Mother Jones
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After watching the biggest donors increasingly shun the major political parties and send their six-figure checks to super-PACs and other outside spending groups, Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress made a sly bid last December to bring billionaires and millionaires back into the party fold. They slipped a provision into an omnibus spending bill that rewrote campaign finance rules to raise contribution limits for donations to the national parties. Under the old rules, an individual could give up to $33,400 a year to the Republican or Democratic national committees. The new rule allows donors to give 10 times that amount. And just months into the new election cycle, the effort is paying off—at least for Republicans. The RNC is pulling down big money from a who’s who of conservative megadonors. Democrats? Not so much.
To date, the Democratic National Committee hasn’t had a single donor contribute the maximum amount of $334,000 or even crack six figures. But five major GOP donors have maxed out in donations to the RNC, and more than a dozen others have ponied up at least six figures. And that doesn’t count donations to other GOP committees, such as the National Republican Congressional Committee or the National Republican Senatorial Committee, each of which can now collect a maximum of $233,800 a year from donors. In the first four months of the year, the RNC raised more than $5 million through donations now permitted by the recently changed rules. The DNC, meanwhile, has reported $213,000 in similar donations. The largest donors gave $33,400.
Link:
Congress Slyly Changed Campaign Finance Rules. Now the GOP Is Cleaning Up.
