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Dear friend of OpenSecrets,
It's the holiday season, and the ghosts of past, present and future may be filling your thoughts. But another specter is looming large as we head into the new year. On January 21, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 5-4 verdict in the case of Citizens United vs FEC, ruling that restrictions on independent expenditures by corporations violated the First Amendment. The initial focus of the ruling asked whether it restricted a corporation's speech, but we know now it altered campaign finance in dramatic and unanticipated ways.
For 10 years, OpenSecrets has been tracking and exposing the impacts of the Court’s 2010 decision, which ushered in an era of seemingly limitless dark money spending from outside influencers who have become skilled at shielding their identities. With the tenth anniversary of the decision coming up in January, we are committed to bringing all the consequences of Citizens United to light. A decade on from the decision we've reported that:
- Spending in each new election cycle is breaking records, and spending by outside groups grew faster (84 percent) than overall spending (49 percent). 50 percent of all outside spending is now dark or gray money.
- Contrary to the expectations of some, corporations did not increase their political spending — but spending by megadonors has quadrupled.
The Center for Responsive Politics works to protect the democratic process and in the past year we have ratcheted up efforts to track the dark money explosion in politics through our Outside Spending and Dark Money databases. In 2019 alone, CRP reported on 30+ stories about abuses in these areas to bring you the latest developments:
- OpenSecrets has collected all the known outside groups dedicated to promoting or attacking current 2020 presidential candidates – 96 and counting.
- Adding new data about digital ad spending on social media platforms, for and against the 2020 presidential candidates.
CRP is also providing state and local nonprofit news outlets with tools aimed at helping reporters, watchdogs and academics to track outside spending targeted in their regions through the 2020 election — uncovering networks of dark money sources that connect back to the federal level.
OpenSecrets will reveal all this and more when we publish a major report on the tenth anniversary of Citizens United — including a deep dive into the gender disparity in campaign finance that resulted and other future trends for 2020.
Please support the work of CRP and our website OpenSecrets.org now, and help independent, nonpartisan, journalism thrive throughout 2020.
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