Since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling ushered in a new era of big money in politics, congressional party finances have dramatically shifted. The parties now increasingly rely on loosely regulated shadow parties with close ties to congressional party leaders and comparatively less on official party committees.
And a new Brennan Center analysis shows that so far in the 2018 cycle, the trend is intensifying.
Here’s why this matters:
- Shadow parties use super PACs to raise unlimited contributions. In fact, their revenue comes overwhelmingly from massive contributions larger than the median American household’s income. By contrast, contributions to official party committees are limited, and the committees tend to raise around a third of their money from small donors of $200 or less.
- In addition, the source of much of the shadow parties’ revenue is hidden from the public. Three of the Hill parties (the exception is House Democrats) make use of dark money groups that hide their donors and are run by the same people as their sister super PAC. Our estimate of dark money raised by shadow parties in the 2018 cycle is already more than twice the amount they raised for the last midterms. Official party committees can’t raise dark money.
- Shadow parties aren’t really independent. They are run by party leaders’ trusted former aides or hand-picked operatives. In many cases, party leaders personally make fundraising appeals for their affiliated shadow parties.
In other words, a system that relies more on shadow parties and less on official party committees further increases the already outsize influence of big money in elections and makes it harder for Americans to see who’s bankrolling political campaigns.
The following graphs show that so far in 2018, three of the four Hill committees are on track to see their fundraising rivaled or overshadowed by their outside-group affiliates. (The exception is the House Democrats, who continue to rely on massive…