Campaign Finance

Why Romney Is Polishing Energy’s Apple

On Tuesday night in Dallas, Mitt Romney made one thing clear: he was not “just polishing the apple for T. Boone Pickens here,” he said, when he began his policy remarks at a fundraiser with Pickens, an oil and gas investor, by talking about energy.

The truth is, as Romney pointed out, he almost always starts talking policy by …

The 2012 Money Gap Grows

To win re-election, Barack Obama won’t be able to rely on the fundraising edge he rode four years ago. The incumbent president was outraised in July by Mitt Romney, the third consecutive month the challenger has held the …

The New Rules Of Campaign Finance: Small Dollars Are No Longer King

Four years ago, the presidential campaign was a celebration of the little guy. Two thirds of the money raised by Barack Obama came online, and 34% of his money came from donors who gave less than $200. This cycle, Obama is doing even better than he did in 2008 with small donors. Through June, 2.4 million Americans have given to his …

Billions For Ballots

Big money will flow through an array of groups supporting Obama and Romney this year. A TIME estimate of how much each group could pump into the campaign

The Obama Campaign Tries Out a New Cellular Weapon

The Obama campaign fundraising machine has debuted a new text message tool with encouraging results for the President’s bean counters. On Wednesday, the Obama campaign sent out an SMS message to cell phones and smart phones of tens of thousands of previous donors asking them to give more money. “Support Pres Obama in less than a minute,” …

Barack Obama’s New One-Click Fundraising Trick

Campaign reporters have blind spots. I can tell you, for instance, what happens when you go on BarackObama.com, or what happens when you sign up for the Barack Obama Facebook app, or what happens when you tell the campaign you want to donate money online. I cannot, however, tell you what happens after you donate the money online, since I …

The Campaign Spendageddon That Already Happened

Consider this campaign finance reformer’s nightmare scenario: Corporate interests flood a presidential election with money, ballooning campaign spending at six times the norm, and throwing a 5-to-1 spending advantage to the eventual winner largely because of one issue. This is not what’s happening in 2012. It’s what transpired in 1896:

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