MORE ON: campaign contributions

After recent court rulings struck down significant campaign finance limits, the next frontier in the debate over money in politics appears to be public disclosure – whether there should be more or less of it. That sticky question formed the main source of argument among election law... + read more

The Golden State’s primary is two months off, but California Republicans already have pumped more than $26.6 million into the prolonged fight for the GOP presidential nomination. That includes $15.2 million in direct donations to front-runner Mitt Romney; challengers Rick Santorum, Newt... + read more

California has some of the best public disclosure of independent political spending in the country, according to a report released yesterday, but the state ethics watchdog wants to go further. The National Institute on Money in State Politics conducted a nationwide study of state... + read more

Update:  In a filing five days after this report was posted, Romney's Restore Our Future PAC reported a $100,000 donation from Whitman. Back in the 1980s at Boston’s Bain & Co. business consulting firm, partner Mitt Romney mentored a promising young executive named Meg... + read more

If super political action committee dollars were votes in the Republican presidential primary, California would already have voted resoundingly for Mitt Romney. Restore Our Future, the super PAC supporting the former Massachusetts governor, collected $2.3 million from Californians last year,... + read more

  UPDATE, Jan. 27, 2011: Mercury Insurance provided this response to questions about its record. The 90-year-old billionaire chairman of Mercury Insurance just won’t give up. George Joseph gave $8.2 million to put an initiative on the November ballot that supporters say... + read more