Litigation

Another Push in Senate for Disclosure Vote?

By Peter Hardin

The Senate may try again in the next few weeks for a vote on House-passed legislation to require groups than run political ads to disclose their donors.

Senate Republicans blocked the bill’s advance in July (see Gavel Grab). Since then, published reports have spotlighted a dramatic decline in disclosure by independent groups receiving money for electioneering.

Today, an Associated Press article said two groups affiliated with the Republican Party have raised a total of $32 million this year, “using new freedom from fundraising restrictions to create a parallel and unofficial Republican campaign to defeat Democrats in November.” One of them, American Crossroads, has registered with the Federal Election Commission and is required to disclose its donors, but the second, Crossroads GPS, has simply registered as a nonprofit and is not required to make such disclosure.

A New York Times editorial, entitled “The Secret Election,” raised concern over political activity by “advocacy committees that are sucking in many millions of anonymous corporate dollars, making this the most secretive election cycle since the Watergate years.”

The editorial called on Congress to pass legislation that will shine a light on election spending, and it noted that “corporations got the power to pour anonymous money into elections from Supreme Court and Federal Election Commission decisions in the last two years, culminating in the Citizens United opinion earlier this year.”

President Obama, meanwhile, criticized Senate Republicans for blocking the disclosure legislation. On Saturday, he said the  Citizens United ruling fostered a “flood of deceptive attack ads sponsored by special interests using front groups with misleading names. We don’t know who’s behind these ads or who’s paying for them.”

Republicans, on the other hand, have accused Democrats of pressing the disclosure bill only to hold on to their majorities in the Congress, the Washington Post reported.

Full post as published by The Gavel on September 20, 2010 (boomark / email).