By Michael Shear
Texas Insider Report: WASHINGTON D.C. They are spending tens of millions of dollars against Democratic candidates without telling the American people where that flood of money is coming from" said President Obama at a fundraiser in New York late last month. Democrats from the president on down have stepped up their warnings about the influence of what they describe as corporate money. And they are increasingly raising the specter of conservative groups solisciting money from foreign contributions.
In January during his first State of the Union address President Obama predicted that a U.S. Supreme Court decision would open the floodgates" of money into campaigns. He warned against elections that are bankrolled" by powerful interests.
Now that flood of cash has arrived
mostly into new organizations that are working on behalf of Mr. Obamas adversaries and are not required to disclose their donors. The money is helping Republican candidates take advantage of a wave of anger and dissatisfaction across the country.
But in the last weeks of the campaign the money itself is becoming the story as Democrats seek to shine light on where it comes from and Republicans defend the election-year spending as a constitutionally protected form of speech.
You dont know if its coming from big oil or insurance companies. You dont even know if its coming from a foreign-controlled corporation" said the president.
The message is being echoed by liberal talk show hosts on cable television. Rachel Maddow spent the first 15 minutes of her show on Wednesday night devoted to the
topic.
And Senator Al Franken Democrat of Minnesota called on Wednesday for a probe by the Federal Elections Commission of possible improper foreign contributions to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce a charge the organization denies.
Now as my colleague Eric Lichtblau
reports this morning Republican leaders on Capitol Hill have begun a a counter-offensive accusing Democrats of attempting to chill" the legitimate First Amendment rights of interests that are supporting Republicans. And they are accusing officials to Mr. Obama of improperly using the Internal Revenue Service to audit the conservative groups.
With so many Republican candidates being financed by the largely unregulated groups the stakes are high. Democrats are hoping to taint the candidates with the stain of ill-gotten cash much of which is hard to trace by the media and independent groups. Republicans are defending their practices even as they use the cash to hammer Democrats with negative ads.
Ed Gillespie a former top Republican official in George Bushs White House who helped conceive several of the new groups said on MSNBC yesterday that they are designed to counter the left and the infusion of money that was coming from outside groups on the left."
But Mr. Gillespie downplayed his role in running any of the conservative fund-raising groups such as American Crossroads prompting Democratic National Committee
spokesman Hari Sevugan to say Ed Gillespie distancing himself from American Crossroads is like the Pope distancing himself from the Catholic Church."
The debate which is hitting a fever pitch just as the midterm campaigns reach their climax this month could carry over after the election as both parties struggle to adapt to a new power dynamic in Washington.
If Democrats keep control of the House and Senate even by a hair the chairmen of key committees could be well positioned to unleash a barrage of investigations into the source of the donations to a series of well-financed conservative groups.
That kind of investigation has a precedent: in 1995 and 1996 headlines were crowded with allegations of Democratic fundraising scandals involving contributions from China and other countries. The investigations that followed helped gum up the legislative agenda during Bill Clintons term.
Investigations at the time by Representative Dan Burton Republican of Indiana and Senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee
went on for years. The Federal Elections Commission eventually imposed a record-setting fine against officials for fund-raising from foreign countries.
Whatever happens in Congress concern over the fundraising is likely to be kept alive by the White House and Mr. Obama who has repeatedly discouraged his Democratic allies from setting up the kind of disclosure-free organizations that have benefitted the Republicans this year.
