If the Republican Party was the big election-day loser, maybe the
second biggest loser was outside spending groups such as Super Political
Action Committees and so-called “dark money” non-profits that need not
disclose their donors. In the presidential race and majority of the close races for
Congress, there was an inverse relationship between who won and who got the most outside money.
Nowhere was this more apparent
than in Illinois. In six hotly-contested congressional contests,
Republican candidates received drastically more outside cash than
Democrats. Yet the Democrat won five of these races.
Only in the
13th congressional district did the GOP prevail. And even there, Republican Rodney Davis is ahead just 1,287 votes over Democrat David
Gill, who will not concede until the provisional ballots are counted.
After the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court Citizens United decision, these outside spending groups could suddenly spend unlimited sums of
money so long as they did not directly coordinate with political
campaigns.
So why were Super PACs and dark money groups not the
difference makers that campaign finance watchdogs feared and an array of
political observers anticipated? Read more »
The Chicago Federation of Labor has made a major television ad buy with a 30-second message making an appeal to elected officials and constituents about the fiscal cliff. The ad notes that although the election may have been a victory for Democrats at the local and national levels, "the fight has just begun."