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1 Ian Vandewalker, Election Spending 2016: Just Three Interests Dominate, Shadow Parties Continue to Rise 1 (2016)

handle is hein.brennan/elcspdint0001 and id is 1 raw text is: BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUST CE at New York University School of Law Election Spending 2016: Just Three Interests Dominate, Shadow Parties Continue to Rise Ian Vandewalker *Research provided ly Alexis Farmer Outside spending - expenditures by groups other than candidates themselves - is pouring into the races that will determine control of the U.S. Senate. As part of our series on money in key Senate races, the Brennan Center has examined the outside spending in 10 close contests.' New data will become available in the next week that will allow us to paint a full picture of spending trends in 2016's most competitive Senate races. In the meantime, our preliminary analysis reveals two important trends: * The courts' deregulation of outside money is not allowing a wider array of voices to fund elections. On the contrary, just a handful of partisan and ideological interests with vast resources, especially the major parties, are using the looser rules to increasingly monopolize election funding. * The parties are shifting their resources outside the official committees, which raise money subject to contribution limits and required disclosure of donors, to super PACs and nonprofits controlled by party operatives but able to take unlimited and often secret donations. Spending Is Dominated by Just Three Interests More than half of the outside spending in key Senate races comes from just three interests: the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, and the political network founded by the industrialist Koch brothers. Counting expenditures from FEC data, media reports, and press releases, we found $321 million spent by entities other than the candidates in the 10 closest Senate races (Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin). Of that, $77 million was spent by the Republican Party and outside groups with close ties to the party, called shadow party groups. The Democratic Party and its shadow party allies spent $60 million, and $42 million was spent by the Koch network, which exclusively supports Republican candidates. The outside-spending vehicles of these three interests are profiled below.

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