Both Parties Are Addicted to Dark Money. Only One Is Trying to Quit.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), like many other Republicans in Congress, has been aggressively bashing HR 1, the sweeping anti-corruption bill that Democrats passed in the House last week. McConnell has called the bill a “radical, half-baked socialist proposal” and a “political power grab” by Democrats, and has made it clear he won’t bring the measure up for a vote in the Senate.

But when it comes to campaign finance, both parties have their hands dirtied by dark money, and it’s not a given that closing loopholes on disclosure of campaign spending would prove more beneficial to Democrats. Although conservative groups have spent significantly more dark money (political spending that doesn’t reveal where the funds originated) than liberal groups over the past decade, liberal groups have not been shy about exploiting the current campaign finance system for their own benefit. Conservative groups have spent approximately $763.2 million in dark money over the past decade, while liberal groups spent approximately $235.8 million during the same time frame.

But recently, dark money has favored Democrats. In the 2018 midterms, almost double the amount of undisclosed funds was spent to boost liberal candidates than conservatives. This also reflected the fact that the Democratic candidates in the House and Senate greatly out-raised their Republican counterparts.

Some Democratic presidential candidates, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sen. Kristen Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), have in the past spoken out against the use of dark money in politics. Although most of the 2020 Democratic candidates have expressed their desire not to have any super-PACs supporting their campaigns, there is not quite a consensus among Democratic candidates on how to deal with dark money, as there is regarding corporate PACs.

“Unfortunately, Democrats and Republicans alike have long been beholden to big money in politics, blocking meaningful reform and benefitting from weak enforcement by the FEC,” says Paul S. Ryan from Common Cause, a nonprofit government watchdog group. But he also highlighted that McConnell’s attempts to paint HR 1 as a Democratic power grab is stretching the truth. “Sen. McConnell’s not fooling anyone with his self-serving rhetoric. America knows he’s only protecting his fat-cat friends.”

read more at https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/03/dark-money-democrats-republicans-mitch-mcconnell/

*Edit...sorry for lack of link...still asleep