Following the Money a Year After Citizens United

Emily Badger
Miller-McCune

Observers thought heaps of anonymous cash would flood U.S. campaign coffers after the controversial Supreme Court decision. They were right.

Last January, critics of the controversial Citizens United U.S. Supreme Court decision — which knocked down long-running restrictions on corporate campaign money in elections — envisioned an ominous scene. Anonymous corporate millions would flood into closely contested elections, elbowing out the influence of average voters, warned many (including the president).

Now, at the decision’s one-year anniversary, hard data is beginning to bear out the grave forecasts, contradicting even some of the Supreme Court’s own predictions. In the wake of Citizens United, outside groups in last year’s election spent more than four times what they’d funneled into the previous midterm cycle, in 2006, according to a new Public Citizen report. And voters will never know where much of it came from.

The scale of so much midterm money ($294.2 million in all) more closely resembles what was spent ($301.7 million) during the 2008 presidential election — suggesting voters have seen only a glimpse of what’s to come in 2012.

“I still feel like we’re going to see a lot more in 2012, not just because it will be a presidential cycle, but because of the chance for people to sort of get their systems in order,” said Taylor Lincoln, the research director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division and one of the report’s authors.

(More here.)