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Election 2020 Dark Money Feature photo
DARK MONEY MATTERS
With Over $1 Billion Spent, Domestic Dark Money Dwarfs All Foreign Influence on
2020 Election
While unapproved foreign interference is a major scandal, corporations and the
ultra-wealthy essentially buying elections is simply (big) business as usual.
by Alan Macleod
March 19th, 2021
By Alan Macleod
WASHINGTON — A newly declassified report from the National Intelligence Council
(NIC) alleges that a range of U.S. enemies — including Russia, Venezuela, Cuba,
Iran and Hezbollah — all attempted to interfere in the 2020 election.
The scope of the supposed interference was relatively minor, amounting to
attempts to push false narratives around Democratic nominee Joe Biden, with
state media outlets questioning Biden’s credibility or sending out emails meant
to confuse or intimidate American voters.
The report offered no evidence for the allegations, arguing that “doing so
could endanger sensitive sources and methods and imperil the intelligence
community’s ability to collect foreign intelligence.” However, the NIC
insisted, the classified report included such evidence and came to the same
conclusions.
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An ODNI report accuses Russia, Iran and Hezbollah of election meddling,
claiming the cadre interfered in the 2020 election but ignoring interference
from US allies like Colombia.
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Despite the lack of substance, and the fact that the intelligence community has
continually published outlandish claims about foreign actors’ nefarious roles
(which were later rolled back), the report’s release became a major
international story, dominating the news cycle and featuring prominently in The
New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, ABC News, The Guardian and many other outlets.
The report generated outrage on social media. Movie director turned political
activist Rob Reiner summed up the mood among many: “No surprise. Putin launched
a massive disinformation campaign in 2020 to help Trump. This time he failed to
get him elected. But he was more than successful at poisoning our Democracy.
Evidence: Jan.6. To restore faith, Trump must be prosecuted,” he tweeted.
Home cooking in a big, dark kitchen
Receiving far less attention was a report published at the same time by the
Center for Responsive Politics, which revealed enormous election interference
from corporate dark money. More than $1 billion worth of secret donations were
made during the 2020 election. This included around $660 million in
contributions to big-money political groups, more than $300 million in
advertising, and $88 million in FEC-reported spending.
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A new report from the Center for Responsive Politics has found that nine of the
costliest Senate races of all time occurred in 2020.
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Few people, even political junkies, know the names of these organizations. But
dark-money groups — organizations trying to influence politics that do not
disclose the source of their funding, such as Duty & Honor and America Votes —
have considerably more influence over who rules the United States than do any
foreign leaders.
Sauce for the goose?
The largest of these groups in terms of political spending is One Nation
America, a Republican organization masterminded by former White House Deputy
Chief of Staff Karl Rove. The organization spent over $125 million during the
last election cycle.
However, it was the Democrats who benefitted the most from dark money sourced
from wealthy, shadowy donors. Democrats outraised the GOP by well over
two-to-one, with Biden’s bid attracting more than six times the amount of money
from anonymous sources than did Trump’s. Given the relatively close race, it is
entirely plausible that this massive cash injection swung the balance in favor
of the 78-year-old Delawarean and away from the incumbent.
Putting “meddling” in perspective
In 2016, the St. Petersburg-based “troll farm” the Internet Research Agency is
said to have spent around $100,000 in online ads targeting American readers.
But four years later, the Center for Responsive Politics calculates that opaque
non-profits shelled out $132 million on the same thing — more than a thousand
times as much.
In politics, money talks. Since 2000, the party spending the most cash has won
between 85% and 98% of all House and 71% and 85% of all Senate races, depending
on the year. Election 2020 was by far the costliest election in history, coming
in at $14.4 billion. That figure is more than double the price of the 2016
election, which cost around $6.5 billion. The six most expensive Senate races
of all time occurred in this cycle. Democrats comfortably outraised and
outspent Republicans in 2020.
The two Senate elections in Georgia — regular and special, which both went to
runoffs that saw Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock elected — wound up
with nearly $830 million spent on the two races alone. Democrats relied on
hefty donations from tech companies like Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and AT&T,
while Republicans counted on support from financial firms like Goldman Sachs
and Bank of America and from money from the Koch Brothers.
This disparity in coverage between the two reports suggests that, while
unapproved foreign interference is a major scandal, corporations and the
ultra-wealthy essentially buying elections is simply (big) business as usual.