It is a nonprofit research group studying campaign contributions; it does not advocate campaign finance reform.
He plans to spend most of the week studying campaign issues and preparing for his first debate, scheduled for Thursday afternoon in New York City.
stock has a back-room stench to it, even if it's legal," charges E. Joshua Rosenkranz, president of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, which has been studying campaign finance.
"They are literally caught in a vicious circle," said Anthony Corrado, who studies campaign finance at the Brookings Institution.
A new report by the Campaign Study Group, a nonpartisan organization that studies campaign finances, has found that energy industry political contributions to Senate campaigns have gone overwhelmingly to Republicans in recent years.
"These committees will be very comfortable operating in the new environment," said Aron Pilhofer, database editor at the Center for Public Integrity, which studies campaign finance.
In total, Democrats raised $47.7 million last month from small donors, according to the Campaign Finance Institute, a Washington research group that studies campaign finance data.
"Interest-group ads have been a growth industry ever since 'Harry and Louise' appeared in '93 and '94," said Darrell West, a Brown University political science professor who studies campaign advertising.
"Big state, incumbent, likely to win, it's a great combination," said Robert M. Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies, a nonpartisan group based in Los Angeles that studies campaign finance trends.
"They will need the help, and if Obama fund-raises for the convention, he'll be going to rich individuals and to corporations with lobbyists," said Steve Weissman, a policy director at the Campaign Finance Institute, a nonprofit group that studies campaign contributions.
"It's proliferating in this cycle; it's now a strategy to try to discredit the candidate," said David Magleby, dean of social sciences at Brigham Young University, who studies campaign advertising.
