Conservatives Are Owning the Dark Money Game

A new report by the campaign finance advocacy group Issue One has revealed that of the $800 million in secret money spent on elections between 2010 and 2016, 75 percent came from just 15 top groups. Most of these groups, you’ll be just shocked to hear, support Republicans.

The top spender was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a truly vile force in American politics which pours money into supporting pro-corporate, anti-worker policies—not just through this kind of secretive spending on elections, but also through spending on lobbyists in Washington. In 2017, according to data compiled by OpenSecrets, the Chamber spent $82 million on federal lobbying. That’s more than half of the total amount they spent on federal elections between 2010 and 2016.

One of the conservative groups, Americans for Job Security, hasn’t filed tax returns in three years, according to a complaint filed with the IRS by Issue One and the Campaign Legal Center. Tax returns filed by these groups are usually the only way to get any insight into their finances—though they don’t have to disclose their donors, they do disclose donations to other non-profits.

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