The Center for Public Integrity

Labor unions face an extremely daunting political landscape in this year’s elections, which explains why veteran AFSCME president Jerry McEntee is working overtime on multiple fronts to mobilize his troops to get out the labor vote.

For many powerful GOP operatives and allied fundraisers, the luncheon last April felt like one part reunion and one part strategy summit for the fall. In reality, the get-together at Karl Rove’s house and office on Weaver Terrace in Washington, D.C., was a bit of both.

As election ads paid for by third-party groups begin to flood U.S. airways, one group seeking campaign finance reform is running an ad blasting a California Republican who has protected the current election financing system. The ad lampoons Dan Lungren, now seeking his 9th term representing the suburbs of Sacramento, California, as a bathing-suit-wearing-fatcat using a legal loophole to get a free Hawaiian vacation.

The Supreme Court's ruling in the Citizens United case opened the floodgates for corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts of money trying to influence the midterm congressional elections in November. Campaign reporters Josh Israel, Aaron Mehta, and Peter Stone, with the help of the Sunlight Foundation's Campaign Ad Monitor, are mobilizing the Center’s supporters to detect in real time examples of political dirty tricks, corporate ads, persuasive "push" polls, pre-recorded phone messages — "robo calls," and efforts to discourage voters from showing up at the polls.

In 2004, America Coming Together (ACT) made a big splash as one of the larger independent “527” committees set up to influence the presidential election. The organization was created and funded largely by wealthy donors and labor unions who opposed the re-election of George W. Bush and hoped to spend millions to influence the outcome. Though ACT ceased its political advocacy in 2005, a Center for Public Integrity analysis of political action committee filings — part of an upcoming project focused on PAC spending habits — discovered that the group’s political action committee is still alive and has spent nearly $1.8 million since the start of 2007.

Paul Magliocchetti, a former lobbyist and key figure in the Center for Public Integrity’s The Murtha Method investigation, pled guilty on Friday to federal campaign finance violations.

As the Center for Public Integrity reported earlier this month, the Federal Election Commission must be notified when a political committee wants to raise and spend unlimited sums of money it collects from individuals. But the FEC database makes it difficult to search and pinpoint which committees are doing it.

Despite having no official position, former President Bush adviser Karl Rove remains a potent, behind-the-scenes operative doing his utmost to influence the outcome of multiple House and Senate contests.

Last week, a Houston-based group called Texas Tea Party Patriots PAC, alerted the Federal Election Commission that it intends to raise unlimited sums of money, without following any contribution size limits.

President Barack Obama’s proposal to spur the ailing U.S. economy by investing in transportation infrastructure is an effort to restart a stalled and chaotic process detailed by the Center for Public Integrity last year.