We covered all bases on three panel discussions that I moderated following the election: lobbying, political money and voting. The first was CQ Roll Call’s Election Impact Conference at the Ronald Reagan Building, where the topic was “Lobbying, Advocacy and Engagement” in the lame duck session and the 113th Congress. (Watch it here.) The second was George Washington…
A New York Times editorial on super PACs pivoting from the campaign trail to lobbying linked to my Roll Call story on the same topic. Here is my article. Here is the Times editorial that followed it.
Instead of baking pies the night before Thanksgiving, I joined Gwen Ifill and fellow guest Matea Gold, of the Los Angeles Times, on the PBS NewsHour to look back on political spending in 2012. The general conclusion: Unrestricted, outside money defined the election, but many spenders reached the point of diminishing returns. Watch the whole…
Politico’s Dave Levinthal surprised and amused me with the news that the term super PAC is to be entered into Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. Even more heartening than Dave’s fun article was the feedback from friends, colleagues and sources all over town, all of it most kind.
When I saw that Jane Mayer had written an article about election lawyer Hans von Spakovsky in the Oct. 29 issue of the New Yorker, I thought to myself: I wonder if Jane Mayer saw my Roll Call story referring to von Spakovsky as leader of Washington’s voter fraud brain trust? Sure enough, early in the story…
I had a lot of fun doing a Q & A with The Crowdwire on the term “super PAC,” and how I came to coin that phrase. Full disclosure: The initial inquiry came from my friend and former National Journal colleague Bill Powers, author of the New York Times bestseller “Hamlet’s Blackberry.” Bill now directs…
I was mentioned in a Columbia Journalism Review article titled “Required Skimming: Campaign Finance.” I was listed as one of seven “follow-the-money reporters on Twitter” who purportedly offer up up “a continuous reading list of worthwhile work.” (Not always our own.) It was nice to be mentioned in my graduate school alma mater’s magazine. Read the whole article…
I participated in a panel discussion with Thomas Hamburger, of The Washington Post’s National Desk, at the Conference Board’s annual Corporate Political Spending Conference. The conference was chaired by Trevor Potter, the former FEC chairman perhaps now best known as comedian Stephen Colbert’s lawyer. Moderated by Peter Cook, chief Washington correspondent for Bloomberg TV, our panel was titled…
I was pleased to join fellow guest John Dunbar, managing editor for politics at the Center for Public Integrity, on the PBS NewsHour. Gwen Ifill interviewed us on the topic: “Who’s Spending More: Candidates or Super PACs?” Click here to watch the whole show.
I participated in a lively panel discussion on Capitol Hill, hosted by the Sunlight Foundation and the Advisory Committee on Transparency. The topic: Will super PACs Determine the 2012 Election? Moderated by Sunlight’s policy counsel, Daniel Schuman, the panel included Allen Dickerson, legal director for the Center for Competitive Politics; Mimi Marziani, counsel for the…
