Campaigns in the United States

Campaign Contributions Legal Materials

To look up contributions to U.S. Federal political campaigns, visit Open Secrets and/or the sites posted by the Federal Election Commission (FEC), the House of Representatives or the Senate. Federal data is also available on Lexis (CMPGN) and CQ’s First Street. Legistorm posts a database of privately financed travel.

In addition, political parties and other political organizations raising over $25,000 are required to register with the IRS using Form 8871, and those raising over $50,000 are required to list their contributors and the expenditures on Form 8872. Some must also file Form 990 tax returns. You can look up these forms through the IRS’s Political Organization Filing & Disclosure database.

For state campaigns, visit Open Secrets, FollowTheMoney.org and/or any relevant state Web site (e.g., the California Voter Foundation or the Maryland Campaign Reporting System).

Westlaw has a database of contributors and contributions made at the state and local level going back to 1996 (POLITICAL-DONORS).

FEC Advisory Opinions: The Federal Election Commission posts its Advisory Opinions back to 1977. You can also search for FEC Advisory Opinions on Westlaw.

Attorney Funding Campaigns

by Emily Loftis

Lawyers and law firms are funding also the 2012 campaigns.

Campaign contributions have poured into the 2012 election contests in record amounts, and lawyers and law firms nationwide have been among the top donors. They gave more than $147 million by October to candidates for everything from judgeships to the presidency, and supplied 264 lobbyists with $20 million in the past year to realize their legislative goals. Legal interests have also doused ballot initiative committees in California with money: Proposition 30, Gov. Jerry Brown’s tax initiative, had pulled in more than $460,000 from attorneys nationwide by mid-September, and the ACLU single-handedly put up $577,000 for Prop. 34, which would end California’s use of the death penalty.

The lion’s share of donations from law firms – between 69 and 77 percent – have for at least two decades gone to Democratic candidates. The American Association of Justice, which advocates for plaintiffs trial lawyers, is a top contributor, spending at least $3 million on candidates during the 2011-12 election cycle. Massive donations from the financial sector to Republican candidates – to the tune of $249 million by October – may also motivate plaintiffs firms to give to Democrats, says Russ Choma of the Center for Responsive Politics.

Greater Power for Wealthy Candidates

A vigorous opponent of restrictions on “soft money,” or campaign contributions to political parties. Former senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) argued that such laws violate the First Amendment and undermine democracy.

The parties are vital institutions in our democracy, smoothing ideological edges and promoting citizen participation…. If special interests cannot give to parties as they have, they will use their money to influence elections in other ways: placing unlimited, unregulated, and undisclosed issue advertisements; mounting their own get-out-the-vote efforts; forming their own action groups….

The power of special interests will not be deterred or diminished. Their speech, political activity, and right to “petition the government for a redress of grievances” (that is, to lobby) are protected by the First Amendment. Political spending will not be reduced; it will just not flow through the parties.

Do we really want the two-party system, which has served us so well, to be weakened in favor of greater power for wealthy candidates and single-issue groups? [Soft money limits] will not take any money out of politics. It just takes the parties out of politics. For more information on financing political campaigns, click here.

Cookie-cutter Campaigns (in Politics)

Related to political science, the following is a definition of Cookie-cutter Campaigns in the U.S. practice of politics: A political campaign run by political consultants who use virtually identical strategies in different jurisdictions. The typical sign of such campaigns are websites or direct mail advertisements that use identical layouts and stock photographs.

The increased number of cookie-cutter campaigns in recent years is due, in large part, to the rise of political consulting on the local level.

But they’re also due to consultants having found campaign tactics that work again and again.

Walter Shapiro: “There is another intriguing reason why campaign tactics in both parties are about as creative and innovative as those employed by the French general staff during World War II. No major candidate is willing to risk his or her political future on untried campaign plans built around embracing new media and playing down TV spots. With a Senate seat or a governorship at stake, the political herd instinct is as powerful as it is debilitating. So every campaign resembles every other campaign with cookie-cutter ads since the creative potential of 30-second spots was exhausted decades ago.”

Resources

See Also

• Senate Campaigns
• Campaign Advertising
• Political Action Committee (PAC)
• House Of Representatives Campaigning
• Political Parties History
• Candidates
• Federal Election Commission
• Primary Election Presidential Primaries
• Alternative Fee Arrangement
• Liberal Party
• Congress
• Lobbyists
• Tax-Exempt Organizations