By: Chuck Raasch
WASHINGTON — Coming off a series of congressional elections in which they have been largely trounced in the St. Louis region, Democrats are starting early on 2018.
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In addition to the focus on the 12th District in Illinois, a group that spent $1.7 million on behalf of former Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander in Kander’s 2016 Senate loss to incumbent Republican Roy Blunt plans to support Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., in her bid for re-election next year.
The group, End Citizens United, cites McCaskill’s support of a constitutional amendment to overturn the 2010 Supreme Court decision that unleashed unprecedented amounts of money, much of it “dark money” whose origins are often hard to determine, into American political campaigns.
The group quotes McCaskill saying that “The Citizens United Supreme Court decision has had a corrupting influence on American democracy in ways that we have never seen before. Missourians — and all Americans — deserve to know who is bankrolling the ads they see on TV and hear on the radio.”
The Center for Responsive Politics says that End Citizens United raised more than $25 million for the 2016 elections and spent all of it on behalf of Democratic candidates. The group reported raising almost $10 million for the 2018 elections through August. Most of its donations are small – some as low as $5 – and from individuals, including many through the online Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue.
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Read the whole story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.