Pulling Up the Curtain On Dark Money
via Politico
In the 1970s, public outrage over government contractors buying influence with a president led to groundbreaking reforms of the U.S. campaign finance system. That same sense of outrage should compel action today against the “dark money” tainting our elections. With a simple executive order today, President Barack Obama could end the secret payments from federal contractors seeking to sway our elections once and for all. Given the scale of the federal contracting universe, a move like that by Obama would go a long way, quickly, toward addressing one of the biggest modern threats to clean and fair elections.
When the Watergate scandal broke, Americans were appalled by the corrupt pay-to-play culture of Washington — where secret, outsized campaign contributions meant special treatment and preferred access to government decision-makers. Millions of dollars in illegal corporate contributions, at times explicitly tied to official acts, funded President Richard M. Nixon’s 1972 reelection campaign. The result was more than a dozen convictions of corporate executives, including the chairman of defense contractor Northrop Corp., who had personally arranged for $150,000 in illegal payments.
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