Last Call To Follow The Money

Our corporate masters are weighing in on who they believe should win the Senate.  Guess which party they're backing?

"In a significant shift, business groups gave more money to Republican candidates than to Democrats in seven of the most competitive Senate races in recent months, in some cases taking the unusual step of betting against sitting senators," the Wall Street Journal reports. 

"Shifts in business donations have foreshadowed the outcome of several recent elections. Business PACs began shifting toward Democrats late in the 2006 midterm cycle, ahead of a political wave in which Democrats regained control of both the House and Senate. Business contributions swung again early in 2010, ahead of a wave that year that gave Republicans a House majority and gains in the Senate."

So yes, big business backed the Dems when it looked like unpopular Bush was going to cost the GOP in 2006 (and did).  They figure the same will happen for Obama costing the Democrats now.  But what if they're wrong and the Dems hold on?

Well, they always have more money to give, right?  Even here in Kentucky, one powerful  Karl Rove crony is trying to buy the Senate election for the GOP.  The shadowy "Kentucky Opportunity Coalition" has bought 12,000 ads for Mitch McConnell, and it's the biggest PAC player in the state.

No other group has had a larger footprint in Kentucky’s U.S. Senate race. In fact, the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition has aired about twice as many TV ads than the next most prolific player in the contest, a pro-Grimes super PAC called Senate Majority PAC, run by allies of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). And the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition has aired more spots than all other pro-McConnell groups combined. 

Despite having effectively no physical presence, the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition now ranks among the largest social-welfare nonprofits in Kentucky—bringing in more money, according to Internal Revenue Service records, than some of Kentucky’s more high-profile nonprofits, such as the Kentucky School Boards Association and the Kentucky Derby Festival, the group behind two weeks’ worth of events surrounding the Kentucky Derby. 

Thank, in part, the loosened rules on corporate electioneering following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision for Kentucky Opportunity Coalition’s unexpected rise. Certain types of donor-shielding nonprofit corporations may now raise unlimited funds to advocate for and against federal political candidates, not only in Kentucky, but in any race. 

More acutely, though, thank a development akin to a corporate takeover for the group’s sudden prominence—the addition, last year, of a former top McConnell aide who previously worked in the White House with Republican strategist Karl Rove. Until then, the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition didn’t do much of anything. 

That man: Scott Jennings.

And Jennings is a piece of work, a former Dubya staffer and McConnell reelection consultant, and a guy who has greased the skids to allow millions in dark money from anonymous donors to buy thousands of ads here in the state.

And we know nothing about who's buying those ads.  Or who's buying my senator.