Elections and Campaign Money III

For Wednesday, read Cigler, ch. 7.

Next Monday, Mike Whatley `11 of the National Restaurant Association.

Questions on the assignment?

• Endnotes
• Sources:  do not always take self-descriptions at face value.

Updates on reverse lobbying:

• Trump v. Kimmel
• Dark Money blacklist
• Who owns what -- conglomerates are vulnerable on multiple fronts.

Explaining Open Secrets

• How the Center for Responsive Politics assigns individual contributions
• The columns in the Industries table

Why give to disclosing groups rather than dark money?

• Many givers (Adelson) want to get credit.
• Some givers are leery of dark money.
• Late Super PAC disclosure (Schatzinger) sometimes makes it a distinction without a difference.

Outside Spending in 2020:  the Big Picture

"[The] main criterion for super PACs and their independent expenditures remains the competitiveness of races." (Schatzinger 119)

• QED:  2022 data

Congressional Leadership Super PAC (Schatzinger 128-131)

• House Majority PAC and Senate Majority PAC
• Congressional Leadership Fund and Senate Leadership Fund

The Small Donor Revolution in 2020

Advertising

• Ads matter less than people think.
• The effect is inversely proportional to the level of the office at stake.  That is, ads have more effect in a race for school board than for US president.
• All other things being equal, negatives have more effect than positive.  Why?  Cognitive biases.

Social media:  

• Most Americans don't use Twitter.  
• Most Twitter users don't use it for politics.,

Foreign Influence (more later in the course!)

"Payload content"

My own favorite: