from secret donors. And there will be no way to know if foreigners are using this trick to influence US elections.
4 Comments
Interesting, but a little partisan. Perhaps I don’t know how the system works, but I checked on the FEC site on Romney (I don’t disbelieve that the alleged transactions took place)
and to date he has raised $18,383,257 with $91,500 coming from orgs like PACS. Obama has raised $46,350,520 with no money reportedly coming from PACS. This data was accurate as of 6/30/11 the lastest available on the site
http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/cancomsrs/?_12+P80003338
Interstingly Obama raised 778 million for his 08 run compared to McCains 383 million. If you look at Obama’s list of big donors in 08 it’s the who’s who of big business and colleges. I wonder if the fight to keep federal ed loans fully funded has anything to do with the millions in donations from those schools to certain candidates? Hmmm
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=n00009638
By contrast, Bachmann has only raised $7,976,620 with $12,000 comings from PAC like entities. Since elections are now won by who raises the most money Bachmann doesn’t stand a chance and Obama should soundly defeat Romney. Contributions have rolled in from big corps to both parties and I’ll use the old GE example whom have contributed to the DEMs and Obama in recent years landing a high proflile job for it’s CEO on Obama’s staff to show more companies how to hide otherwise taxable assets offshore.
We need CFR for all if we want outside influence stripped from our politics and judge our candidates based on merit, accomplishments and ideals rather then who we see the most bashing the other guy on TV. If we just banned TV ads it would level the playing field and make them get out and touch voters or force voters to read vs. listen to sound bites.
I agree that the SCOTUS decision on PACs, CORP’s etal was a blow to freedom and we then need to make constitutional adjustments, which is a course of action not likely to be pursued by any party. Both groups are out of control and the drunken contribution orgy will continue. The only other option I see is changing the law to “No public contributions” and giving an equal amount of government money to each candidate.
I really don’t care who rakes in the most in contributions I just want someone that is capable and willing to do the job.
Partisan? I clearly said “I would not be surprised to find out that more than half the money that will be spent in the upcoming 2012 elections will come from secret donors.” That is not partisan at all.
This is not about Mitt Romney or the Republicans, this is about our elections and money. The same thing applies to Obama and the Democrats.
By the way, Super-PACs do not show up on the FEC site for Romney or other candidates since they are (theoretically) independent organizations.
Even outlawing contributions to candidates would not solve this problem, since organizations that limit their ads to attacks on other candidates (like the Swift-boaters who attacked Kerry) are hard to associate with an individual candidate.
I hear ya IK, but when you include a non specific statement in a specific post it is taken by some as part of the posts specificity, ie. directed albeit indirectly related to the subject of the post. If you had done a piece on campaign contributions while mentioneing no names, it would have indeed been non-partisan, but since the subject of the post was clearly a knock against Romney, (which I don’t disagree with) it is tainted shall I say against the GOP.
I agree on the organizations who run their own ads, but at least their required to say they are in essence not endorsed by the candidate. And they are usually much more aggressive then the candidate would be.
Thanks for clarifying the SuperPAC thing, I thought it was unbelievable that only 1/2% of contributions were attributed to the SPACS. I’m with you though brother on the campaign finance reform.
“Even outlawing contributions to candidates would not solve this problem, since organizations that limit their ads to attacks on other candidates (like the Swift-boaters who attacked Kerry) are hard to associate with an individual candidate”IK. But barring television advertising would. Think of the boost to the struggling, dying, postal service. And Internet services.