Tag: Campaign Finance

A court ruling in Washington, D.C., on Friday evening may put a stop to the epidemic of secret donors who bankroll political groups that now fill the airwaves with vague and often specious election campaign ads.

Super PACs and other outside groups are already spending four times as much money on this upcoming presidential election than was spent in 2008, the Sunlight Foundation reports.

Democratic state Senate President Brandon Shaffer, who is running fpr Congress against freshman Republican Rep. Cory Gardner in Colorado's Fourth District, reported today that he pulled down $112,000 from more than 600 donors in the final quarter of 2011. The report comes as news circulates that Shaffer is testing the waters in the state's Sixth Congressional District.

Denver District Court Judge Bruce Jones ruled Thursday (pdf) that Secretary of State Scott Gessler overreached last summer when, through rulemaking, he raised constitutionally established donation disclosure limits for issue committees in the state. Judge Jones signaled during arguments that he believed Gessler had taken it onto himself to amend the Colorado Constitution, an absurd stretch for a non-lawmaking official such as the secretary of state. Gessler said he is determined to appeal the decision. He dismissed Jones's arguments as mere grandstanding for the press.

Denver District Court Judge Bruce Jones on Tuesday smacked down Secretary of State Scott Gessler in a topsy-turvy campaign finance trial that saw two government watchdog groups defending the Colorado Constitution against the man sworn as state head of elections to uphold it.

Focus on the Family news outlet CitizenLink on Monday posted a dire summary of a recent court ruling that rejected an attempt to protect the identities of donors to the anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 campaign. The CitizenLink story echoes the fears of intimidation and harassment from "gay activists" and "the homosexual lobby" that drove the major organizational financial backers of the campaign to file the suit in 2008.

Oil and gas money is greasing the wheels of U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton's reelection campaign, which more than doubled its fundraising bounty for the quarter that just ended, public records show.

Colorado Fourth-District Republican US Rep Cory Gardner is filling his campaign coffers for 2012 as he did in 2010 by leaning heavily on oil-and-gas industry donors. He raked in $370,000 in the quarter that just ended. That's the most of any candidate for federal office from Colorado and topped his take in previous quarters by roughly $100,000. One of every ten dollars Gardner brought in last quarter came from oil and gas, and this quarter the percentage is higher, coming in at roughly 12 percent. That notable campaign finance record paired with the high-profile pro-drilling and environmental-regulation-rollback positions he has taken mark out the freshman congressman as an aspiring top-level advocate for oil and gas on the Hill.

Still more than a year from Election Day, Colorado Fourth District Republican Congressman Cory Gardner today reported to the Federal Election Commission that he hauled down a whopping $371,312 over the last three months. That tops his second-quarter take by more than $70,000 to bring his total this year to $896,176. Roughly 12 percent of Gardner's donations this quarter came from oil and gas companies or individuals and organizations tied to the oil and gas industry.

Campaign finance spending will exceed $6 billion this year, and one man deserves a fair amount of the credit — election lawyer James Bopp, architect of the infamous Citizens United Supreme Court case and ideological crusader against state-based campaign finance laws that limit corporate expenditure, as The Texas Independent recently reported.