At the beginning of October, they had outspent Democratic groups by a 9-1 margin. And, under tax and campaign finance laws, most of these groups don’t have to disclose their donors until after the election.
Filled with cash, right-wing groups such as (former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to former President George W. Bush) Karl Rove’s American Crossroads have sunk money into an ever-increasing number of races to force the Democratic Party to spend defensively and prevent Democrats from using all of the party's resources to defend its more vulnerable House members.
With its flood of outside money, Republicans have targeted Democratic House seats once considered safe and beyond GOP reach — a drive that threatens to reshape the electoral map and raises the specter of a historic rout in the midterm elections this Tuesday. Critics say these conservative groups have funnel hundreds of millions of dollars in negative ads all across the country distorting the records of Democrats.
In another combination of funneling cash to Republicans, Republican Chairman Michael Steele has created a paradigm shift in funding among Republicans.
Rather than giving to the Republican Party, where Michael Steele controls the money, their name is made public and they are limited by regulation as to how much they can give; major donors have abandoned the RNC and are giving to Republican Party affiliated organizations, which can also take money directly from corporations.
This new approach to campaign finance has altered US politics reducing the power of political parties and increasing the power of concentrated corporate wealth.
Rove’s American Crossroads, which also set up Crossroads GPS, has — for example — run ads in at least 30 races around the country.
American Crossroads and another group, the American Action Network, say they have spent more than $50 million into House races to back Republican candidates, on top of the more than $50 million already spent by the GOP's House campaign arm.
They are not alone. The Republican National Committee and the Republican Governors Association received a donation of $3.5 million from Bob Perry. That’s the same Perry who helped to fund the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads against presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004.
Another big contributor to the Republicans campaigns has been The US Chamber of Commerce, which has spent $75 million on a political ad campaign to put what critics say is an anti-worker, corporate boardroom friendly candidates in control of Congress.
The business group likes to portray itself as a mainstream voice of business big and small, financed by contributions from more than 300,000 businesses – 96 percent of which are small businesses—supposedly.
But, as a recent The New York Times article and a series of reports from Think Progress make clear, it’s not the Mom and Pop’s shops that’s fueling its record-breaking election spending and other pro-business lobbying blitzes. It is tens and tens of millions of dollars in non-reportable contributions from giant corporations.
For example, because the chamber is not required to report corporate donations, it doesn’t. But using corporate tax records and other public documents, the NY Times says in a report “that while the chamber boasts of representing more than 3 million businesses, and having approximately 300,000 members, nearly half of its $140 million in contributions in 2008 came from just 45 donors. Many of those large donations coincided with lobbying or political campaigns that potentially affected the donors.”
The NY Times reviewed 70 chamber-produced ads and found that 93 percent are aimed on the midterm elections and either support Republican candidates or criticize their opponents.
