Elections
10-1 Elections Cost $6.3 Million
10-1 Elections Cost $6.3 Million
Political action committees laid out $726,000
for independent expenditures to influence voters
by Ken Martin
© 2015 The Austin Bulldog
Part 1 in a Series
Posted Friday March 27, 2015 1:59pm
“Money doesn't talk, it swears.” — Bob Dylan
The chief poet of rock ’n’ roll might have been talking about the use of money in politics when at age 24 he sang these words in one of the songs on his 1965 album, ”Bringing It All Back Home”
Twenty-three local political action committees (PACs) certainly believed, or at least hoped, that spending $726,210 would influence Austin voters to elect—or not elect—certain candidates for mayor and City Council.
When the money spent by these independent PACs is combined with funds spent by the candidates themselves it all adds up to an eye-popping grand total of $6,298,059.
Independent expenditures in Texas law are known as “direct campaign expenditures” made without the prior consent or approval of the candidate who benefited. They are not counted as contributions to the candidate.
The Austin Bulldog reviewed the direct expenditures in every report the 23 PACs filed and recorded them in a spreadsheet. The direct expenditures funded by PACs paid for a wide variety of goods and services including consultants, advertisements, printed mail pieces and the postage to send them, for door hangers, campaign signs, canvassers, phone banks, and block walkers.
The big picture
Locals United Against Citizens United
Locals United Against Citizens United
Pay 2 Play documentary, panel discussion focus
on reducing influence of big money in elections
by Ken Martin
© The Austin Bulldog 2015
Posted Friday January 23, 2015 11:52am
Updated Friday January 23, 2015 12:24pm
On the fifth anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s January 21, 2010, decision in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, a sold-out showing of a documentary, followed by an hour-long panel discussion, indicates there is considerable local interest in overturning corporate personhood and money as free speech.
The film by John Ennis, Pay 2 Play: Democracy’s High Stakes, released in September 2014, was shown to a full house of about a hundred people at the Alamo Drafthouse Village Wednesday evening. The 90-minute documentary focuses on multiple congressional elections in Ohio, the corrosive effects of unlimited spending from such figures as the Koch Brothers, and features numerous nationally known experts, among them Professor Noam Chomsky, Professor Lawrence Lessig, economist Robert Reich, and convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
The film asserts that for corporations, politics is a game akin to Monopoly that is rigged in their favor. The film also focuses on numerous ways that people are engaging in political struggles across the country to fight back, from the Occupy movement to street artists, from candidates running for office to public protests.
