Center for Public Integrity uncovers the seedy side of state political money

Realizing that states would play an increasingly important role in campaign finance once soft money contributions had been banned from national party committees, the Center for Public Integrity last year embarked on an epic research project – a comprehensive 50-state investigation of state political spending.

The results weren’t pretty. After a year-long study, the Center found that Democratic and Republic state party committees had raised $570 million, and of that, almost half ($263 million) had come through the soft money transfer loophole, a troubling omen in the effort to get soft money out of politics. The campaign finance law enacted this spring does not close that loophole.

Conducting the research required getting disclosure reports from 50 states covering the agencies of 225 party committees. Most records were on paper, amounting to about 30,000 pages, the equivalent of a 15-foot-high stack.

Nor was the information consistent. Multimillion dollar discrepancies were found between state and national party numbers.

“After this November…the states will only gain in importance,” said Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, at a press briefing. “And, we found, the quality of state records means that tracking that money will be much more difficult. Here we are, a year and a half after the 2000 election, still trying to learn the truth about who gave what to whom in our political process. It will only get worse, we fear, after the November election.”

For more information, visit http://www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/home.asp or call 202-466-1300