Political darkness in need of sunlight and open secrets

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SALT LAKE CITY — Every day, practically, Campaign 2012 gets itself all fired up in a tizzy about the latest "big development" in the political world. Sometimes, it's momentous and tizzy-worthy. Like this week with the landmark Supreme Court hearings over the Obama administration's signature legislative achievement: the Affordable Care Act. Other times, it seems about as consequential as an old episode of Gilligan's island. Like the question of whether Ron Paul wears fake eyebrows or anything having to do with The Donald.

But for my money (which no doubt is limited), the most telling and profound places to find a truly "big development" about Campaign 2012 are the websites of a pair of non-partisan watchdog groups: opensecrets.org and sunlightfoundation.com. They are both veritable gold mines of information for citizens and journalists alike to understand what the fuzz is going on with our government.

Surf around those two websites and you'll find plenty of food for thought on at least a trio of truly big trends:

The floodgates of campaign cash are wide open.
Much of that money is flowing in the dark.
Public apathy may be the end result of #1 and #2.

For years, I've turned to the Center for Responsive Politics and its website opensecrets.org to do what all reporters, especially of the political variety, have drummed into their heads from the day they pick up their first notepad: follow the money.

You'll find Barack Obama has raised a tsunami-like $157 million so far for the 2012 race, compared with Mitt Romney's $74 million, to Ron Paul's $34 million, Rick Santorum's $15 million, and Jon Huntsman's $6 million.

Which industry sector gave the most money to national political campaigns, including Congressional races, in 2011-12? Finance/Insurance/Real Estate, which contributed an eye-popping $207 million. Top contributor in that sector? Goldman Sachs with $3.4 million. Bain Capitol in second with $2.7 million. Top financial sector recipients: Mitt Romney with $13.7 million and Barack Obama with $5.6 million.

Who did lawyers and lobbyists give more of their $89 million to? Democrats by a 65 percent to 33 percent margin over Republicans. According to the site, Occidential Petroleum ($35,000) is the top contributor to Nancy Pelosi this past year. For John Boehner, it was AT&T Inc, with $99,200.

Orrin Hatch's top contributor over the course of his career? Pharmaceuticals/Health Products ($1.8 million) For Jim Matheson, its Health Professionals, at $620,000.

I could go on.

The point is that thanks to the watchdog groups like OpenSecrets.org we can know who is giving, who is getting and how much. If you want to understand the powerful moneyed interests behind candidates, parties and issues, there is probably no better website.

The Sunlight Foundation describes its mission as using "the power of the Internet to catalyze greater government openness and transparency" for media and citizens alike.

#poll

One of Sunlight's recent causes, along with nine government watchdog groups like OpenSecrets, is getting both President Obama and the Republican presidential candidates to reveal more information about "bundlers," the fundraisers who gather up contributions in amounts far above what they're allowed to contribute on their own.

Another one of their projects is a campaign to urge voters to press lawmakers and the Obama administration to address the game-changing effects of the Supreme Court case called Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which set the stage for the explosion of Super PACS in the 2012 race. Super PACs are operating like "shadow campaigns," accounting for more than $69 million to support or oppose presidential candidates, according to the group's website. Thanks to lax or non-existent rules, much of that cash is "dark money," totally undisclosed.

Regardless of your political stripe, the ramifications of these developments should be chilling. Unlimited amounts of money, with little or no way to track it. Sound like trouble?

As I've traveled around the U.S. this year covering the GOP primaries, many voters, from New Hampshire to Nevada to South Carolina, have expressed dismay and frustration at the tone and overpowering intensity of the 2012 race. Candidates and Super PACs that back then, but aren't supposed to coordinate with them, carpet bomb their opponents with negative ads. A woman in South Carolina told me her parents got more than 60 robo-calls from campaigns in a 15-hour period, basically dawn to dusk, the day before that state's GOP primary. That's four an hour. She said her folks already knew who they were voting for, and were ready to pull their phone out of the wall by day's end.

Ugh.

Campaign consultants and local TV stations may be making big bucks on Campaign 2012, but the result for many average citizens is feeling overwhelmed and unenthused about the political process. Health care, the deficit, jobs, global warming, gun rights; pick your issue. If you're passionate about it and want government to do something about it, one of your biggest fears should be voter apathy. If voters don't care, then the conversation and decisions are increasingly left to those who can afford to fund political campaigns and the people, including elected officials, who work for them.

America needs people to get engage, involved, excited, into a tizzy occasionally, to thrive. But when the floodgates of dark money are opened, a lot of folks just throw up their hands, call it all "bull jive" as one Georgia voter described it, and sit on the couch to watch an old TV episode of Gilligan's Island.

One potential solution: More sunlight on politics' open secrets.