New Cuba Policy Reinvigorates Anti-Castro Donors

President Barack Obama’s announcement in December that he would start normalizing relations with Cuba seemed a direct shot at a once-powerful lobbying presence in Washington — the large, well-organized and relatively wealthy enclave of Cuban-Americans and Cuban exiles who have been major contributors for decades. Although the community’s cash has gone to candidates on both sides of the aisle, as we pointed out late last year, in recent years it has taken a decidedly conservative turn even as the community’s giving has declined. But the newest FEC filings covering the period in which Obama revealed his new policy show that the U.S.-Cuba ... read more.

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Paul and Rubio Make Headway With Big Donors

Mitt Romney’s will-he-won’t-he drama and the big fundraising ambitions of Jeb Bush and Chris Christie have dominated the presidential money-in-politics story lines lately, but the three GOP senators seen as most likely contenders for the 2016 Republican nomination have one advantage — long-established leadership PACs they’ve used to crisscross the country and drum up support. And numbers from the final filings of 2014 show they made ... read more.

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Crowding In on Cromnibus, Most Heavily Lobbied Bill of ’14

December’s cromnibus spending package was a bonanza for lobbyists, with the defense, banking, and health care industries especially flexing their influence muscle to make sure their priorities were on the agenda. The Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act (H.R. 83), or Cromnibus, which combined a short-term continuing resolution on Department of Homeland Security funding with broader ...read more.