Campaign Money Surges From Undisclosed Donors

It might be hard to believe after the political spend-a-thon for the 2008 presidential contest, but this year's elections are on track to set a record for campaign spending. In the past, new high watermarks for campaign spending followed a sort of zig-zag pattern: There was a constantly rising sum for each presidential election and a smaller, also constantly rising sum for less costly midterm elections. This year, there's no zig-zag.

A big driver is the surge in independent groups. And this year may set another record, too -- in money from undisclosed donors. After the astronomical sums of cash thrown into the 2008 campaign, everyone's pumping in even more -- about 10 to 15 percent more -- according to Kip Cassino, vice president of research at the media analysis firm Borrell Associates. "Unlike a lot of industries in the United States right now, which are seeing some downturns, political spending is absolutely a growth industry," Cassino says. Fueling it, he says, is corporate money — dollars liberated by the Supreme Court when it ruled that corporations and unions can be unrestrained in their campaign spending.

"The unwritten charter of these groups is to really be disruptive and try to go in there and turn a race on its head — or put a candidate on the defense. And by that nature, most of those ads that they're gonna run this fall are gonna be negative ads," said Evan Tracey, president of the Campaign Media Analysis Group