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Some of the Democratic Party’s biggest donors met Tuesday afternoon with influential party figures such as AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, organizer Joan Fitz-Gerald and former White House aide Van Jones to discuss the lessons and implications of the GOP’s landslide midterm election victory. The meeting – organized by a group of wealthy, politically active liberals called the Democracy Alliance – took place at Washington’s swank Mandarin Oriental hotel, where off-duty police officers and other security patrolled the halls looking for reporters and other uninvited guests, who were escorted from the premises. "The agreement is that everything that goes on here...

Top Overall Donors Breakdown to display: Dem vs. Repub Source of Funds Rank   Contributor   Total Contribs   To Dems   To Repubs   Contributions Tilt   1   ActBlue $18,497,333 100% 0% Solidly Democratic 2   Honeywell International $3,364,660 54% 46% On the fence 3   AT&T Inc $3,340,925 47% 52% On the fence 4   Intl Brotherhood of Electrical Workers $2,968,218 98% 2% Solidly Democratic 5   Comcast Corp $2,922,278 66% 33% Leans Democratic 6   National Assn of Realtors $2,906,374 57% 42% Leans Democratic 7   National Beer Wholesalers Assn $2,729,941 56% 43% Leans Democratic 8   American Assn for Justice...

Four Gold's Gym franchises in the San Francisco Bay Area are abandoning their brand after learning that their parent company's owner made a large, private donation to American Crossroads, the conservative political group that backs candidates opposed to expanding gay rights. Billionaire Robert Rowling, CEO of TRT Holdings, which owns Gold's, has given more than $2 million this election cycle to American Crossroads, the third party organization with ties to former Bush strategist Karl Rove. Reports of Rowling's significant donations to American Crossroads angered some franchise owners, who said the donations betrayed Gold's strong ties to the gay community. "Gold's...

Arizona has attracted more than $3.6 million of donations to help defend its law to crack down on illegal immigration, with one whopping contribution—and thousands of smaller ones—from out of state. Timothy Mellon, an heir to a Pittsburgh steel and banking dynasty, has donated $1.5 million to a legal-defense fund established by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, according to the governor's office. Mr. Mellon, who is identified on a donor list as a Wyoming resident, is among more than 42,000 people who have contributed to the border state's legal battle for the right to enforce the law, which Arizona's legislature

Officials at the Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Stability contracted with a small consulting firm that had given nearly $25,000 to Democratic candidates since 2005 (and no money to Republicans) for “Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Analysts to support the Disclosure Services, Privacy and Treasury Records.” The firm is currently advertising a job opening for a FOIA analyst with experience in the “Use of FOIA/PA exemptions to withhold information from release to the public” (emphasis mine, and if that link goes down, The Examiner has kept a copy for its records).

Boucher's leadership PAC, the Committee for Southwest Virginia, has spent something north of $40,000 this cycle for lodging, catering, airfare and car rental for what appear to be late-winter jaunts to the Westin Riverfront Resort and Spa in Avon, Colo. There appear to have been two trips, apparently fundraisers, taken in early 2009 and 2010. (Boucher's campaign spokeswoman did not respond to my inquiries in time for publication.) The combined hotel bill at the Westin is $36,000. Catering from Chef De Cuisine Epicurean Services, the Juniper Restaurant in nearby Edwards, and Vail Catering Concepts, cost $4,100. Politicians use leadership PACs...

Surprisingly, almost none of them appear to be the foreigners about whom Barack Obama keeps warning us: When it comes to Tea Party candidates — small donors are emerging as a major force. Their contributions — $200 or less — are arriving in mass numbers.“The small donor trend for Tea Partiers is unprecedented,” says Sheila Krumholz of the Center for Responsive Politics. Her group analyzed the most recent campaign donation numbers available from the Federal Elections Commission. …Typically, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, Senate candidates get no more than 20 percent of their funds from small donors. But...

The White House attack on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce isn't about "disclosure." It's about disarmament. While posing as campaign finance champions, the ultimate goal of the Democratic offensive is to intimidate conservative donors, chill political free speech and drain Republican coffers. Chamber of Commerce official Bruce Josten tried to educate the public. "(W)e know what the purpose here is," he told ABC News. "It's to harass and intimidate." Josten cited protests and threats against chamber members as retribution for ads the organization ran opposing the federal health care takeover. But this isn't the first time liberal bullyboys have targeted...

Many television pundits, newspapers columnists and ordinary Americans have spent the last few days wondering why President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats have chosen donor disclosure as their last stand issue in the upcoming mid-term elections. Their accusations of foreign money influencing American elections have been proven baseless and their insinuations about 'shadowy third-party groups' have only served as a reminder that protecting donors' privacy is not only perfectly legal, it has been practiced by Team Obama for years. So why is the administration still barreling forward with an attack plan that should have been quickly abandoned once it...

The left is not quite in full reverse on the groundless accusations against the Chamber of Commerce, but they will be soon enough. In a desperate attempt to run away from their political record (>9% unemployment, mountains of debt, Obamacare) the democrats thought they had found the perfect distraction. (Amazing how little has changed in one year) Seemingly coordinated accusations of “secret money” and buying elections spilled out of leftist precincts last week. Democrats, the President, and their sympathizers, didn’t just go after the chamber of commerce, but also Karl Rove and the Koch brothers. Democratic operative Robert Reich used...

WASHINGTON - A Minnesota campaign law requiring disclosure of corporate donations is fast becoming a national model in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allows corporations to spend unlimited amounts in elections. Finding their elections awash in secret donations, other states are looking for a way to replicate Minnesota's law, which requires disclosure of funding sources for groups that spend on political advertising for or against a candidate.

The donor disclosure issue revved up by President Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee last week took center stage at Wisconsin's senatorial debate tonight between Democratic incumbent Senator Russ Feingold and his Republican challenger, Ron Johnson. But instead of the Obama/DNC one-sided attacks at rallies with pre-screened attendees and in advertisements, Senator Feingold's feigned outrage was met with a swift and decisive response.

DICKSON CITY, Pa. (AP) -- Vice President Joe Biden is criticizing a Republican fundraising effort that he says has poured vast sums of unaccounted-for money into GOP campaign coffers. Biden on Monday challenged former Bush administration political operative Karl Rove to reveal the names of donors to his advocacy group, which has given millions of dollars to Republican candidates this year.

Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign is allowing donors to use largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor's identity, campaign officials confirmed. Faced with a huge influx of donations over the Internet, the campaign has also chosen not to use basic security measures to prevent potentially illegal or anonymous contributions from flowing into its accounts, aides acknowledged. Instead, the campaign is scrutinizing its books for improper donations after the money has been deposited. ... The problem with such [prepaid] cards,...

Barack Obama is being politically crushed in a vise. From above, by elite opinion about his competence. From below, by mass anger and anxiety over unemployment. And it is too late for him to do anything about this predicament until after November's elections. With the exception of core Obama Administration loyalists, most politically engaged elites have reached the same conclusions: the White House is in over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless about how to get along with or persuade members of Congress, the media, the business community or working-class voters. This view is held by Fox News pundits,...

Two top Republicans lit into President Obama and the Democratic Party Sunday over accusations that the GOP strategists and the Chamber of Commerce were using foreign contributions to influence the election, calling the claim a "baseless lie" and accusing the president of "abuse of power." Karl Rove, a Fox News contributor, said on "Fox News Sunday" that the president had gone too far. "Have these people no shame? Does the president of the United States have such little regard for the office that he holds that he goes out there and makes these kind of baseless charges against his political...

The "movers and shakers" of Washington DC have apparently seen the light. Well connected PAC's, even those connected to Clinton and Obama, have started shifting money to the right: Major political action committees and employees of the nation's largest business empires have dramatically shifted their money to the right. A detailed analysis of 2010 campaign cycle contributions by the Houston Chronicle shows that Republicans are catching up with Senate Democrats in campaign fundraising. Donations to the Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY)-led Senate Democratic Campaign Committee (DSCC) have dropped 25 percent this year alone. "Employees of 126 businesses that had donated money...

A dozen Minnesota companies have sent corporate money into this year's political campaign, from Securian Financial to Polaris Industries to Davisco Foods. So why is everyone focusing on Target Corp.? The question arises because Target finds itself alone in the center of the storm. To its critics, there are both logical and emotional reasons why Target has become the poster child in a nationwide controversy after it gave corporate cash to a group backing Tom Emmer, the Republican candidate for governor with a record of opposing gay rights. The logical reasons, they say, include Target being Minnesota's first corporate donor,...

The future of a new Minnesota law that let the public know about polarizing political donations from Target Corp., Best Buy Co. and other companies rests with a federal judge who will decide whether to suspend the disclosure requirement on free speech grounds. U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank said Friday he will rule within a month on a request for a temporary injunction to suspend the law, which could free corporations and other independent groups to spend on this year's election without revealing their identities. Abortion opponents Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, the anti-tax Taxpayers League of Minnesota and a...

Obama urges Republicans to name political donorsSat Aug 21, 6:17 am ET WASHINGTON (AFP) – US President Barack Obama Saturday urged Republican leaders in Congress not to block a bill aimed at reducing the role of big corporations and foreign entities in domestic elections. "This should not be a Democratic issue or a Republican issue," Obama said in his weekly radio address. "This is an issue that goes to whether or not we will have a democracy that works for ordinary Americans -- a government of, by, and for the people." The president was referring to a landmark decision earlier...