Free Republic

An investigation by the New York State Board of Elections found evidence of flagrant violations of campaign finance law by a team of people that Mayor Bill de Blasio created to raise money for Democrats running for the State Senate in 2014, according to a confidential board report. The board sent the report to Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, three months ago, prompting a criminal investigation into the fund-raising. The mayor’s Senate effort, which failed in its goal to wrest the legislative body from Republican control, has proved damaging to him in multiple ways. Democrats remained in...

Four hundred protesters associated with the Democracy Spring movement were arrested in Washington, DC last week after demonstrators descended upon the US Capitol. They spoke out against money in politics, the Koch brothers, and the Citizens United ruling that overturned key provisions of campaign finance law. The demonstration was clearly a statement against corporate influence in politics. The protesters aren't entirely wrong. Yes, political influence is unequally distributed because money begets power and vice versa. A guy who changes oil for a living doesn't have as much pull as a guy who owns an oil company. But what can be...

Marco Rubio’s campaign is dead. His secret-money legacy lives on. Nobody knows who funded the nonprofit group that spent more than $10 million on TV ads boosting Rubio, and untold more on mailers and research. And, unless those donors out themselves, nobody ever will. No presidential candidate fighting for their party’s nomination has ever benefited from as much undisclosed cash, and watchdogs worry the pro-Rubio group’s unchecked activity serves as a dangerous precedent that will soon become common practice. “It is now the model for a how a candidate can inject unlimited, secret, corrupting money into their campaigns to benefit...

Newt Gingrich laid it out perfectly on Sunday. The forced ouster of Mozilla co-founder and CEO Brendan Eich this week was a sign of the "new fascism" of liberalism that's sweeping American life. "People need to realize, if you're a young faculty member, in a lot of places if you're a young member of a news department and you have the wrong views – meaning conservative – you have no career," Gingrich said on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." "This is just the most open and blatant example of the new fascism, which says, 'if you don't agree with us...

When running a campaign where your base wants to hear about how you will eat the rich and put the 1% in their proper place, the wealthy truly have to learn to tread carefully. With that in mind, somebody over at Hillary Headquarters might want to suggest that when the subject of money comes up during interviews or debates, their candidate should just pretend she has a foot cramp and change the subject. It seems that every time Hillary Clinton opens her mouth on the subject of cash lately, her foot winds up halfway down her throat. When she was...

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders thinks that millionaires and billionaries buy elections. He hammered away during Sunday’s Democratic debate, complaining about people “pouring unbelievable sums of money into the political process.” According to estimates made by the Center for Responsive Politics, $3.77 billion was spent on elections for federal office during the 2014 midterms. Sanders blames this on the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United, prohibiting the government from restricting independent political spending by unions, corporations and advocacy groups. But the growth rate in campaign spending long predates that case, and has actually slowed down since that decision....

Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) says the demands of fundraising helped drive him to retirement, and he is pushing for campaign finance reform. Israel, a prominent House Democrat who once headed up the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, announced earlier this month that he will not run for reelection. ...

Part 305 of 305 in the series Wisconsin's Secret War MADISON, Wis. - Ding dong, the witch-hunter is dead. More than a month after the Republican-led Legislature passed a bill dismantling the state Government Accountability Board, Gov. Scott Walker on Wednesday finally signed the bill into law - with a partial veto. The bill's supporters, including conservatives targeted by the GAB and Milwaukee County prosecutors in the unconstitutional and politically driven John Doe probe, rejoiced while the left prophesied biblical-proportion campaign finance and election law disasters. "Reform to this broken agency was long overdue and I'm proud of today's accomplishment,"...

MADISON, Wis. - Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, the Democrat who launched Wisconsin’s politically driven John Doe investigation into conservatives, appears to have broken state campaign finance law, according to state Attorney General Brad Schimel. "...(I)t does appear on its face that two maximum contributions were received (by Chisholm's campaign) from the same individual in the same election cycle," Schimel told Wisconsin Watchdog Thursday. Chisholm did not return a call seeking comment. He has not returned any calls from Watchdog. As Wisconsin Watchdog exclusively reported this week, Chisholm's campaign accepted donations in excess of single-contributor limits during the same...

MADISON, Wis. - Calling a politically driven investigation into conservatives a "long, unfortunate chapter in Wisconsin’s history," state Attorney General Brad Schimel on Tuesday released a statement reiterating what the state Supreme Court definitively declared last week: The dark John Doe is dead and buried. "The courts have unequivocally rejected the John Doe investigation, both in the manner in which it was carried out, as well as the legal arguments brought by the prosecutors. The Wisconsin Supreme Court has now ordered that the property seized be returned," Schimel, a Republican, wrote. "For everyone involved, the special prosecutor should end the...

MILWAUKEE. - The Milwaukee Democrat who launched Wisconsin's notorious John Doe investigation into conservatives on allegations of illegal coordination appears to have broken state campaign finance laws. Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm accepted donations in excess of single contributor limits, and failed to disclose who provided his campaign with a $38,000 loan, according to an amended petition asking Gov. Scott Walker to remove the district attorney from office. The diverse coalition of Milwaukee county residents seeking Chisholm's ouster also is asking state Attorney General Brad Schimel to file a criminal complaint against the DA. "As not only the top...

As Donald Trump leads yet another national poll, the New York Times' Jonathan Martin asks a question that has consumed the political world: Can anyone inside the Republican Party -- via negative TV ads or a scorched-earth campaign -- stop Trump? And if so, do they even have the will do it? "Almost everyone in the party's upper echelons agrees something must be done, and almost no one is willing to do it," Martin writes.*snip* The campaigns and allies for three establishment presidential candidates -- Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and John Kasich -- have spent a combined $47.5 million in...

Part 269 of 267 in the series Wisconsin's Secret War By M.D. Kittle | Wisconsin Watchdog MADISON, Wis. – Wednesday was old school “Back to the Future Day” in the state Assembly – the Huey Lewis and the News “Back in Time” kind. As their fellow Democrats in the Senate did in winter 2011, the minority party fled another vote on a controversial piece of legislation. Back then it was a temper-tantrum over Act 10, Gov. Scott Walker’s public employee collective bargaining reform bill that sent the Fleeing 14 over the border into Illinois in a failed attempt to stave...

Billionaire businessman Donald Trump is no longer self-funding his presidential campaign — at least for now. The Republican front-runner filed his quarterly campaign finance report Wednesday evening, and it is filled with eye-popping details. For example, he spent more than $500,000 just on hats and related apparel. Trucker-style hats bearing Trump's campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again," became a hit fashion accessory over the summer. To purchase the hats, people had fork over $25 or $30 to Trump's presidential bid. But even more striking, Trump received almost $4 million in what his campaign called "unsolicited donations." Trump frequently brags on...

California is considering some of the nation’s strictest campaign-finance rules, aimed at keeping candidates from coordinating with groups able to raise unlimited amounts of money on their behalf. The state’s Fair Political Practices Commission is scheduled to vote on the proposals Thursday. The rules would apply to statewide and local elections. The vote comes as outside groups are playing a central role in national campaigns since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010. That ruling led to the growth of super PACs, which can raise and spend unlimited amounts in support of candidates, or their opponents, but cannot legally...

Democratic presidential contender Hillary Rodham Clinton raced through millions of dollars over the summer as she expanded her campaign’s ground operations and launched a paid television campaign, spending around nine out of every 10 dollars she raised in the third quarter. Clinton pulled in more than $28 million and spent an estimated $24.8 million, for a burn rate of about 88.7 percent, based on early numbers released by her campaign. As of Sept. 30, she still had more than $32 million on hand, campaign spokesman Josh Schwerin said in a tweet Thursday. That gives her a small financial cushion over...

Over the last 20 years of talking about the problem of big money in politics, Congress hasn't actually voted to do anything about it, and it's unlikely that they will anytime soon. So Harvard University law professor Lawrence Lessig has cooked up a crazy plan to force some change: He's trying to crowdfund a presidential campaign focused on the single issue of campaign finance reform. If Lessig can raise $1 million by Labor Day, and if no other presidential candidates take up what he calls "citizen equality" as their first priority, he plans to run as the first ever "referendum"...

Rush has said repeatedly that the reason Bush is the presumptive nominee is that he has "all the money." Well, I think it was in the Hannity interview that Trump said Bush has raised $114m. (Can anyone verify this number?) Trump said Hillary had raised $60m (really low). By my calculations Cruz has raised about $65m. (Again, can anyone verify?) But Trump said his annual income is $400m. So he can outspend Bush, Hillary, and Cruz put together and still have just under $200m for his jet.

Nothing surprising happened in Grand Rapids last week. Simply stated, Michigan’s campaign finance laws are now being enforced against two powerful, well-connected interest groups that failed to report large, late contributions to a 2014 ballot measure campaign until well after the votes had been counted. But the lesson to be learned is not “the system works.” Last year, Rina Baker and Bonnie Burke launched a grassroots petition drive collecting the signatures of nearly 10,000 registered voters to place on the ballot a two-term “eight is enough” limit on election to the Grand Rapids City Commission. The two women worked day...

The long unraveling of the so-called “John Doe II investigation” convened by partisan district attorneys in Wisconsin is now complete. This case was about using vague campaign-finance rules to intimidate conservative groups and smear Republican officials, including Gov. Scott Walker. No charges were filed in the John Doe II investigation and it was halted by both the state and federal courts.Today, the Wisconsin Supreme Court releases its final disposition in the case: To be clear, this conclusion ends the John Doe investigation because the special prosecutor’s legal theory is unsupported in either reason or law. Consequently, the investigation is closed....