(Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

March 15-21 is Sunshine Week, a national initiative celebrating open government and access to public records. Undisclosed spending by political actors undermines transparency and voters’ ability to make informed decisions.

On March 20, some of the groups named in this story finally disclosed their donors long after elections took place. This story was updated to include that information.

Super PACs on both sides of the aisle are abusing loopholes in campaign finance law to keep their donors secret, leaving primary voters in the dark about who is trying to influence them.

These groups are required to disclose their donors. But by launching a new super PAC just before an election, political actors can spend unlimited sums influencing races without disclosing their funding sources until after votes are counted.

Between the Nevada Caucuses and the March 17 primaries, at least 11 groups used this tactic to conceal the source of nearly $24 million in election spending in presidential, House and Senate races.

Persist PAC, which unsuccessfully backed Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), made up the bulk of that undisclosed spending. The super PAC spent $14.8 million between the Nevada, South Carolina and Super Tuesday contests without revealing its donors to voters in those states. The super PAC supporting Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Kitchen Table Conversations, spent $2.7 million while employing a similar tactic.

The pro-Warren super PAC revealed its donors Friday. One wealthy Democratic donor, Karla Jurvetson, gave $14.6 million, accounting for much of the group’s fundraising.

These groups ultimately weren’t able to catapult the senators to success on Super Tuesday. But they showed how a super PAC could exploit loose disclosure rules to spend in every early presidential primary contest without informing voters about its sources of funding.

The Federal Election Commission required groups influencing Super Tuesday races to disclose their donors in pre-primary reports on Feb. 20. But groups that waited to start spending until Feb. 13 didn’t have to file. Some groups avoided pre-primary reports entirely by filing on a monthly basis. Monthly filers will disclose their February donors on March 20. Since the Iowa Caucuses start on Feb. 3, a single super PAC could influence several key primary contests with secret sources of funding.

Groups employed this tactic as recently as Tuesday’s elections. In the Republican primary for Illinois’ 14th District, a new group called Illinois Conservatives PAC spent $910,100 on advertisements attacking state Sen. Jim Oberweis. The group launched on March 2 and started spending five days later, successfully avoiding the pre-primary disclosure window.

The group didn’t disclose its donors by the time Illinois voters went to the polls, which perhaps gave it more leeway to launch inflammatory attacks. Among its misleading claims, the group’s television ads accuse Oberweis of “comparing pro-lifers to terrorists” while displaying images of Taliban fighters.

Pictured is a screenshot of a linked video from Illinois Conservative PAC’s YouTube channel.

Oberweis declared victory in the stacked primary after earning 25 percent of the vote. But it’s still unclear who was behind the group that wanted to stop him from facing freshman Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.), a top Republican target, in November.

Illinois Conservatives PAC uses the same ad buyer as some establishment Republican groups. Oberweis, a wealthy dairy magnate, has run in several federal races but lost all of them. Until the group discloses its donors, there’s no way to know what motivated the ad blitz.

Super PACs circumvent outdated, sluggish reporting system

The current reporting rules were crafted more than four decades ago, when committee treasurers typed their reports with typewriters and mailed their disclosures to the FEC. Now, campaigns and outside groups maintain electronic databases of their contributions and spending, making it easy to file reports quickly. But the rules have not been updated to keep up with technological changes.

“The reporting schedule from 1974 is inadequate to provide transparency for the way campaigns are run now, especially with the advent of super PACs,” said Brett Kappel, a campaign finance lawyer at the law firm Akerman.

Unlike candidate campaigns, which build up funds from thousands of donors over the course of months, super PACs often solicit multi-million dollar contributions from a handful of wealthy donors. This allows political actors to spend big shortly after launching a new super PAC and outmaneuver outdated reporting requirements.

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“It is very easy for political operatives to create a super PAC, spend a ton of money in a race in the week or two before an election and hide donors before election day,” said Brendan Fischer, director of federal reform at the Campaign Legal Center. “Congress and the FEC have shown little interest thus far about doing anything about it.”

The Supreme Court overwhelmingly agreed in Citizens United v. FEC that independent spenders should provide transparent information about their funding sources. But inaction from both lawmakers and regulators has allowed undisclosed spending to run rampant.

Election experts say it would be easy for super PACs to disclose their donors more often if Congress required them to do so. Shortly before an election, political candidates are already required to file disclosures revealing large donors every 48 hours.

“If candidates can comply with these last minute large donor reporting requirements, super PACs certainly can as well,” Fischer said.

This issue has received little attention in Congress. An amendment from Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.) in Democrats’ omnibus election bill HR 1 would require the FEC to report recommendations to Congress on how to stop groups from dodging disclosure requirements. That bill passed the House last year but will not receive a vote in the Senate.

Local names, national party ties

Pop-up super PACs often adopt a name linked to state or local sources. Oftentimes these groups are actually funded by those tied to national political parties.

In the North Carolina Senate primary, a group called Carolina Blue spent $4.5 million backing Cal Cunningham, national Democrats’ preferred challenger to Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.). The group started airing ads in February, so it switched its filing schedule to monthly so it could hide its donors until March 20, long after voters made their choice.

Carolina Blue uses the same ad buyer as Senate Democrats’ top super PAC. So does VoteVets, which also spent millions supporting Cunningham. On March 20, the group revealed it is funded entirely by Democrats’ Senate Majority PAC.

In the primary, Cunningham defeated Erica Smith, a lesser-funded progressive candidate who was boosted by nearly $3 million from a mysterious group called Faith & Power PAC. That group criticized Cunningham as not being progressive enough for the state’s Democratic voters.

Faith & Power PAC aired the bulk of its ads on Feb. 8, within the window where election spenders must disclose their donors. Within two weeks of the election, the group revealed it was funded entirely by the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC affiliated with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). That disclosure let voters know that Republicans were behind the “progressive” advertisements.

Forward California, a super PAC supporting Democratic California congressional candidate Sara Jacobs, was in a similar situation. Had the group waited to spend its $1.4 million worth of independent expenditures, voters would have no way to know that it was funded by Jacobs’ grandfather Irwin Jacobs, the billionaire co-founder of Qualcomm.

Several groups successfully hid their donors from Texas voters. In the Democratic primary for Senate, Lone Star Forward spent $254,000 backing Cristina Tzintzun Ramirez, a progressive labor organizer. The group acknowledged it received funding from local unions but did not report its donors to the FEC by election day. Tzintzun Ramirez came in third place behind state Sen. Royce West and Air Force veteran MJ Hegar, the Democrats’ preferred challenger to Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).

Pictured is a screenshot of a linked video from Lone Star Forward’s YouTube channel.

Other groups also independently backed Lone Star State candidates without revealing their funding sources. Texans Coming Together spent over $138,000 unsuccessfully supporting Pierce Bush, the grandson of former President George H.W. Bush. The group revealed its donors this week. Lone Star Values PAC spent over $74,000 backing primary winner Wesley Hunt, Republicans’ favored challenger to Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D-Texas).

The tactic of hiding donors from voters is increasingly common and will likely continue into this year’s general election. Several pop-up super PACs spent millions of dollars in the 2018 midterms without disclosing their donors before election day. Of those, many were revealed to be funded by party-tied super PACs or well-known megadonors.

In addition to the pop-up super PACs, “dark money” groups that don’t disclose their donors have spent nearly $12 million this cycle. Primarily organized as nonprofits, these groups never provide information about their sources of funding. That makes it impossible for the public to know if lawmakers are influenced by donors to these secretive groups. Groups that disclose their donors but are partially funded by dark money have spent another $22 million.



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