Photograph by Alex Wong/Getty Images

The Capitol in Washington, DC.

The Senate could be on the verge of entering the modern world when it comes to campaign finance.

More than one-third of the Senate — 35 senators — have attached their names to legislation that would require candidates to file their campaign finance information electronically to the Federal Election Commission, rather than on paper to the Secretary of the Senate. Senators and their opponents are now the only federal candidates who still use paper; others have been filing electronically for a decade.

The bill, S. 375, has bipartisan support. It was introduced by Democrat Jon Tester of Montana and Republican Thad Cochran of Mississippi. Previous efforts to require electronic filings have been blocked by Senate Republicans.

While presidential, House, political party and political action committee filings can be made instantly available for public inspection and analysis, it takes weeks, if not months, before Senate filings can be entered into the FEC’s computers.

“Through its insistence on clinging to this time consuming and expensive process of paper-based filing, the U.S. Senate succeeds only in denying voters vital information about who is bankrolling campaigns until after the votes have been counted, but that is precisely the goal of opponents,” said Meredith McGehee, policy director for the Campaign Legal Center, an advocacy group that favors stronger campaign finance laws.

Original post is Senators Eye 21st Century World of Campaign Finance by Political Capital.

President Barack Obama’s campaign committee, Obama for America, still owes $3.1 million, new Federal Election Commission filings show.

The debts include $626,886 for stage, sound and lighting at campaign events; $500,757 for telemarketing and more than $216,146 for legal fees. The campaign received $1.9 million from the joint fundraising effort with the Democratic National Committee.

Republican rival Mitt Romney reported that his campaign was debt free and he had $872,021 in the bank entering April.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who lost the Republican presidential nomination to Romney, reported $4.6 million in debts, including $647,519 to himself, $413,370 for security, and $983,072 to the air charter company Moby Dick Airways Ltd.

Original post is Obama Campaign Still Owes $3 Million by Political Capital.

Photograph by Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call

Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, holds his weekly on camera news conference in the Capitol on Thursday, April 11, 2013.

As the House speaker, John Boehner is in a position to raise plenty of campaign funds for his party.

The Ohio Republican took in $2.4 million in the first three months of this year, his campaign committee reported to the Federal Election Commission today.

That’s more than most candidates for Congress raise in an entire two-year campaign cycle.

Boehner raised $394,000 from political action committees of companies including American Airlines Inc., Boeing Co., Northrop Grumman Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp., Federal Express Corp., Lockheed Martin Corp. and Microsoft Corp.

Boehner’s campaign committee spent more than $1.5 million, including about $693,000 sent to the National Republican Congressional Committee, the campaign arm of House Republicans.

Boehner raised $22 million and spent $21.2 million in the 2012 election, FEC data show.

Original post is Boehner Raises $2.4 Million First Qtr by Political Capital.

Photograph by Scott Eells/Bloomberg

People gather to watch election coverage in Times Square in New York, on Nov. 6, 2012.

The final price tag on the 2012 elections:

$6.3 billion.

That’s according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which intially pegged the cost at $6 billion.

It’s still less than the $7 billion that Federal Election Commission Chairwoman Ellen Weintraub estimated when she took the gavel in January.

Original post is 2012 Election Total: $6.3 Billion by Political Capital.

Photograph by Tim Boyle/Bloomberg

An AT&T Inc. store in Chicago.

AT&T Inc. has a tradition of making political contributions early and often.

The political action committee of the second-biggest U.S. wireless carrier sent $363,200 to federal candidates and political committees in the first two months of this year, including $169,200 in February, the PAC said today in a filing with the Federal Election Commission.

The early and aggressive giving underscores the active political participation of a company that also spent more than $17 million on lobbying in 2012, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

AT&T’s PAC gave $315,250 to federal candidates and committees in the first two months of 2012, compared to $393,000 over the same period in 2011, FEC documents show.

AT&T’s PAC sent donations last month to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and to a leadership PAC led by House Minority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland. Republicans receiving donations included House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers of Kentucky and Senator John Thune of South Dakota, who got a donation through his leadership political action committee.

Original post is AT&T Political Giving: Early and Often by Political Capital.

Photograph by David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

A Chevron Corp. station in San Francisco.

A coalition of advocacy groups filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission today over Chevron Corp.’s $2.5 million donation to a super-political action committee aligned with House Speaker John Boehner.

Chevron’s donation to the Congressional Leadership Fund was one of the few contributions from a publicly traded company to a super-PAC. The groups, including Public Citizen and Friends of the Earth, said the donation violated federal law because federal contractors are not allowed to make political contributions. San Ramon, California-based Chevron received $661 million in contracts from the Defense Department in the 2011 fiscal year, according to Bloomberg Government.

Super-PACs were approved by the FEC in 2010 following the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which overturned decades of legislation and court decisions restricting corporate contributions for political purposes. Such PACs are allowed to take in unlimited corporate, union and individual donations and spend the money to elect or defeat those running for office, though must disclose their contributors and cannot give directly to a candidate’s campaign.

“The ‘pay-to play’ prohibition exists because of a long and seedy record of companies attempting to buy lucrative government business by filling the campaign coffers of politicians,” said Craig Holman, a lobbyist for Public Citizen, which supports stronger campaign finance laws.

Chevron spokesman Lloyd Avram said the donation came from the parent company, which “does not conduct business with the federal goverment.” All federal contracts are held by corporate subsidiaries, he said.

“Chevron does not believe that the federal government contractor ban applies to this specific contribution,” Avram said.

In any event, the FEC is unlikely to take any action.

It has routinely deadlocked along party lines, 3-3, on enforcement measures.

Original post is Chevron’s $2.5 Mln Donation Challenged by Advocacy Groups by Political Capital.

Photograph by Evan Vucci/AP Photo

Former Sen. John Breaux and other Democratic lobbyists were big early donors to their party’s effort to defend its Senate majority in the 2014 elections.

Breaux, a Patton Boggs senior counsel and a Louisiana senator from 1987 to 2005, donated $30,800 last month to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, according to a Federal Election Commission filing this week.

Gerald S.J. Cassidy, the founder and chief executive officer of Cassidy & Associates, also gave $30,800 to the DSCC. Democratic lobbyists Jimmy Ryan, a former adviser to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Heather Podesta, a lawyer and frequent Democratic donor, each gave $32,400.

The Federal Election Commission last month raised the annual limit on what an individual donor can give to a national party committee to $32,400 from $30,800.

The lobbyists’ donations helped the DSCC raise $4.2 million last month compared to $1.5 million for its partisan counterpart, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the filings show.

Home Depot Inc. CEO Frank Blake and New York real estate developer Jerry Speyer each gave $30,800 to the NRSC.

The DSCC began February with $3 million in the bank and $15.7 million in debts, compared to $3.3 million in cash-on-hand and $10 million in debts for the NRSC. Both parties borrowed millions of dollars to finance their spending on the 2012 Senate elections. Democrats increased their majority to 55 seats from 53.

Original post is Lobbyists Help Senate Democrats Outraise Republicans in January by Political Capital.

The San Diego-based maker of communications microchips revised its policy on disclosing political spending to settle a lawsuit,  Bloomberg’s Phil Milford reports. The company voluntarily itemized the money it gave trade groups and other tax-exempt organizations, and posted a list of the donations on its website.

In January, New York Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli brought a suit on behalf of the state’s public employee retirement fund to determine whether Qualcomm’s contributions were in the best interest of shareholders.

Companies typically aren’t required to disclose donations to tax-exempt organizations — even though some of the groups, such as the Chamber, participate in election politics.

Qualcomm’s founder, Irwin Jacobs, is a major Democratic donor. For the 2012 elections, he gave $2 million to a super-political action committee dedicated to helping President Barack Obama win re-election and $200,000 to other Democrat-friendly super-PACs, according to the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics.

His son, Paul E. Jacobs, the chief executive officer and chairman of Qualcomm, gave $5,000 to Obama’s campaign in 2011. In recent years, Paul Jacobs contributed $40,800 to the Democratic National Committee and gave thousands more to state party committees, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

“Increased transparency for election-related activities by corporations is very beneficial,” Paul Jacobs said in a joint statement with DiNapoli.

Qualcomm’s contributions to political candidates and tax-exempt groups show a bipartisan approach.

Its top gift of $1 million went to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonprofit group in Washington that has been pushing Congress to reduce the federal deficit. The Chamber of Commerce, which tends to give money Republicans, received $385,000 from Qualcomm.

The company invested $78,000 in California state candidates and political groups, and $161,000 in federal races while giving nothing to super-PACs. Those kinds of donations were already public because they were reported to the Federal Election Commission.

“Qualcomm’s disclosure policy sets a high standard,” DiNapoli said in the joint statement. “The company deserves praise for its actions.”

Original post is Qualcomm, Settling Lawsuit, Discloses More Than $3 Million in Political Spending by Political Capital.

Photograph by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain holds up a cupcake decorated with his 9-9-9 economic plan before a speech at the National Press Club in this file photo.

One legacy of the 2012 presidential race: the super-political action committees it spawned.

Weeks after the Nov. 6 election, those groups still had more than $5.4 million left to spend, Federal Election Commission reports due yesterday show.

Each candidate — from President Barack Obama to short-lived Republican contender Rick Perry — got an assist from at least one specially designed super-PAC, often staffed with former aides to that presidential hopeful.

New to the presidential race last year, super-PACs could accept unlimited sums from wealthy individuals, corporations and unions and spend the money directly helping their candidate of choice, so long as they didn’t coordinate with the candidate.

Priorities USA Action, organized to help the president win re-election, had $3.7 million at the end of December. What will the super-PAC do with the leftover cash? A representative for Priorities couldn’t immediately be reached.

Restore Our Future, created to boost Republican challenger Mitt Romney, had $1.3 million in the bank. Brittany Gross, a spokeswoman for Restore, said in an e-mail the group is “not discussing future plans at this point.”

Far older super-PAC corpses — from the Republican primary race that concluded some nine months ago — still litter the field.

Winning Our Future, which helped Newt Gingrich stay in the Republican race months after his own campaign coffers dwindled, had $60,283. (The super-PAC finally stopped paying its consultant-founder, Rebecca Burkett, last month.)

Perry ally Make Us Great Again had $216,161 as of Dec. 31. Rick Santorum-backing Red, White and Blue Fund, had $127,063. Our Destiny, funded largely by onetime candidate Jon Huntsman’s father, had $20,209 cash on hand.

The pro-Herman Cain 9-9-9 Fund was down to its last $100 but owes $162,000 to a fundraising company. The Georgia businessman, who promised to balance the federal budget in less than a year, would not be pleased.

Original post is Super-PACs Still Super With $5.4 Mln — Though `9-9-9′ Down to Last $100 by Political Capital.

Photograph by Peter Foley/Bloomberg

Images of President Barack Obama, left, and Republican Mitt Romney are seen on a monitor while a trader works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on Nov. 7, 2012.

That’s about how much was spent on the 2012 election, according to an estimate from the Federal Election Commission.

Candidates spent about $3.2 billion, compared with $2 billion spent by the political parties and $2.1 billion by outside political committees, FEC chairwoman Ellen Weintraub said yesterday at a commission meeting and in a statement.

“The election of 2012 was record-breaking in the campaign finance world,” Weintraub said. Pending a review of final campaign finance reports due yesterday to the FEC, “it’s possible that this is the first election where outside groups outspent the major parties.”

“Certainly, there were races where outside groups outspent candidates, so that’s kind of an unusual situation that we find ourselves in,” Weintraub said.

The biggest expenditures for candidates, party organizations and outside groups include television advertising. Weintraub said the FEC estimate also includes overhead expenses such as salaries and rent.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: $7 Billion by Political Capital.