Outside cash pours into races, much of it anonymously

"Pennsylvania's hurting," the TV ad says, and Democratic Senate nominee Joe Sestak "voted to make it worse" by supporting limits on carbon emissions. They would lead to higher electric bills, $4-a-gallon gas, and lost jobs.

As for Republican Pat Toomey, he voted against a $1,500 bonus for veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq but favored letting Wall Street tycoons keep "every penny" of their bonuses.

Prominent disclaimer language on each 30-second spot tells the viewer who's responsible: Americans for Tax Reform, for the anti-Sestak one, and VoteVets Action, for the anti-Toomey piece.

But good luck tracking down who gave the money to ATR and VoteVets to finance those attacks in the first place. The groups don't have to tell you - and they won't.

Aside from the rise of the tea party movement, the major story in this year's midterm election campaign has been the sheer volume of cash that special-interest groups are pumping into House and Senate races across the country, much of it from anonymous donors.

These outside groups - unions, business associations, and ideological organizations - have doubled their spending on political advertisements and messaging compared with the 2006 midterm election, according to a tally released Friday by the Center for Responsive Politics, a watchdog group.

So far the outside spending has overwhelmingly favored Republicans, and Democrats, including President Obama, have used it as a war cry in their effort to maintain control of both houses of Congress on Nov. 2, warning that unaccountable corporations are threatening democracy.

The spending, experts say, has been driven in part by the January U.S. Supreme Court case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which struck down long-standing prohibitions on the use of corporate and union cash in federal elections, as well as other legal developments that had already weakened the restrictions.

And of course, Republicans are riding high in the polls, with conservatives highly motivated to oppose Democratic policies that they consider antibusiness.

"Citizens United made it crystal clear that corporations and unions could spend their money directly on federal elections, and that's sort of a Good Housekeeping seal of approval that made them comfortable doing so," said Trevor Potter, an election lawyer with Caplin & Drysdale in Washington who was Sen. John McCain's general counsel in the 2008 presidential campaign and is a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission.

"The decision came at the very moment much of the corporate world was unhappy with the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress," Potter said. "It provided them a road map, something to do with their unhappiness."

Further, after the ruling, Republicans on the FEC took the position that certain nonprofit corporations should not have to disclose donors unless their contributions were earmarked for a specific ad. Each party has three members on the FEC, and there was a stalemate.

Legislation to force disclosure failed in the Senate after a GOP filibuster.

Together, the outside groups have spent $167 million so far in the 2010 election cycle, up from $69 million four years ago and $27 million during the 2002 midterm, the Center for Responsive Politics found.

This year's figures include $111 million in independent expenditures, which refer to a specific federal candidate and run within 60 days of an election, and $40 million in electioneering communications, which are "issue ads" that can mention a candidate but don't tell the viewer to vote for or against the candidate.

A study of TV ad buys from Sept. 1 through Oct. 7, conducted by the Wesleyan University Media Project, found that outside groups were spending nine times as much on Republicans as Democrats.

For instance, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which runs ads attacking Democrats and does not disclose its donors, is on track to raise and spend $75 million. (It has helped a few conservative Democrats running for House seats.) American Crossroads and American Crossroads GPS - advocacy groups affiliated with Karl Rove - have already raised $32 million to help.

In Pennsylvania's Senate race, outside interest groups have spent at least $12 million since the May primary, most of it tarring Sestak as a tax-and-spend liberal, boosting Toomey. Wesleyan said that it was the fourth-most-expensive Senate race in the United States.

"There is a concerted effort on the Republican side of the aisle to reverse what I think is a 30-year trend toward openness and transparency - and to instead maximize the funding of campaigns through non-reportable entities where donors are not disclosed," Democratic National Chairman Tim Kaine told reporters Thursday.

Conservative Republicans view it as a matter of free speech.

"Things change from cycle to cycle, and in previous elections groups allied with Democrats dominated," Toomey said Friday. His campaign believes that the independent ads helped define Sestak early, but Toomey said he would prefer a system where unlimited donations could be made to candidates as long as the sources were disclosed immediately on the Internet.

"That way candidates would control their own message and be accountable, and there would be no need [for donors] to funnel money to outside groups," Toomey said.

With two weeks left in the campaign, spending is likely to ramp up even more. It's unclear how effective the resulting flood of ads will be.

Robin Kolodny, a political scientist at Temple University, said a recent controlled experiment suggested that voters might trust an ad more that comes from a group with a "feel-good name" than from a candidate's campaign. "They think a candidate is just saying things to get elected," Kolodny said.

Yet by this stage, there may be a point of diminishing returns.

"Political science tells us that by now most of the voters have made up their minds," Kolodny said. "They did months ago, and so all this is aimed at very few persuadable voters, a small universe of true undecideds. How likely are they to vote?"

Larry Ceisler, a political analyst and communications consultant in Philadelphia, said that most voters couldn't care less about process issues such as campaign-finance rules. But he thinks the cascade of outside spending is at best ineffective and at worst counterproductive.

"These independent expenditure groups can't speak with the campaigns to coordinate, and they don't know local politics," Ceisler said. "Their ads all look the same."

And the latest Chamber spot that attacks Sestak for supporting an "unfair scheme to grow unions," the so-called card check, may help the Democrat, Ceisler said.

Not only is the issue dormant, with no chance the proposal will pass Congress, he said, but the ad also gives union members a reason to back Sestak.