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| | Arizona Clean Elections Foe Targeted
 Arizona State Senate President Russell Pearce (R), a driving force behind efforts to repeal Clean Elections in the state, is being targeted by Public Campaign Action Fund with political mailers ahead of his recall election on Tuesday. The mailers highlight his close ties to big money special interests and central role in the recent Fiesta Bowl scandal that has ensnared several lawmakers in ethics controversy and possible legal violations.
Pearce has long been a fierce opponent of the state's popular Clean Elections law, and spearheaded the effort to put a repeal measure on the 2012 ballot.
"After receiving thousands of dollars in tainted campaign contributions, it's no wonder Russell Pearce wants to gut campaign reform laws," the first mailing read. "He's leading the effort to repeal Arizona's Clean Election Law and would allow corporations, special interests and lobbyists to dominate state politics."
Just 12 percent of Pearce's campaign cash in his recent fundraising report came from his district in Mesa, according to analysis by the Arizona Republic. In addition, the Phoenix Business Journal reported over last weekend that, "Top business lobbyists are prevalent on the campaign finance report of the group backing Pearce against his recall challenge from Jerry Lewis." Eighty-three percent of Pearce's 2008 and 2010 donations came from outside of his Mesa district, according to Public Campaign Action Fund analysis of data from the National Institute on Money in State Politics.
Last week, a Maricopa County Judge struck down the aforementioned ballot measure for violating the "single-subject" rule in Arizona, but the effort to kill the Clean Elections system will go on. Defeating Sen. Pearce in this recall election would send a strong message to opponents of Clean Elections that Arizonans don't want a return to a corporate and special interest-dominated state government.
Eric Cantor: Darling of the 1%  House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) has friends in high places – the one percent to be exact. After cancelling his income inequality speech in Philadelphia due to planned protests by Occupy Wall Street, Cantor rescheduled his talk for Chicago, where he has plenty of wealthy donors.
Those donors include Kenneth and Anne Griffin who each gave the maximum contribution of $5,000 this year. Mr. Griffin is the CEO of the hedge fund Citadel Investment Group, and has a net worth of $2.3 billion. He's #171 on the Forbes 400, a list of the world's richest people.
Roll Call reported this week that they aren't the only financial industry titans filling his campaign coffers. Cantor's "popularity among Wall Street executives has cemented his status as the top rainmaker on Capitol Hill, helping him raise an extraordinary $6.5 million for his GOP colleagues so far this year."
While Cantor may excel at courting wealthy contributors from the one percent, if he's truly concerned about income inequality, he should be focusing more on regular Americans who are struggling to get by.
"Cantor can speak (or not) until he's blue in the face about how he understands income inequality in this country," Public Campaign Action Fund's David Donnelly told the Huffington Post. "But until he starts focusing on his constituents and the 99.95 percent of Americans who don't make big campaign contributions, we know where his allegiances will really lie."
Scandal Not Slowing Herman Cain's Fundraising  Despite being embroiled in not one, but two scandals that threaten to undermine his presidential campaign, current Republican frontrunner Herman Cain hauled in over $400,000 for his campaign on Monday, according to the CNN political blog.
"In the last 24 hours, the Friends of Herman Cain campaign has had the single best day of fundraising since the start of the campaign," Mark Block, Cain's chief of staff, said Tuesday night.
While the still developing sexual harassment scandal continues to suck all the air out of the room, a potentially more damaging scandal looms for Cain. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal, "Herman Cain's two top campaign aides ran a private Wisconsin-based corporation that helped the GOP presidential candidate get his fledgling campaign off the ground by originally footing the bill for tens of thousands of dollars in expenses for such items as iPads, chartered flights and travel to Iowa and Las Vegas - something that might breach federal tax and campaign law, according to sources and documents."
While Cain has surged to the top of the Republican primary field, so has his fundraising. He raised over $3 million last month, and yesterday's sum shows that no scandal, or in this case, multiple scandals can keep the big money from flying around the 2012 presidential race.
The 2012 election is poised to be the most expensive in our history. And the fact that these scandals, including one that involves possible violations of the law, hasn't hurt, but in fact, helped Cain's fundraising, shows that it will likely get worse before it gets better.
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