Documenting Donor Influence on Politicians’ Fundraising.
“Dark money” influences politics while donors remain a mystery. What journalists need to know about how to follow campaign finance and its effects on politicians.
by Anne Godlasky, National Press Foundation

If you don’t cover campaign finance, you don’t fully cover politics, Patrick Svitek, Texas Tribune political correspondent told NPF’s 2022 Statehouse Reporting Fellows.

For many candidates, fundraising takes up most of their time. “Hours and hours a day making calls, attending events, all geared toward raising money … [to pay] for things like TV ads, polling, all the important things and functions that go into a successful campaign,” Svitek said. More importantly, “money can influence the decision-making of elected officials … [whether] there’s an actual quid pro quo … [or] that big donors tend to get access to politicians that normal people, average voters do not.”

Svitek broke down fundraising into three categories, with declining transparency:

1) Hard money: A candidate’s campaign account
2) Soft money: Political action committees (PACs)
3) Dark money: Groups, such as 501(c)4s, that spend money for political influence but do not disclose donors

Lobbyists “meet a certain threshold where they’re compensated or whether they make expenditures to directly communicate with a member of the executive or administrative branch of government to influence legislation or administrative action,” said Anne Temple Peters, Texas Ethics Commission executive director. “Once they’ve met those thresholds, then they have to register and then registration triggers the reporting requirements.”

What political reporters need to know:

Four things every good campaign finance reporter must know, Svitek said, are:
1) Federal campaign finance rules as well as their state rules, particularly contribution limits
2) Reporting periods and deadlines (and how they change as election day approaches)
3) Who the authorities are (i.e. FEC at the national and state level. The agencies vary by state. (In Texas it’s the Texas Ethics Committee).
4) Who the sources are (beyond the donors and candidates).

“Fundraising is a metric that a lot of people use to judge candidates, like it or not, fair or not fair, good for democracy or not good for democracy,” he said. Get to know the sources that are primarily focused on fundraising: “people who put together events, people who help connect candidates with donors, get to know the donors themselves if you can … try to understand what motivates them. Obviously, some people give at a very high level because they want access. … that bypasses the access that the average voter can get. Some people have very deep ideological issues that drive them to give so much.”

Svitek feels strongly that these issues must be covered because “campaign finance groups can … almost supplant campaigns as power centers.”

“This is all about shining a light on a part of politics that often happens in private, and the end goal is to hold people accountable and bring more sunshine to this part of politics.”

Speakers:
Patrick Svitek, Texas Tribune primary political correspondent
Anne Temple Peters, Texas Ethics Commission executive director

Part 2 video: [ Ссылка ]
Transcript, presentation, resources: [ Ссылка ]

свернуть