September 14, 2012

This Week in Dark Money

A quick look at the week that was in the world of political dark money…

the money shot

 

quote of the week

“If [Republicans] win in November, we won’t recognize the America they’ll create.”
—A fundraising plea from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which previously warned big donors to “wake up” and start giving to super-PACs, decrying the “hundreds of millions in Citizens United corporate dollars” flooding into the 2012 election.

 

attack ad of the week

Planned Parenthood’s super-PAC has spent $1.8 million on a new ad hitting back at Mitt Romney over his hostility toward the group. The spot, titled “Mitt Romney Would Turn Back the Clock on Women’s Health,” will run in Ohio and Virginia, according to the group. (Romney has said that as president he would slash Planned Parenthood’s federal funding, but the ad takes a clip of him out of context to suggest he would “get rid of” the organization altogether.)

 

Chart of the Week

It’s too big to cram onto this page, but head over to the Texas Tribune for a great visualization of the Lone Star State’s deep-pocketed donors funding some of the country’s biggest super-PACs. Topping the chart: billionare businessman (and “Dallas’ most evil genius”) Harold Simmons, whose favorite super-PAC (to the tune of $11 million) is Karl Rove’s American Crossroads, and Houston homebuilder Bob Perry, who’s given $8.75 million to the pro-Romney Restore Our Future, among other groups.

 

stat of the weeK

$570,000: The minimum amount raised by the Coalition of Americans for Political Equality, a super-PAC run by a former Arizona GOP county chair that put up a series of websites disguised as candidate homepages in an apparent effort to trick prospective donors. After the National Journal reported on the websites last Sunday the super-PAC’s front sites briefly disappeared, but the group chalked it up to a GoDaddy outage. NJ snapped some screenshots just in case (note the disclaimer in the top-right corner):

 

more must-reads

• The dark-money group attacking Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), revealed. ProPublica
• “Changing corporations, not the Constitution, is the key to a fairer post-Citizens United world.” Democracy Journal
• Milllions of dollars from outside spending groups have flooded into the presidential race, but House candidates may have more reason to fear the groups. Center for Public Integrity
• Mitt Romney still hasn’t disclosed all of his, but the New York Times has a list of President Obama’s biggest bundlers.

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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.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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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.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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