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Gingrich’s primary vehicle for political organizing for the last decade has been GOPAC, which has raised and spent more than $8 million just since 1991. But GOPAC claims most of its money is used to help elect Republican candidates for state offices (a “farm team” of future congressional candidates), and thus says that it doesn’t have to disclose its financial activity or observe federal limits on the sizes and sources of campaign contributions. The Federal Election Commission disagrees, and is suing GOPAC.

In the states where GOPAC did file, a curious pattern emerged–the same $40,000 in contributions from a group of eight businessmen were reported in at least six different states. What this means is that even the modest amounts GOPAC reported receiving in various states don’t even begin to account for who really filled the war chest, since the same $40,000 contribution was recycled at least six times.

The upshot is that most of GOPAC’s money wasn’t reported at the federal or state level. And the internal records of GOPAC remain under lock and key. Only these documents can shed light on some of the most important questions about Gingrich’s machine, including what happened to millions of dollars GOPAC has raised and spent since Gingrich took it over in 1986. Without full disclosure, it’s impossible to know who secretly contributed to GOPAC, what they got in return, and where the money got spent.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

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