Democrats and undisclosed political spending

Former White House aides enter field of undisclosed political spending

Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney launch two independent groups — the type of organizations once condemned by Democrats — to fend off similar conservative efforts as the 2012 presidential campaign gets going.

Matea Gold
Los Angeles Times
4/29/2011

Adopting tactics condemned by President Obama, two former White House aides launched a pair of independent groups Friday to defend him and fight the array of conservative efforts that poured money into last year’s election.

The move by former White House Press Secretary Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney, who served as a top aide to former Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, confirmed the sharp reversal by Democrats on the use of undisclosed political spending.

Burton and Sweeney said they were moved to create their own outside groups to fend off conservatives such as the Koch brothers and American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, independent groups co-founded by Karl Rove. Veteran Democratic strategist Paul Begala will serve as a senior advisor to the Democratic efforts. Initial donors include the Service Employees International Union and DreamWorks Animation Chief Executive Jeffrey Katzenberg.

One of the new organizations, Priorities USA, has been formed as a 501(c)(4) organization — a nonprofit social welfare group that can raise unlimited amounts of money without disclosing the identity of its donors. It putatively is designed to focus on issues — in this case, “to preserve, protect and promote the middle class” — but can spend up to half of its money on political activities. The use of such anonymous money in elections was vehemently criticized by Obama last year, as well as by Burton, his spokesman at the time…

The article continues at LATimes.

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