Campaign Finance

Welcome to the wild ways of campaign money, circa 2018.

(Update: On Oct. 7 Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law AB 249, meaning campaigns will now have to be more transparent about the source of their funding.)   Who pays for all those political ads that bombard voters every election season? An effort to make the answer clearer to the public is squeezing California Democrats […]

“Make-up money” is what it’s called in Sacramento—the contributions that flow to newly-elected officials from interest groups that backed a losing candidate during the campaign. It’s a completely legal way of saying, in political terms, “Let’s kiss and make up.”