Los Angeles Times: Op-Ed: Who's Paying for the Democratic Convention?
Where the money comes from matters because it buys influence. The host committee’s sole task — organizing and raising money for the convention — isn’t at all innocuous. A recent report from the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, “Funding the Conventions: How a Trickle of Money Turned Into a Flood,” shows how, thanks to a series of rules passed in the 1980s, the FEC gradually allowed exemptions on private funding of conventions. Until then, it was strictly prohibited under the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 and the 1971 Federal Election Campaign Act.