After Joe Biden entered the White House as president of the United States, speculation surrounding his campaign lingered, with Bloomberg reporting on Jan. 23 that Biden received about $145 million in contributions from anonymous donors and outside groups that supported him, far more than the $28.4 million received by former President Trump. Biden also set a record for the most dark money donations received, with the previous record being the $113 million in dark money donations received by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2012.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Democrats received a total of about $326 million in dark money in the election, more than twice the $148 million raised by Republicans.
Bloomberg reports that the Priorities USA Action Fund, one of the most prominent Democratic “Super PACs” backing Biden, used $26 million it would have donated to its nonprofit Priorities USA to support Biden. The group is using $26 million it would have donated to its nonprofit Priorities USA to support Biden, and the donors of the money are not required to be disclosed.
Critics argue that voters deserve to know who is funding political ads and campaigns. The Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan group, calls such dark money, which obscures its source, “a serious threat to our democracy. Issue One, a nonpartisan group that seeks to reduce the influence of money in politics, has called dark money “the most toxic political force of all.
Although the Democratic Party has previously introduced legislation to crack down on dark money donations, it has not stopped accepting anonymous donations in the Biden-Trump campaign. “We are not going to unilaterally disarm Trump and his right-wing forces.” Guy Cecil, president of Priorities USA, told Bloomberg.
Fox reports that one of the first bills the incoming Senate will face is Sen. Jeff Merkley’s (R-Ky.) For the People Act, the Senate counterpart to the House’s For the People Act. “This is the Senate counterpart of the House For the People Act.
The House bill, led by Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.), was passed in 2019. The bill provides for a crackdown on dark money by requiring all political organizations to publicly disclose their donors, in addition to implementing automatic voter registration and expanding same-day voter registration.
In a statement on his website, Sarbanes said that in an election in which Americans have been subjected to rampant political repression and an influx of dark money, “the 2020 election underscores the need for comprehensive, structural democratic reform.” He said.
As part of the administration’s reforms, the Biden Administration has called for banning certain types of nonprofit organizations from contributing to elections and requiring any group that spends more than $10,000 on federal elections to file a request with the Federal Election Commission and publicly disclose its donors. Under such a proposal, Priorities USA would be forced to disclose its donors.
Historically, Democrats have been more resistant to anonymous black money from “super PACs” than Republicans, who have more substantial corporate backers and, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, have previously received far more According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Republicans used to receive far more anonymous cash than Democrats. But that trend has shifted in recent years, with liberals spending more dark money on political ads in the 2018 midterms than conservatives for the first Time since 2010.
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