Stunning Statistics of the Week:
- Amount the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spent this week in new independent expenditures: $6.6 million
- Amount the committee has spent to date: $19 million
- The amount the committee is expected to spend before Election Day: $52 million
- Amount that just two Republican groups, American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, have raised to influence the elections: $56 million
FEC should investigate Crossroads GPS for campaign finance law violations, watchdogs say
Crossroads GPS, an organization created by Republican strategists Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie to influence the midterm elections with huge expenditures of money, appears to be violating federal campaign law, Public Citizen and Protect Our Elections told the Federal Election Commission in a complaint filed this week.
SuperPacs are debasing our democracy
When the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision in January, Public Citizen predicted that corporations were sure to accept the court’s invitation to overrun the political process. We were hardly alone in offering this prognostication. Nine months later, we concede: Things are much, much worse than we anticipated. (more…)