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 »
About 10 Lakeview residents trickled in and out of the John Merlo
Branch Library from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. this morning, and a few of them
spoke with Progress Illinois about the 2012 election.
A confident Tammy Duckworth voted at around 10:00 a.m. at the massive
Willow Creek Church complex in Barrington. Duckworth is trying to
unseat controversial Congressman Joe Walsh, a Tea Party favorite, in one
of the most high-profile and expensive congressional races in the
nation in a redrawn 8th district.
This week, U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh (R-McHenry) mocked Tammy Duckworth for an upcoming fundraiser in Santa Monica, California and 
