As a junior Democratic senator in 2019, Vice President Kamala Harris took direct aim at dark money, co-sponsoring election reforms that would have revealed the identities of the megadonors behind these secretive efforts to sway elections.
“It does not represent justice in America when dark money is fueling elections and when the few who have the greatest amount of wealth behind a veil without even presenting themselves or their names, manipulate and fuel the election process,” she said in a speech at the time. “We’ve got to take that money out of politics.”
But now, as her presidential campaign benefits from millions in contributions from secret donors — including a whopping $20 million donation from Democrat’s main dark-money group a week after she became the party’s presumed nominee — what is Harris saying about untraceable political spending?
So far this election cycle, not much.
During last week’s presidential debate, Harris and former President Donald Trump discussed hot-button topics including the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the war in Ukraine — but said nothing about the concealed political donations that have aided both presidential campaigns.
Behind the scenes, political committees supporting Democratic candidates have reported more than $100 million in dark-money contributions this election season, while committees supporting Republicans have reported similar amounts. According to OpenSecrets, which tracks campaign finance and lobbying data, dark-money groups are on track to contribute more money to this election than ever before.
At the same time, the Harris campaign is further obscuring the origins of its donations. Harris has yet to release the names of her “bundlers” — fundraisers who compile massive “bundles” of campaign checks from numerous donors.
The Harris campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
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The Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. FEC decision — a development decades in the making — triggered the flood of dark money by ruling that politically active nonprofits such as 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organizations can spend unlimited amounts to influence elections. Such nonprofits are considered “dark” because they don’t have to disclose their donors, allowing them to bombard Americans with political ads and messages without revealing the identities or motives of the people funding them.
Both parties have come to rely on dark money, but critics say such behavior from Democrats is especially hypocritical. The party has repeatedly introduced legislation to stop anonymous political donations, including a 2019 bill co-sponsored by Harris, and its 2024 platform pledged to “end ‘dark money’ by requiring full disclosure of contributors and ban 501(c)(4) organizations from spending on elections.”
But at the same time, Democratic lawmakers have been unwilling to take the necessary steps to pass such reforms — all while continuing to welcome massive checks from 501(c)(4)s.
Some Democrats say that in this era of tremendous dark-money campaign spending, legislators have no choice but to play ball if they want to remain competitive. But others say that by doing so, the party is allowing the elite to tighten their grip on the country’s political system. Instead, election reformers say small-donor financing systems, in which public funds that match small donations, could help reduce the influence of special interests and empower everyday voters.
“Unfortunately, especially after the Citizens United decision, both parties continue to accept and benefit from hundreds of millions of dollars of dark money,” said Aaron Scherb, senior director of legislative affairs at the watchdog group Common Cause. However, “overwhelming majorities of Democratic and Republican and Independent voters support… more transparency in political money. It’s really only in Congress where this is seen as a partisan issue.”
Dark-Money Contradictions
Before Harris became vice president, she had a clear message about dark money: It plays a dangerously influential role in our political system.
As California’s attorney general in 2014, Harris was sued by the conservative charitable group Americans for Prosperity Foundation for seeking the names and addresses of the organization’s donors. The foundation, which has spent over $257 million backing conservative congressional and presidential candidates since 2004, was founded by right-wing petrochemical tycoon Charles Koch.
Then, while serving as California’s junior senator in 2019, she called out the Citizens United decision, saying it “has fundamentally changed the foundation of our political system, giving the top 1% an unfair advantage in our elections” and we need to “get big money out of politics.” That same year, she and the rest of the Senate Democratic Caucus introduced the Democracy for All Amendment, a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United.
In 2019, Harris also co-sponsored the Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections, or DISCLOSE Act. First introduced in 2010 by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), the bill would require all organizations spending money in federal elections to disclose donors who had given $10,000 or more during an election cycle.
But in 2022, the DISCLOSE Act failed, even after President Joe Biden urged its passage following The Lever’s reporting on a record-breaking $1.6 billion dark-money donation. This was thanks to Senate Republicans’ use of the filibuster — a tactic used to delay or block a vote on a bill by preventing debate on it from ending.
Democrats could eliminate the filibuster, which has repeatedly been used to stop the DISCLOSE Act. But amid massive donations from business interests eager to preserve this “legislative kill switch” and convenient opposition from corporate Democrats like Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) and Joe Manchin (W. Va.), they’ve long failed to do so.
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Alternatively, experts say that Democrats could use a legislative practice called budget reconciliation, which allows them to bypass the filibuster to pass bills that impact the federal budget. In fact, as vice president and presiding officer of the senate, Harris has been in a position to overrule any objections to this process. But despite nonpartisan government researchers concluding the DISCLOSE Act would have budget implications, Harris and her Democratic colleagues never tried the maneuver.
Democrats’ lack of meaningful action on untraceable election spending has led some observers to think the party is more interested in reaping the benefits of dark money than actually taking the steps to restrict it.
“Many Democrats and Republicans alike feel like it's more important to win by any means necessary than unilaterally disarm in the political fundraising arms race,” Michael Beckel, research director for the political reform group Issue One, wrote in an email to The Lever. “It's disappointing that so many Democratic and Republican political operatives have embraced secret spending as a tool in political campaigns.”
A Flood Of Dark Money
Meanwhile, unprecedented amounts of dark money have flooded both party’s 2024 election coffers.
For Democrats, much of that has come from Future Forward USA Action, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit associated with a political action group run by former Biden aides called Future Forward. While super PACs — a type of political action committee that can raise and spend unlimited sums on candidates — like Future Forward must disclose their donors, dark money nonprofit groups like Future Forward USA Action do not. Therefore, when these dark money groups donate to super PACs, it’s often impossible to trace the original source of these contributions.
According to the Federal Election Commission, this election cycle the Future Forward USA Action dark-money group has donated nearly $56 million to Future Forward — roughly a third of the super PAC’s total contributions over the past two years. That includes $20 million on July 29 — eight days after Biden suspended his presidential campaign and endorsed Harris.
In early 2024, Future Forward, which a senior Biden adviser called “the preeminent Super PAC supporting the Biden-Harris agenda and 2024 efforts,” announced a record-breaking $250 million pro-Biden ad spend. Then in July, the super PAC revealed it would mount a $50 million ad blitz focused on Harris ahead of the Democratic National Convention.
And last year, the Future Forward dark-money group reportedly shelled out tens of millions highlighting Biden’s policy wins. In total, the two Future Forward groups raised a combined $208 million in 2023, according to reporting by Politico.
Dark-money groups like Future Forward USA Action could be spending far more on election efforts than what’s tracked by federal regulators, since such groups are only required to report efforts that explicitly advocate for a candidate’s election or defeat.
Very little is known about who is bankrolling Future Forward USA Action or what they hope to achieve through a Harris presidency. Last March, CNN used previously unreported tax records to show that the nonprofit’s top donors included husband-and-wife financial traders with ties to AI investments and cryptocurrency.
Meanwhile, one of Harris’ campaign ads claims that “grassroots supporters like you are the only thing standing between us and Donald Trump winning in November.”
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The Harris campaign has also failed to disclose the identity of its bundlers, or super fundraisers who solicit and compile hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars from individual donors, who by law are only allowed to give $3,300 each to a particular candidate.
Campaigns are not required to disclose the names of their bundlers, though presidential campaigns have typically done so. But that trend has started to shift: Trump failed to disclose his bundlers in 2016 and 2020, and Biden revealed the names of his bundlers just two days before the 2020 presidential election.
Earlier this month, the political reform group Issue One called on Harris to disclose information about her 2024 campaign bundlers, arguing that “government accountability depends on transparency in our campaign finance system.”
“By raising hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars, bundlers are able to ingratiate themselves — and curry favor — with their preferred presidential candidate, while receiving special perks and access that most voters can only dream of,” Beckel, Issue One’s research director, told The Lever.
A Never-Ending Era Of Dark Money?
There is also the question of whether Harris and Democratic lawmakers are willing to take the necessary steps to pass campaign finance reform if they win in November.
If Harris wins the presidential race and Democrats keep the Senate majority, Schumer said he wants to enact the Freedom to Vote Act, which includes the DISCLOSE Act, to require more transparency around political donors.
Yet to accomplish this — along with other promises made by Harris at the Democratic National Convention this August — lawmakers will likely need to set aside the filibuster.
“Each year, important and popular legislation dies on the Senate floor, because the filibuster allows a minority of senators — representing a disproportionately white segment of the country’s population — can stop any legislative action in its tracks,” noted Common Cause in a policy report.
Schumer told the Washington Post that Democrats are willing to reform filibuster rules to pass their agenda. And if Democrats manage to regain control of Congress, one obstacle to doing so will no longer stand in their way: Sens. Sinema and Manchin, who voted against the DISCLOSE Act and opposed filibuster reforms, are retiring from the Senate.
If Democrats do away with unlimited dark-money campaign spending, election-reform advocates say a better alternative could be small-donor public financing initiatives, in which small-dollar contributions are matched by public funds.
New York State launched such a program this year, allocating $25 million to match contributions from individual donors. A 2023 analysis by OpenSecrets and New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice found that if this new campaign finance program was in place in 2022, small donors could have accounted for 41 percent of statewide candidates’ funds, as opposed to just 6 percent.
But for now, the question remains: If elected, will Harris use her presidential power to push for dark-money reform, or will she allow these secretive donors to continue influencing U.S. politics?
“It’s ultimately the voters who lose out, who get the short end of the stick here,” said Scherb from Common Cause. “Because they are left in the dark about who is trying to influence their voices and their votes.”
