Stories
Coulda Been a Contender: Catching Up With ’08 Presidential Also-Rans
BY Caitlin Ginley | November 25, 2008
PaperTrail is going through withdrawal. Memories of once-regular characters like Fred Thompson, Chris Dodd, and the slew of other presidential contenders are beginning to fade. And though Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden have stayed in the picture — benefiting from President-Elect Obama’s “Team of Rivals” approach — what about the remaining cast of challengers we grew to know (and occasionally love) over the past two years?
More >Two-Party Debates
BY Josh Israel | September 18, 2008
On the night of September 30, 2004, few of the estimated 62.4 million viewers watching President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry square off on national television likely took any notice when moderator Jim Lehrer announced, “These debates are sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates.” Many voters tuning in for arguably the most important 90 minutes of the race probably didn’t know what the Commission is, either: a largely secretive tax-exempt organization, created and run by former chairmen of the two major parties, funded by a small group of unidentified major donors, and designed, it seems, to exclude nearly all third-party candidates.
More >Mixing Oil and Politics Is Formula for Newt’s “Solutions”
BY Marianne Lavelle | September 10, 2008
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich isn’t running for president this year, but due to a gusher of support for his campaign to promote opening up more offshore areas to oil drilling, he’s chairing the election season’s hottest conservative advocacy group.
More >The Millionaire’s Media Megaphone — Part Three
BY Caitlin Ginley AND Taylor Rausch | September 04, 2008
It was just days after Air America’s March 2004 launch and already things looked grim. The highly anticipated liberal talk radio network, launched only eight months before Democrat John Kerry was to face President Bush at the polls, had been on Chicago’s affiliate station WNTD-950 AM for only two weeks when station owner Arthur Liu complained about a bounced check. Air America, he claimed, owed him more than $1 million, and he dropped its programming.
More >The Millionaire’s Media Megaphone — Part Two
BY Alicia C. Shepard | September 03, 2008
When Illinois Senator Barack Obama secured the Democratic presidential nomination on June 3, becoming the first African-American ever to do so, he and his wife, Michelle, took to the stage in St. Paul, Minnesota. They hugged, and kissed, and then she raised her right hand in a fist and knocked knuckles with her husband in a celebratory gesture familiar to millions of Americans, especially sports fans.
Three days later, that gesture made news on the Fox News Channel program America’s Pulse. Host E.D. Hill promoted an upcoming segment based on the Obamas’ display of affection witnessed around the world: “A fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab?” she said to her viewers. “The gesture everyone seems to interpret differently. We’ll show you some interesting body communication and find out what it really says.”
More >The Millionaire’s Media Megaphone
BY Alicia C. Shepard | September 02, 2008
Rich people live lives that most everyone else can only imagine. They can buy the nicest cars, drink the finest wines, afford the best doctors, and secure the highest priced lawyers. But when it comes to making donations to their favorite presidential candidates, they are like ordinary Americans in that the most they can donate is $2,300 per election cycle. Still, there is another way that only someone with megamillions can influence an election: buy a newspaper, radio network, or cable channel and use it to help a candidate get to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
More >Checkbook Diplomacy - Part Three
BY Stephanie Mencimer | August 13, 2008
Richard Nixon’s personal lawyer went to prison for soliciting money from major donors who wanted ambassadorships, and when Jimmy Carter showed up at the White House in the wake of Nixon’s scandal-scarred presidency he was determined to clean things up.
More >Checkbook Diplomacy - Part Two
BY Stephanie Mencimer | August 12, 2008
When George W. Bush took office, the White House personnel director, Clay Johnson, was inundated with more than 1,700 applications from would-be ambassadors. And why not?
The salary may be relatively modest, but the job — at least at the choicest postings — sure has it perks: beautiful surroundings, domestic staff, the potential to hobnob with the elite. Ambassadorial residences are often located in choice real estate. For instance, Villa Taverna, the ambassador’s residence in Rome, is a restored 16th century villa that includes seven walled acres of gardens, making it the largest private park in the city. The compound, which takes up an entire city block, includes a movie theater and a swimming pool.
More >Checkbook Diplomacy
BY Stephanie Mencimer | August 11, 2008
In October of 1969, Vincent de Roulet, the newly appointed ambassador to Jamaica, arrived in Kingston aboard his 90-foot yacht, soon to be joined by 17 of his race horses. Wealthy by birth as well as by marriage (his wife was a Whitney), the 44-year-old dilettante had no experience in international diplomacy, his résumé instead boasting a variety of club memberships, horse-racing activities, and board service for various Long Island hospitals.
Broken Elections, Stolen Votes – Part Five
BY Susan Q. Stranahan | July 07, 2008
With another Election Day bearing down on an electorate whose trust has been shaken by the spectacular disarray of the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, what is being done to fix what’s broken, and what’s impeding reform efforts?
More >Broken Elections, Stolen Votes – Part Four
BY Susan Q. Stranahan | July 03, 2008
A week before the Election Day 2004, election experts were making no secret of their concern.
“I am really, really worried,” Doug Lewis of the nonpartisan Election Center, an advisory group for election officials, told The Wall Street Journal. “We’re all on our knees — ‘Dear Lord, let the winner win big, whoever it is.’”
Broken Elections, Stolen Votes – Part Three
BY Susan Q. Stranahan | July 02, 2008
By all outward appearances, Manuel Yip of Miami was a dedicated public citizen, unfailingly casting his ballot. Yip voted in local elections in 1994 and again in the general election. A year later, he dutifully voted in a referendum to relocate Parrot Jungle, a Miami tourist attraction starring Dutchess, the bicycle-riding cockatoo. In November 1997, he voted in the city’s mayoral election.
Broken Elections, Stolen Votes – Part Two
BY Susan Q. Stranahan | July 01, 2008
Election tampering has a rich history in the United States. So does vote buying. George Washington spent almost 40 pounds to supply more than 140 gallons of rum and beer to his supporters when he ran for the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1758. Even so, according to historian Tracy Campbell, Washington worried that his campaign manager had “spent with too sparing a hand.” Apparently not; he won. In 1777, his fellow Virginian James Madison balked at “swilling the planters with bumbo.” He lost.
More >Broken Elections, Stolen Votes
BY AND Susan Q. Stranahan | June 30, 2008
Were the chaotic presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 an anomaly or a harbinger of things to come this November? Is democracy, as Karl Rove warned the Republican National Lawyers Association in 2006, under siege?
More >Obama’s Rainmakers
BY Caitlin Ginley | June 12, 2008
Traditionally, the practice of “bundling” — pooling together a large number of donations — is a common and often essential part of campaign fundraising. Presidential candidates rely on the work of their wealthy and well-connected supporters to haul in huge amounts of cash, sometimes bringing hundreds of thousands of dollars each.
More >McCain’s Mixed Blessings
BY Caitlin Ginley | June 10, 2008
Republican John McCain, self-proclaimed champion of campaign finance reform, has a much-changed outlook on the role of the Federal Election Commission since becoming his party’s nominee for president. In an interview for the Buying of the President 2004, McCain told the Center he was disappointed over the appointments of certain FEC members, including David Mason, for not being willing to enforce the campaign finance reforms passed by Congress.
More >Dirty Politics – Part Four
BY Stephanie Mencimer | June 04, 2008
Hillary Clinton’s campaign created a stir in December 2007 when one of its operatives began dishing dirt on Barack Obama in an interview with The Washington Post. Billy Shaheen, Clinton’s New Hampshire co-chair and husband of former New Hampshire Governor Jeanne Shaheen, told The Post that he thought Obama was unelectable because the GOP would have a heyday with his former drug use. (Obama wrote in his first book that he had experimented with marijuana and cocaine while in high school and college.)
More >Dirty Politics – Part Three
BY Stephanie Mencimer | June 03, 2008
Allen Raymond knows a thing or two about dirty politics.
At 41, Raymond has spent most of his career working deep inside Republican politics. He was once the head of opposition research for the New Jersey Republican Party, and as he worked his way up the food-chain of electoral politics, he went on to become chief of staff to a co-chairman of the Republican National Committee. He did a stint in presidential elections working for Steve Forbes’s presidential campaign in 2000, and after Forbes lost, Raymond became the executive director of the Republican Leadership Council, a political action committee with several U.S. senators on its board. He also ventured into business for himself, setting up a GOP phone-bank business with seed money from his mentor, uber-lobbyist and now Mississippi governor Haley Barbour, and Barbour’s partner, Ed Rogers.
More >Dirty Politics – Part Two
BY Stephanie Mencimer | June 02, 2008
In March 2006, the conservative American Spectator’s front cover featured a photograph of Mitt Romney, with the headline “Romney Rocks!” The story suggested that he could become president and quoted prominent conservatives praising him and the idea of a Romney administration. Despite this early enthusiasm, the former Massachusetts governor’s campaign struggled to win conservative voters and managed to garner only 272 delegates out of the 1,191 needed to win the nomination.
More >Dirty Politics
BY Stephanie Mencimer | May 30, 2008
When it comes to presidential elections, all politics is dirty. As Susan Estrich, Michael Dukakis’s campaign manager in 1988, says, “He who doesn’t throw mud ends up covered in it.” The 2008 election has been no exception to the truth that Dukakis learned the hard way, and we can look forward to almost six more months of mud blizzards before Election Day clears the campaign skies in November.
McCain’s Friends
BY Caitlin Ginley | May 14, 2008
While Republican John McCain has severed ties with two campaign advisers who lobbied for the military junta in Myanmar, connections between his staffers and oppressive foreign regimes still exist and date back more than a decade.
More >McCain’s Land Swap Deja Vu
BY Caitlin Ginley | May 09, 2008
Republican John McCain’s controversial 2005 land swap deal, reported today by The Washington Post, is eerily reminiscent of a similar situation reported by the Center for Public Integrity in its book The Buying of the President 2000.
More >Stealth Campaigns – Part Five
BY Sara Fritz | May 06, 2008
We may never know exactly why any American would contribute more than $20 million in a single year to influence a presidential election. That is because Bob Perry, a residential housing developer in Houston, Texas, refuses to explain his reasoning and investor George Soros is somewhat vague about his motives.
More >Stealth Campaigns – Part Four
BY Sara Fritz | May 05, 2008
Negativity has always posed a temptation for politicians, especially those who fear they are going to lose the election. Politicians claim to hate negative advertising, but they continue to use it. That’s why former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle once called negative advertising the “crack cocaine of politics.”
More >Stealth Campaigns – Part Three
BY Sara Fritz | May 02, 2008
So, with the 2008 presidential campaign headed for a record level of spending not only by the major party candidates but also independent groups that raise millions without disclosing their donors, how effective has the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2002 been?
More >Stealth Campaigns – Part Two
BY Sara Fritz | May 01, 2008
[Editor’s note: MoveOn.org’s political action committee announced yesterday that it will spend a million dollars on a month-long ad campaign against Republican John McCain. The group has endorsed Democrat Barack Obama.]
As the 2008 presidential campaign cycle got going, the undisputed leader in the field of independent attack advertising was MoveOn.org, the liberal Democratic group with loads of money, a popular website, and more than 3 million registered members. As MoveOn.org grew in stature and influence, Republicans grew intensely anxious about the power of liberals to raise money, mobilize voters, and influence public opinion – and answered by launching Freedom’s Watch to fight back.
More >Stealth Campaigns
BY Sara Fritz | April 30, 2008
Their names roll off the tongue with a patriotic cadence: Freedom’s Watch, Democracy Alliance, Citizens United, Progress for America, Foundation for a Secure and Prosperous America. These are the new giants of American politics, the well-funded groups organized behind a veil of secrecy to influence the voters’ choice for president of the United States in 2008.
Financed by many of the nation’s wealthiest investors and business leaders, as well as millions of small donors, these organizations are responsible for a flood of political attack advertising. Their work threatens to drown out the traditional voices of the Republican and Democratic parties and undercut the presidential candidates’ efforts to control their own messages.
More >Zero Enforcement
BY Caitlin Ginley | April 21, 2008
In a crucial election year rife with controversies and record spending, the Federal Election Commission, missing four of its six members, lacks the quorum necessary to take any action. Despite a new congressional ethics law that gave the FEC new regulatory responsibilities, the paralyzed agency has failed to provide any rulings or advisory opinions so far this year.
More >McCain Filling Up with Gas Money?
BY Caitlin Ginley AND Josh Israel | April 16, 2008
In a Tax Day speech Tuesday, Republican John McCain announced a series of economic stimulus proposals, most notably a summer-long suspension of the federal gasoline tax. With the national average cost of gas looming at more than $3.38 per gallon, the plan would impose a moratorium on collection of the 18.4-cent-tax between Memorial Day and Labor Day.
More >Hillary Clinton: The Wal-Mart Videos
BY Bill Hogan AND Alan Green | April 09, 2008
Throughout the 2008 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton has studiously avoided discussing her five-and-a-half-year tenure as a director of Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer.
Clinton, who served on the Wal-Mart board from November 1986 to May 1992, while she was First Lady of Arkansas, makes no mention of the experience in speeches, nor is it listed in her official biography or referenced anywhere on her campaign’s website. Indeed, as The New York Times put it last year, her stint as a director of Wal-Mart “remains a little known chapter in her closely scrutinized career.”
The Longest Campaign — Part Five
BY Jules Witcover | March 28, 2008
All it took was a single clever idea. As a result, the federal financing of presidential campaigns, which was showing signs of decrepitude a quarter-century after the Watergate scandals that inspired it, is all but dead.
More >The Longest Campaign — Part Four
BY Jules Witcover | March 27, 2008
A dollar is a dollar—except in politics, where some dollars are “hard” and some are “soft.” This hard-versus-soft distinction was invented by election lawyers and other political operatives looking for a way around the sweeping campaign-finance reforms ushered in by the Watergate scandal. It didn’t take them long.
More >The Longest Campaign — Part Three
BY Jules Witcover | March 26, 2008
Politics abounds with irony. Only four months before the Watergate break-in that would set off the greatest political scandal of the 20th century and lead to his resignation in disgrace, President Nixon finally signed the Federal Election Campaign Act—but it did nothing to stem the flow of big contributions to his reelection campaign.
More >The Longest Campaign — Part Two
BY Jules Witcover | March 25, 2008
Henry Ford ushered in not only the age of mass production, but also the age of scandalous excess in political campaigns. World War I riveted his interest in politics, and, in 1918, he ran for the U.S. Senate from Michigan. He lost, surprisingly, to a Republican opponent who ran what was branded a “money barrel” campaign.
More >The Longest Campaign
BY Jules Witcover | March 24, 2008
Back in the 1960s, when Jesse Unruh, the speaker of the California General Assembly, famously branded money “the mother’s milk of politics,” the extremes and excesses of the years ahead were probably beyond his imagination.
Today, running for the nation’s highest office has become so costly that by the time the November election rolls around total presidential campaign spending will, in all likelihood, easily exceed $1 billion for the first time in history. From Day One of every presidential campaign, how well candidates fare in amassing their war chests is a critical factor in how they are portrayed by the press and in how well they can make their cases to the public.
More >Hillary Clinton’s Double Donors
BY Josh Israel | March 05, 2008
Five of the six individuals who have given $10,000 or more to the American Leadership Project, a 527 committee formed recently to promote Hillary Clinton, had already given the legal maximum of $4,600 to her presidential campaign, an analysis by the Center for Public Integrity shows.
The Kerry Precedent
BY Josh Israel AND Devin Varsalona | February 26, 2008
By the time John Kerry had virtually locked up the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, he’d already been branded “a handmaiden of special interests,” a Washington elitist, and a hypocrite — and that just by members of his own party. Early in the year, The Washington Post reported that the Massachusetts senator had raised more money from lobbyists over the previous 15 years than any other senator. Kerry’s campaign had sought to portray him as a presidential candidate who would block special interests from the corridors of power. The Post story suggested that he might hold the entryways open for them.
Democrats Win Super Tuesday “Money Primary”
BY Devin Varsalona | February 08, 2008
The two contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination each raised more money in 19 Super Tuesday states than the three Republican hopefuls combined, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis.
Hillary Clinton topped fundraising in those states at just over $58 million, while fellow Democrat Barack Obama raised $47 million. They were followed by Republicans Mitt Romney ($27.5 million), John McCain ($16 million), and Mike Huckabee ($2.3 million).
More >Move Over, Mitt
BY Sarah Laskow | February 06, 2008
Democrat Hillary Clinton loaned her campaign $5 million in late January, according to The Associated Press.
More >Mitt Romney’s Deep Pockets
BY Josh Israel AND Sarah Laskow | February 04, 2008
With the winnowing of the presidential field, Republican Mitt Romney is the only remaining contender who has donated or loaned money to his own campaign, according to Federal Election Commission filings made available last week.
More >Fourth-Quarter Scores
BY Josh Israel | January 31, 2008
The candidates have filed their campaign-finance reports for the fourth quarter of 2007, covering the period from October 1 to December 31.
More >Going Radioactive
BY Sarah Laskow | January 17, 2008
In her response to a question during Tuesday’s Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton made it a point to link Barack Obama to Exelon Corporation, a Chicago-based company that says it accounts for roughly a fifth of the U.S. nuclear industry’s power capacity.
More >Kerry on Slash-and-Burn Politics
BY Sarah Laskow | January 11, 2008
John Kerry, who endorsed Barack Obama in a speech yesterday in Charleston, South Carolina, might have some advice along these lines, based on his experiences as the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee:
More >From the Archives
BY Sarah Laskow | January 09, 2008
In the 2000 edition of The Buying of the President, the Center examined Republican John McCain’s financial connections in Nevada, which holds its caucuses this year on January 19. Here is an excerpt:
In February 1999, McCain took a testing-the-waters trip for a presidential bid. But he didn’t trek through the snowy fields of Iowa or the meeting houses of New Hampshire. Instead he headed straight for Las Vegas.
Obama Wins New Hampshire ‘Money Primary’
BY Josh Israel | January 07, 2008
The people of New Hampshire have invested more than just hope in Barack Obama this past year. After his decisive win in the Iowa caucuses, Obama rocketed past Hillary Clinton in surveys of likely voters in tomorrow’s Democratic primary, but he’s also been decisively outpacing Clinton in fundraising in the state for more than a year.
Sin of Omission?
BY Sarah Laskow | December 21, 2007
Washington lawyer Bruce Fein, who writes a weekly column for The Washington Times, used the venue to attack Senator John McCain without disclosing that he had agreed to be an adviser to Representative Ron Paul, one of McCain’s rivals in the race for the GOP presidential nomination.
More >Huckabee’s 2000 Gift List
BY Sarah Laskow | December 18, 2007
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee accepted gifts valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars during his years as governor of Arkansas. Here are the gifts valued at more than $100 that Huckabee and his wife reported receiving in 2000:
More >Huckabee’s 2001 Gift List
BY Sarah Laskow | December 18, 2007
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee accepted gifts valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars during his years as governor of Arkansas. Here are the gifts valued at more than $100 that Huckabee and his wife reported receiving in 2001:
More >
Huckabee’s 2002 Gift List
BY Sarah Laskow | December 11, 2007
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee accepted gifts valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars during his years as governor of Arkansas. Here are the gifts valued at more than $100 that Huckabee and his wife reported receiving in 2002:
Huckabee’s 2003 Gift List
BY Sarah Laskow | December 11, 2007
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee accepted gifts valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars during his years as governor of Arkansas. Here are the gifts valued at more than $100 that Huckabee and his wife reported receiving in 2003:
More >Huckabee’s 2004 Gift List
BY Sarah Laskow | December 11, 2007
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee accepted gifts valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars during his years as governor of Arkansas. Here are the gifts valued at more than $100 that Huckabee and his wife reported receiving in 2004:
More >Huckabee’s 2005 Gift List
BY Sarah Laskow | December 11, 2007
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee accepted gifts valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars during his years as governor of Arkansas. Here are the gifts valued at more than $100 that Huckabee and his wife reported receiving in 2005:
More >Huckabee’s 2006 Gift List
BY Sarah Laskow | December 10, 2007
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee accepted gifts valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars during his years as governor of Arkansas. Here are the gifts valued at more than $100 that Huckabee and his wife reported receiving in 2006:
More >Back to the Future
BY Charles Lewis | November 02, 2007
More than 40 years of contemporary political campaign books essentially began with Theodore White’s first of four such books, The Making of the President, 1960, which won the Pulitzer Prize. Back then, reporters, including White, didn’t write much about the grubby issue of candidate and political party money, where it came from, what exactly it bought. It was a simpler, more innocent time — before cable television, the Internet, blogs, and the 24/7 information age, with John F. Kennedy competing in just seven presidential primaries, with relatively fewer political reporters watching or public records available.
More >With $50 Million, Kucinich says, “I can win”
BY Josh Israel | August 17, 2007
Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) says that he will buck a trend among presidential hopefuls and participate in the federal matching funds program.
More >Recently Added Stories
Categories
