Political watchdog group Citizens for Responsbility and Ethics in Washington wants the Internal Revenue Service to punish a nonprofit group that spent millions of dollars on advertisements boosting Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., ahead of his election victory last year.

The IRS complaint follows a Center for Public Integrity investigation into Carolina Rising's political activities, which CREW cites several times.

Carolina Rising provided "a vehicle for donors to make unlimited secret contributions to benefit candidates, and that is not permitted under the law," the organization's Executive Director Noah Bookbinder argues. "While the public is kept in the dark, the candidate or official almost certainly knows who made the often-large contributions."

In the complaint, Bookbinder asks the IRS to consider stripping Carolina Rising of its nonprofit status, hitting the group with excise taxes and treating it as a taxable corporation or political group.

But CREW faces major headwinds: The IRS has shown little interest in pursuing politically active nonprofits, particularly in the aftermath of a 2013 scandal in which staffers singled out conservative groups for enhanced scrutiny.

In North Carolina's bitterly fought U.S. Senate contest last year, Carolina Rising ran nearly 4,000 TV ads.

In August 2014 alone, it ran more ads than either then-Sen. Kay Hagan, the Democratic candidate, or Tillis, her Republican challenger who ultimately won the seat.

Carolina Rising, a nonprofit “social welfare” group organized under Sec. 501(c)(4) of the tax code, doesn’t reveal its donors. Dallas Woodhouse, the group’s founder and president, said it spent roughly $4.7 million on the ads, which praised Tillis.

Woodhouse, who last month was chosen to lead the North Carolina Republican Party, could not immediately be reached for comment.

But last year, he insisted Carolina Rising's ads weren’t political.

“Those are issue ads. Those are not political ads,” Woodhouse told the Center for Public Integrity after the election.

The legal distinction between issue ads and political ads is important because nonprofits such as Carolina Rising can’t, by law, make politics the primary purpose for their existence.

Under federal law, issue ads, known as “electioneering communications,” name a candidate and run during a certain time frame. But they don’t overtly direct voters to vote for or against a candidate even if the ads might substantially help or hurt a candidate in the same way a straight-up political ad could.

Issue ads don’t generally count as “political activity” under IRS rules, and therefore, nonprofit groups sponsoring the ads aren't required to disclose information about their cost or production like a political committee must.

CREW describes itself as "dedicated to promoting ethics and accountability in government and public life by targeting government officials who sacrifice the common good to special interests."

It has pursued both Democrats and Republicans in the past, although last year, liberal political activist and top Hillary Clinton supporter David Brock became the group's chairman after an internal shakeup.

On Tuesday, the group also filed a complaint with the IRS against Conservative Solutions Project, Inc., a "social welfare" nonprofit that's supporting the presidential campaign of Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.

The TV ad war is heating up in Louisiana as voters prepare to enter the jungle.

In advance of the state’s open, or “jungle,” primary this Saturday, Louisiana saw more state-level political advertising than any other state last week.

The system allows voters to select a preferred candidate in each race, regardless of party affiliation. Candidates who win a simple majority of votes are declared the general election winner. In races with no majority winner, the top two candidates advance to a runoff election Nov. 21.

No race has seen more TV ads than the fight to replace outgoing Gov. Bobby Jindal. Republican U.S. Sen David Vitter, the early favorite in the race, has aired more ads than any other candidate as he tries to combat attacks on his Washington record and his links to a notorious prostitution scandal.

Reporter Rachel Baye contributed.

Sources: Center for Public Integrity analysis of Kantar Media/CMAG data current through Oct. 19; U.S. Census/Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Population Survey.

U.S. Rep. Mark Walker filed legislation Tuesday to change the way the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) provides mortgage insurance to nursing homes—the subject of a Center for Public Integrity investigation last fall.

Walker’s proposed Nursing Home Accountability Act seeks to link the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) quality ratings to loan eligibility by ensuring that new federally backed loans go to facilities with a demonstrated commitment to quality care for their residents, according to Walker spokesman Kyle Hall.  Walker is a North Carolina Republican.

Hall said Walker’s previous experience as a pastor had given him familiarity with area nursing homes, and a story by a local reporter using data from the Center for Public Integrity prompted the representative to take action. 

“Our local Fox affiliate did the story on the one-star facility that got a HUD-backed loan we have here in our district in Greensboro,” Hall said.  “That inspired him to look into this issue.”

Under the proposed legislation, if a nursing home receives an overall quality rating of 2 stars or less out of a possible 5 stars for 30 consecutive months, the nursing home will be ineligible for any future mortgages guaranteed by HUD.

The quality ratings are an important part of the government’s Nursing Home Compare website that is used by consumers to evaluate prospective nursing homes for family members.

Nursing homes are inspected every 9 to 15 months, according to CMS.

Walker wanted to bar from the program nursing homes that had provided sub-standard care for two inspection cycles, Hall said.  The legislation’s 30-month threshold  would give facilities sufficient time to improve the quality of care.

But Clifton J.  Porter, II, senior vice president of government relations for the American Health Care Association, a nursing home industry group, expressed concerns about the bill. 

“Upon initial review, AHCA has concerns with this legislation that we would like to discuss with the Congressman,” Porter said in a statement. “Because skilled nursing centers use these loans for improvements that enhance patient care, we would not want to see centers that need the loans the most prohibited from receiving them.”

Cheryl Phillips, senior vice president for public policy and health service at Leading Age, a group of non-profit aging services providers, concurred with Porter.  Her initial impression, she said, was that the proposed law is too blunt a measure that could have unintended consequences for individually-owned nursing homes in economically depressed or remote areas.  

In those communities, nursing homes are often one of the only health care options  for seniors and a major employer, according to Phillips.

“I don’t want to support low-performing nursing homes, but I’m not sure that a fiscal stick that punishes them further is the right solution,” she said.  “In this kind of sweep, you would also impact homes that are hanging on by the skin of their teeth.”

The Center analyzed monthly ratings data from 2009 to 2011, finding that 12 percent of nursing homes had an overall quality rating of 2 stars or less for 30 consecutive months

The Center investigation found that 240 nursing homes across the country received nearly $2 billion in mortgages guaranteed by HUD the month after receiving the lowest possible 1-star rating for overall quality of care from CMS.  For close to 30 percent of these nursing homes, the loan was at least their second HUD-backed mortgage.  The value of those earlier loans was close to $500 million, the Center found.

The Center’s series was the recipient of The Joseph D. Ryle Award for Excellence in Writing on the Problems of Geriatrics from the National Press Club. The Project was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

We've launched a crowdfunding campaign to support our “Unequal Risk” investigative series, which seeks to expose how America's workers face risks from toxic exposure that would be considered unacceptable outside the job. It's a direct way to take action on stories that otherwise won't be told.

Our partnership with the Beacon crowdfunding site is a fantastic way to put the stories of the victims front and center and allow us to keep at the reporting that brings those stories to life.

For me this project, led by Jim Morris and his team in the Environment & Workers’ Rights unit, goes to the heart of what we do: the impact of money in politics and systemic failure to protect people. It’s also about inequality as so many of the team’s stories show that minorities and the poor are the most effected.

Our goal is to raise $10,000. We'd be more than grateful for your support.

Please take a minute to check out our crowdfunding site on Beacon Reader and please share the information with your friends and contacts. The more people who are aware of the campaign, the more likely we are to reach our goal and to make crowdsourcing an important part of our revenue in future.

Thank you, 

Peter Bale
CEO, The Center for Public Integrity

Editor's note: Wendell Potter's commentaries are being suspended for the time being. To read more from Wendell, go to his archive. 

If you’d like to meet someone who is truly “part of the solution,” someone who understands the problems of American health care in a way that few politicians do—and someone who is putting her money where her mouth is to get us healthier—meet Esther Dyson.

Dyson is a former journalist and angel investor whom Forbes magazine named one of the most powerful women in American business. Thirty-five years ago, Dyson founded EDventure Holdings, a pioneering information technology and new media company. In 1998, she became the first chair of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a nonprofit that was created to manage the global domain-name system.

She has a keen sense of what stands a good chance of being the next big thing, having been an early investor in a Who’s Who of Internet-based companies. Her investment portfolio includes names like Facebook, LinkedIn and Evernote.

Now Dyson has set her sights on health care, and believes she’s found a way to reduce the absurd amount of money Americans spend, not with more legislation but by improving our health, one community at a time.

Dyson’s newest venture is HICCup, a nonprofit with the ambitious goal of encouraging  a “rethinking of how we produce health.” HICCup’s biggest project is “The Way to Wellville,” a five-year effort to do just that—“produce health”—in five small cities across the United States.

Dyson admits to a mix of reasons for her efforts.  Yes, she does care that so many of us are one cheese steak away from a heart attack, but she told me recently that her main motivation is something that drives her nuts.

“The reason I’m doing this is not really because I’m such a nice person. Yes, I do want to help the people in those (five) communities, but honestly, it was born of a hatred of stupidity and waste,” she said. “It’s crazy that people lose their health and then have to pay so much in agony and pain and disrupted lives, not to mention money, to recover it—if they ever do.”

She went on: “I was a tech person and I love technology and business models and economics and making things more efficient. At one point not long ago I discovered health care and I was like, ‘Wow, this is so messed up. Nothing makes sense. The economics aren’t aligned. Everything we know that we should do, we’re not doing. What’s wrong with us?’ ”

After doing the requisite due diligence she concluded that much of the money, time and attention devoted to improving our health care system is not really addressing why things have gotten so messed up. Her “aha” moment was in realizing that the answers lie not just in changing the “system” but in improving our health and well-being.

Dyson is convinced something can be done to address what ails us in a way that can make everybody happy, including mayors, taxpayers, even investors. And in a way that steers clear of partisan politics.

“I don’t know how to change the world on a broad scale, and Washington doesn’t either, nobody does,” she said,  “but what we’re trying to do at HICCup is to change the world in five small places to show what it looks like.” Those places, selected from 42 applicants in 26 states, are Clatsop County, Ore.; Muskegon, Mich. Lake County, Calif.; Niagara Falls, N.Y; and Spartanburg, S.C.

“One of the things we’re setting out to do is produce an outcome, to have a measurable impact. We’re not going to change longevity in five years in any significant way, but we can change the rate of transitions to diabetes. And we want to show what it looks like so others can be inspired. If the folks in Clatsop County can do this, the folks in Louisville and El Paso and Newark can, too.”

While all the initiatives in the five communities have yet to be determined, Dyson hinted at what some of them might be. She said it’s known, for example, that numerous measures of health can be improved simply by properly preparing young women for giving birth. Health can also be ‘produced’ by providing effective early childhood education and making healthy, affordable food more available and by addressing people's mental health and substance abuse issues. And even solving transportation problems.

To improve the odds that HICCup’s mission itself has longevity, Dyson is helping to design a new financial instrument that will enable people to invest in, say, Muskegon’s diabetes prevention portfolio. The return on investment would be determined at least in part by the amount of money Muskegon avoided spending by having fewer diabetic employees a few years from now. The investor would get a percentage of the savings.

Dyson acknowledges this is a novel concept. “We couldn’t do it before because we didn’t have good enough data or tracking or anything like that, but it is now possible, and there are investment bankers working on it.”

What they’re working to do is create a new asset class for investment opportunities. “You can buy stocks and bonds, you can invest in income-producing assets like a mortgage or a mine or a company, why can’t you buy a portfolio of people’s health?”

Thanks to the brilliant mind of a woman who can’t abide stupidity and waste, you’ll soon be able to do just that. 

Wendell Potter is the author of Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans and Obamacare: What’s in It for Me? What Everyone Needs to Know About the Affordable Care Act.

For a first family, inviting guests to spend a night in the Lincoln Bedroom can pay dividends for decades.

Among donors to Democrat Bill Clinton’s campaigns first revealed as overnight guests of his White House and today still living, more than half are still giving — this time to Hillary Clinton.

The Center for Public Integrity published the first list of donors who nabbed a night in the Clinton White House— and whose stays sparked outrage and investigations — in its 1996 report, “Fat Cat Hotel.”

Of the 66 original “Fat Cats” still living, 34 have donated a total of $1.15 million to Hillary Clinton’s campaign or the super PACs supporting her since January 2013. With more than a year before the general election, the number of supporters and their donations may rise.

Most of the generous former guests contributed $2,700 to Hillary Clinton’s campaign account — the maximum amount allowed under federal law during the primaries. The Clinton campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

At least one of the faithful 2016 givers, who celebrated his 10th wedding anniversary in 1993 with a stay at the White House, is looking forward to a return stay in the chief executive’s mansion, courtesy of the Clintons.

“Last time I stayed in the Queen’s Bedroom, so I need to be upgraded to the Lincoln Bedroom,” said former Florida state Rep. Dick Batchelor, who orchestrated the first Florida fundraiser for Bill Clinton in 1991.

“I have no idea whether that would take place or not, but anybody who says they don’t want to visit the White House and spend the night is probably not telling the truth. If I had an opportunity to go back, I would absolutely go back,” he added. “I need to return the towels.”

The original 80 Fat Cats, including those who are now deceased, are only a portion of those who ultimately crashed at the Clinton White House.

The Clinton administration released records in 1997 showing that 938 guests had stayed at the mansion during the president’s first term, dwarfing the 284 who stayed during the previous administration.

And a Democratic National Committee memo showed that President Bill Clinton personally endorsed the idea of using sleepovers at the White House as a fundraising tactic — “Ready to start overnights right away,” he wrote.

At least another 404 guests stayed the night at the Clinton White House and Camp David after Hillary Clinton began campaigning for U.S. Senate in July 1999.

The invitations for sleepovers in the Lincoln Bedroom two decades ago drew fire during Bill Clinton’s presidency, as the press dug up details and Congress probed the chief executive’s fundraising efforts.

Many of the original Fat Cats were Clinton friends from Arkansas. But only eight of them have given to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Another 18 Arkansas friends have not, while 10 are no longer living.

But that doesn’t mean Arkansan attitudes toward Hillary Clinton have cooled, said Skip Rutherford, a longtime Clinton strategist and former White House overnight guest.

“The people that I know that were friends of Bill’s are friends of Hillary’s,” said Rutherford, who said he hasn’t contributed to politicians since becoming dean of the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service. His wife, Billie, gave $2,700 to the 2016 Clinton campaign. “Politics is very personal in this state. And the Clintons touched a lot of people over the years. And so there’s a lot of loyal, good friends of the Clintons here.”

There are some turncoats: At least four of the former Clinton guests, on top of turning lukewarm on Hillary Clinton, have contributed to her Republican rivals for the nation’s highest office.

Texas oil magnate Truman Arnold, who served as finance chair for the Democratic Party in 1995 and has contributed to Democrats as recently as last year, gave $25,000 to Right to Rise USA, a super PAC backing former GOP Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Arnold, who was in charge of Democratic fundraising in his role as finance chair, was caught up in the Lincoln Bedroom scandal as more than just a guest.

He once told journalists that he used a Clinton White House database to make sure donors were rewarded with perks, including Lincoln Bedroom stays. Arnold did not respond to requests for comment.

Little Rock bank executive Curt Bradbury and his wife Charlotte both gave to the campaign of Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina; in addition, Curt Bradbury gave $25,000 to a super PAC supporting New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie and $100,000 to Right to Rise USA, the pro-Bush super PAC.

Bradbury said staying in the White House was “a little bit like sleeping in a museum.” Though he’s a lifelong conservative, he supported Bill Clinton because he is a “native son” of Arkansas.

“Bill’s politics in Arkansas don’t resemble anything I see in the Democratic Party now,” he said. “He was very pragmatic in Arkansas.”

Arkansas banker Warren Stephens, who has given mostly to Republicans but supported Bill Clinton’s first bid for the presidency, has contributed more than $216,000 to support the presidential bids of several GOP candidates, including Bush, Christie, Graham and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who has since dropped out of the race.

“The entire Democrat party has shifted pretty hard to the left,” Stephens said. “Our politics are a lot different.”

Several of the Hollywood honchos who once stayed at the Clinton White House have donated to Hillary Clinton, but others have yet to commit.

Director Steven Spielberg gave $1 million to a super PAC supporting the former secretary of state, as well as $2,700 to her campaign. And actor Tom Hanks, singer Barbra Streisand, producer David Geffen and actress Mary Steenburgen also supported the former first lady’s 2016 run.

“I don’t think there’s a human being in this world more qualified because of all of her experiences,” Steenburgen, an Arkansas native, told the Arkansas Times earlier this year. She has given $2,700 to the campaign fund. “I will be campaigning mightily.”

But comedian Chevy Chase, actor Richard Dreyfuss and producer Mike Medavoy have not given.

Dreyfuss called his kids from the Lincoln Bedroom and was awoken by Bill Clinton at 7:20 a.m. so they could talk politics, the Center for Public Integrity previously reported.

Even Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, a documentary filmmaker who stayed in the Lincoln Bedroom for the first night of Bill Clinton’s presidency and ended up sleeping there a total of 101 nights, has yet to donate to Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid.

Producer Medavoy, who supported Obama during the 2008 presidential primaries, said he plans to give soon.

“I will contribute at the time of my choosing,” he said. “When is none of your business.”

Medavoy said he supports Clinton this year because he doesn’t expect another viable candidate to emerge, not because he wants a return visit to the White House.

“I thought the president and Mrs. Clinton were gracious, nice. I thought the family was nice. I was very lucky, and I know it, to have been invited,” he said. “And I hope that it wasn’t just because I supported them and early, but because we basically agreed about what needed to be done in the world.”

Medavoy’s ex-wife Patricia Duff also stayed at the White House; she has given a total of $7,700 to Hillary Clinton’s campaign account and Ready PAC, formerly known as Ready for Hillary, which supports Clinton. One of Duff’s claims to fame is that she called Bill Clinton “one full-service president” after her stay in the executive mansion, reportedly angering the president.

Some of the former guests who have not yet donated to the Clinton 2016 effort may be waiting for the Democratic Party to choose a nominee. Others said they plan to give soon.

“Well of course I support Hillary because I’m crazy about her,” said Diane Carroll, whose husband Phillip Carroll once worked with the candidate at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock. “I just haven’t really gotten around to it, to tell you the truth.”

This story was co-published with Slate.

Buying of the President - Public Integrity and Al Jazeera America

The Center has announced a groundbreaking deal with Al Jazeera America.

Under a project negotiated by our Money & Politics supremo John Dunbar, Al Jazeera has agreed to work with us on a package of investigative reporting under the Buying of the President brand, made famous by Chuck Lewis in the early days of the Center.

It’s imaginative and a great example of “earned income” to add to the mix of revenue we have, predominantly of course from our philanthropic funders.

Al Jazeera has already been a strong partner for Public Integrity, with Dave Levinthal a regular commentator.

The deal has actually been in place for some weeks and we’ve run pieces together, including the fun-but-worrying piece by Michael Beckel on a dodgy super-PAC supposedly supporting Bernie Sanders to which 007 "James Bond" gave money.

More meaty fare is our constant analysis of where the money in the race is coming from and going such as this piece, also by Michael and Carrie Levine.

In his inimitable fashion Chris Zubak-Skees brought the money race for the presidency to life with this interactive and its very nice raised/spent/cash on hand views.

Here’s what we said about the Al Jazeera deal and here’s how they described it.

Executive editor Gordon Witkin notes too that apart from me mentioning Michael, Carrie and Chris there, they and John Dunbar, digital lead Kim Porteous and Ben Wieder worked late into the night and early morning on the election data material as they do every time there is a debate or a fresh release of the election funding data. It’s a mission.

"Big marijuana" in Ohio

Liz Essley Whyte has been tracking a developing story on Ohio,  where there’s a heavily funded move to legalize marijuana for both recreational and medical use. She reports on what sounds almost like a “Big Marijuana” lobby, certainly well-financed, behind the proposed legislation. It’s a fascinating twist and another use of our CMAG advertising data source.

What we’re reading (or thinking about)

The Prospero columnist in The Economist asks why Businessmen in movies are always the bad guys.

Edward Luce, a Washington correspondent of the Financial Times,  creates a lovely image in a piece originally headlined  “Banana Republicans” which then drew an amusing letter from a US reader.

The FT has also done a terrific job on the oil money and other income feeding ISIS. Great, risky, work.

I welcome any feedback on this note.

A Lincoln Bedroom mystery has been solved.

Democratic fundraiser Patricia Duff made headlines nearly two decades ago when, after an overnight stay at the White House with her then-husband Mike Medavoy, she reportedly referred to Bill Clinton as “one full-service president.”

Duff is among those first revealed as overnight guests of the Clinton White House who have stayed loyal by donating to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, the Center for Public Integrity reported this week.

Duff, who did not respond to an initial request for comment, reached out to the Center for Public Integrity on Monday to explain her earlier remark.

“The president knew that Mike had to get up early the next morning. We were both totally charmed when the President knocked on our door and brought Mike a cup of coffee as his wake up call,” she wrote in an email. “My sincere surprise at this homespun hospitality occasioned my completely sincere and innocent remark. We were delighted — and said so.”

Duff also said no one has ever confirmed to her reports that Bill Clinton was angry about her comment.

“Then, as now, I maintain a cordial relationship with both Secretary Clinton and the president,” she wrote.

Duff isn’t the only Clinton guest to be awoken by the president.

When actor Richard Dreyfuss stayed the night in 1996, the president woke him up at 7:20 a.m. to discuss politics, the Center for Public Integrity previously reported.

Dreyfuss has yet to contribute to the former first lady’s presidential bid, according to federal records.

Captured on video, a white South Carolina school police officer violently tosses a black student out of her desk, drags her across the floor and cuffs her as she’s sprawled on the floor. Captured on video. That’s key. Because across the country, questionable police actions at schools are  mostly a hidden phenomenon.

Nationwide, in incidents that rarely get publicly aired, thousands of students are also getting arrested, ticketed, interrogated and searched by police officers, often in connection with minor indiscretions or allegations they were disruptive.

Some police actions involve alarming physical altercations, with kids subdued and handcuffed. Others may be handled without much force. But law-enforcement involvement in school discipline has routinely resulted in kids—some as young as elementary school-age—summoned to court to answer  charges that they committed crimes. Frequently, charges include battery or assault in connection with schoolyard fights or disorderly conduct or disturbing the peace at school —issues that some believe should be handled by school officials, not cops.

A kid doesn’t even have to be a teen for this to happen.

As the Center for Public Integrity recently reported, 11-year-old Kayleb Moon-Robinson, in Lynchburg, Virginia, was “slammed” down, as the sixth grader said, after a school principal asked a resource officer to stop Kayleb in a hallway because the boy walked out of class without permission. 

Kayleb is autistic. The officer told him to go the office. He didn’t comply immediately. And the officer grabbed him. Kayleb struggled and used some foul language—and ended up wrestled to the floor, handcuffed and charged with felony assault on a police officer, as well as disorderly conduct.

Other kids’ cases revealed in the Center report include middle-schoolers arrested for school fights and even charged with resisting arrest. A 12-year-old girl who clenched her fist at a cop ended up with a charge of obstruction of justice.

A growing group of judges, educators and civil-rights lawyers says that research and experience has convinced them this trend has gone too far. They say that prosecuting kids in court for low-level accusations like disorderly conduct and battery is actually backfiring; kids become stigmatized, develop records and often disengage from school. The risk increases that they’ll progress  to more serious trouble, especially if core emotional or mental-health or learning problems go unresolved or inadequately treated. 

The Obama Administration has also sounded the alarm. Officials are urging school districts—whose administrators and boards hold a lot of sway—to keep the business of routine discipline in the hands of schools and counselors, not law enforcement. Assistant U.S. Secretary of Education for Civil Rights Catherine Lhamon told the Center that disorderly conduct allegations are a “red flag” for her office, which can investigate school districts and withhold federal funds if kids’ civil rights are violated.

To get a sense of the national landscape, the Center analyzed national data collected from schools by the U.S. Department of Education for the 2011-12 school year.  South Carolina’s rate of student “referrals to law enforcement”—this could include arrests—was not above the national state-by-state average. The state overall came in at 5 per 1,000, compared to about 6 per 1,000 nationally.

However, the state’s numbers did show a pattern of disproportionate referrals of black students—students like the girl in the South Carolina video. Black students represented almost 36 percent of the state’s public school student body, but they were 50 percent of all students referred to law enforcement.  Spring Valley High School, where the video was shot, reported no arrests or referrals that year. Schools are currently sending in data to the federal education department for an updated collection that won’t be released until next year, most likely.

The video of the girl getting manhandled and arrested in Columbia, S.C.  has touched a nerve.  Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott has reportedly asked the FBI to investigate the officer’s conduct. 

When it comes to how police conduct themselves schools—and what their purpose is—schools are governed by a patchwork of laws and policies that differ state by state, district by district, sometimes school by school. Virginia, for one, has now launched a statewide effort to retrain school police. The 2011 data the Center analyzed showed that statewide Virginia’s rate of referring students to law enforcement was 16 per 1,000, the highest in the country.

Center for Public Integrity senior reporter Dave Levinthal appeared on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” program on Oct. 24 to detail the influence and importance of small-dollar donors in the 2016 presidential election. He also spoke more generally about how much money campaigns, nonprofits and super PACs are raising and spending.

Small-dollar donors are classified as those who give less then $200.

Democratic presidential candidate and independent U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders raised $26 million during the third quarter of this– 77 percent of those donations came from small-dollar donors.

Republican Ben Carson, who raised more campaign cash during the third-quarter than any other GOP White House contender at $20.8 million, can thank small-dollar donors for nearly 60 percent of his donations. Meanwhile, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump raised $3.9 million, with small-dollar donors accounting for about 70 percent of his total.

Levinthal is part of the veteran, award-winning reporting team at the Center for Public Integrity covering the influence of money in both federal and state elections.

In the heaviest advertising month yet during the 2016 presidential campaign, non-candidate groups such as super PACs and politically active nonprofits have dominated the airwaves.

Such organizations, made possible by the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, ran more than 8,400 presidential race-focused ads from Oct. 1 through Oct. 26, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of data provided by advertising tracking firm Kantar Media/CMAG.

In contrast, only one Republican presidential candidate has sponsored his own ads. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson aired more than 400 spots last week, according to preliminary data.

The October ad data represents a dramatic outsourcing of presidential campaign messaging. Not even during the 2012 Republican primaries, when super PACs first began supporting presidential hopefuls, did candidate campaigns so completely cede their paid TV messaging to proxy groups.

Wednesday’s Republican debate in Boulder, Colo., however, will allow voters to tune their televisions to CNBC and hear directly from the presidential candidates themselves.

The advertising landscape in the Republican presidential primary contrasts sharply with the Democratic one, where 96 percent of TV ads aired so far have been sponsored by candidates — although there have been far fewer Democratic TV ads overall.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who leads in the polls, has paid to air roughly nine out of every 10 ads on the Democratic side. A pro-Clinton super PAC, Priorities USA Action, announced its first TV ad last week.

The only super PAC that has so far aired a significant number of ads in the Democratic race — Generation Forward, which is supporting former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley— has sponsored fewer than 200 ads.

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who has challenged Clinton’s lead in some early state polls, has yet to air an ad. Harvard Professor Larry Lessig, another Democratic candidate, has sponsored fewer than 400.

Candidates are largely relying on super PACs and politically active nonprofits because such groups have no limits on how much money they may raise and spend.

This allows candidates, who may only raise money in limited increments, to conserve precious resources at a time when more than a dozen semi-viable Republican candidates are competing against one another. 

“They have to turn to super PACs to bail them out,” said Washington State University’s Travis Ridout, co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks political advertising,

The downside: Candidates may not coordinate expenditures directly with super PACs and the like. In other words, candidates cannot tell the groups when and where to air TV spots or what content they should contain.

Only a small fraction of the ads run by outside groups backing one presidential candidate or another have been negative. Voters may not even notice that the sponsor of an ad touting a particular candidate isn’t the campaign itself.

On the flip side, the effect of this gauzy, super PAC-fueled political advertising is questionable.

So far, October’s biggest presidential advertiser, Right to Rise USA, is a super PAC created to boost former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. It’s aired roughly 45 percent of the TV ads in the presidential race during October — nearly 5,300 ads primarily targeting the early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

The Bush-backing super PAC has now sponsored more ads than any other group or candidate during the Republican presidential primary. By another measure, it’s aired more than one out of every four ads on the GOP side — including three of every five TV ads so far during October.

During the period from Oct. 1 to Oct. 26, Right to Rise aired more than three times as many ads as the second-biggest Republican-side sponsor, the Conservative Solutions Project, a nonprofit supporting Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

Nevertheless, Bush has consistently languished in polls behind businessman Donald Trump, who has yet to air an ad, and Ben Carson.

Last week, Bush announced a campaign shake-up aimed at cutting costs, reallocating staff to early states, and sharpening focus on New Hampshire, which hosts the nation’s first primary contest in February.

“Plenty of money is being spent, we’re seeing more TV advertising than we have in the past, but the return on investment right now seems to be less,” said Elizabeth Wilner, senior vice president of Kantar Media and the executive who oversees the Campaign Media Analysis Group responsible for the advertising data.

Kantar Media/CMAG monitors television ads that run on local broadcast TV in all 211 media markets, as well as national network and national cable TV. It does not monitor local cable stations or track digital advertising. 

Overall, the group that has run the second-largest number of ads on the Republican side remains the Opportunity and Freedom PAC, a now-defunct super PAC that ran more than 3,400 ads in an unsuccessful attempt to boost the flagging candidacy of former Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

Perry withdrew from the race last month. In the wake of his withdrawal, the super PAC suspended operations and refunded contributions to its donors. 

According to the Kantar/CMAG data, the only major Republican candidates who have aired any TV ads directly so far this cycle are Carson, Bush, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.

Michael Beckel contributed to this report. 

This story was co-published with TIME and Al Jazeera America. 

The U.S. Air Force has awarded an initial $21.4 billion contract for a new stealth bomber to be equipped with nuclear weapons, following years of ardent lobbying and generous campaign donations by the victorious military contractor, Northrop Grumman, to 224 key members of Congress.

The firm’s task will be to construct at least 21 Long Range Strike bombers, Air Force Assistant Secretary William LaPlante announced at a late afternoon Pentagon press conference on Oct. 27. It will be the second largest military program in 14 years, exceeded only by the Joint Strike Fighter, manufactured by Lockheed Martin.

Lobbyists and officials at Northrop Grumman have spent years greasing the wheels on Capitol Hill to ensure congressional support for the program and for the firm’s central role in it, according to the Center for Public Integrity's review of lobbying and campaign contributions by the contractor and its employees.

Congress has given the program $2 billion so far, starting in fiscal 2011. That year, the House Armed Services Committee, then chaired by Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Calif., even added $100 million more than the $197 million the Air Force requested for new bomber work for the 2012 fiscal year.

The company, through its political action committees and via its employees, contributed $4.6 million to the campaigns and leadership PACs of 224 lawmakers on the House and Senate Armed Services and Appropriations Committees that control the Pentagon's purse strings, from 2010 through the most recent campaign filing period ending on September 30, according to the Center for Public Integrity's analysis of federal campaign contribution data.

The company also spent a total of $85.4 million to lobby Congress, the Department of Defense, and other agencies on the bomber program as well as other military spending issues, from 2010 through the most recent lobbying reporting period ending on September 30, according to the Center’s analysis of federal lobbying records. The lobbying was done by a staff of more than 100 who worked specifically on defense issues, including five former members of Congress.

The local communities where the new bombers and their flight crews will be based have also pressed for the program, which will in some cases help them hold onto an economic lifeline for decades to come. Community organizations based in Abilene, Texas; Bossier, Louisiana and Ellsworth, South Dakota, all home to bomber bases, have spent $1.4 million lobbying on defense issues in the past six years, including lobbying on the bomber program and other bombers, according to the lobbying records.

They've also sent local delegations to Capitol Hill to advocate for their communities. In January, for example, politicians from Louisiana, Missouri and Texas, contractors, congressmen and lobbyists – all members of the so-called Bomber Support Community --gathered in a House of Representatives reception room to hear speeches touting the plane’s strategic importance.

Norm Archibald, the mayor of Abilene, Texas, was there with a small group representing Dyess Air Force Base and its B-1s. Another contingent came from Minot Air Force Base in South Dakota, home to the Air Force's B-52 5th Bomb Wing. The reception's host was Murray Viser, a businessman from Louisiana and the head of Barksdale Forward, which promotes the state's Barksdale Air Force Base, where the Air Force's other B-52 bomb wing operates.

The speeches were followed by a four and half minute presentation, set to martial, ominous music, extolling the virtues of Long Range Bombers, played on the two large flatscreen televisions embedded in the conference room walls. The video was actually produced by the 'bomber caucus', what Viser said was an informal organization, which he also referred to as "the bomber constituency."

After the presentation, Archibald, the mayor of Abilene lauded the B-1 bombers stationed at Dyess and acknowledged the support of the Abilene Military Affairs Council and its two lobbyists. The Abilene MAC exists in part to "build support to protect and expand the military mission in Abilene," according to its website. Its corporate sponsors included Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

This story was co-published with the Huffington Post.

The Center for Public Integrity was honored today with four 2015 EPPY awards from Editor & Publisher — the second year in a row that four Center projects have been recognized.

The winning investigations and categories include:

• The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) won Best Collaborative Investigative/Enterprise Reporting with under 1 million unique monthly visitors for Swiss Leaks & Luxembourg Leaks
• ICIJ also won Best Innovation Project with under 1 million unique monthly visitors for Fatal Extraction: Australian Mining in Africa
• Best use of Data/Infographics with under 1 million unique monthly visitors was won by Who’s Trying to Influence Your Vote? Tracking TV Ad Wars in the 2014 Election
• Best Community Service on a Media-Affiliated Website with under 1 million unique monthly visitors and over went to Criminalizing Kids, a collaboration  with Reveal Radio

Two ICIJ’s investigations – the Luxembourg Leaks and Swiss Leaks projects – sought to pull back the veil of secrecy surrounding tax havens around the world. In Luxembourg Leaks, ICIJ used secret documents to expose the backroom deals that allowed more than 370 companies – including Disney and Ikea – to avoid billions of euros in taxes on profits they channeled through Luxembourg. The Swiss Leaks project was based on 60,000 leaked files that revealed how the Swiss branch of HSBC, one of the world’s largest banks, profited from doing business with criminals and tax dodgers around the world.

Fatal Extraction exposed links between Australian mining companies, their practices in Africa and allegations of negligence, violence, environmental law-breaking and other behaviors that U.S. experts said would never be tolerated in the States.  It was the Center’s first interactive multimedia presentation of its kind, integrating experimental technology to create an immersive experience. The project combines video, data-driven graphics, audio, stills and text in a documentary-style narrative.

For the 2014 election cycle, state and federal money in politics teams at the Center sought to expose the powerful special interests that try to influence elections and policy.  While TV audiences across the country were bombarded with political ads, control of Congress hung in the balance;  the Center tracked the candidates, political committees and nonprofits spending large sums of cash on key U.S. Senate races. The Center built news applications to track TV ad spending in all state-level races and ballot initiatives and, at the national level, U.S. Senate races.

The Center’s ongoing project Criminalizing Kids examines the use of law enforcement and courts to respond to kids’ conduct at school. The series provides crucial context to this week’s news that a South Carolina school police officer, Brian Fields, was caught on camera violently tossing a black student out of her desk, dragging her across the floor and placing her in handcuffs. Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott has announced that Senior Deputy Ben Fields has been fired.

The Center’s most-recent investigation into school referrals to law enforcement nationwide was produced in collaboration with Reveal and highlighted the story of then sixth-grader Kayleb Moon-Robinson– who is diagnosed as autistic – and his experiences with a school resource officer and the court system in Virginia. The story was updated months later as Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe asked members of his cabinet to recommend policy changes.

Congratulations to all of the winners. 

Voters head to the polls Tuesday to decide major races in several  states, while Louisiana gears up for its runoff election on Nov. 21 to determine its next governor and several other top offices.

Though overshadowed by the 2016 presidential contest, these state elections have generated thousands of television ads worth millions of dollars.

Who voters choose to represent them will  have important consequences for Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Virginia. And voters will use ballot measures to decide important policy issues ranging from marijuana legalization in Ohio to campaign finance reform in Maine.

Here are 10 things to know about this year’s TV election ad wars:

Source: Center for Public Integrity analysis of Kantar Media/CMAG data current through Oct. 26.

Want to prove your political prowess and your love of elections trivia?

Now is your chance to show off how closely you’ve been following this month’s news!

A lot happened during October.

Republican Paul Ryan was selected as the next speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Democratic presidential candidates faced off in Las Vegas, while the Republican White House hopefuls debated in Boulder, Colo.

And all of the 2016 contenders filed campaign finance reports detailing their third-quarter spending and fundraising.

Here at the Center for Public Integrity, we’ve concocted eight questions for you to prove your mettle in this month’s news quiz.

Ready. Set. Go!

Billionaire brothers Charles Koch and David Koch have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into various philanthropic efforts during recent years, including higher education. In all, six separate private foundations are tied to one or both Koch brothers:

Charles Koch Foundation

Reported net assets through Dec. 31, 2013: $415.2 million 

Description: The primary private foundation through which Charles Koch funds higher education programs, most of which are focused on the study of free-market economics. During 2013, Charles Koch personally fueled his namesake foundation with more than $168.3 million. The Charles Koch Foundation spent more than $23 million during 2013, with most of the money going directly to colleges and universities or programs housed on college campuses.

Other major contributions during 2013 went to free market-oriented think tanks, research groups and educational organizations. Among them are the American Enterprise Institute ($910,000); Liberty Source, known now as Strata ($653,000); the Bill of Rights Institute ($350,000) and the Heritage Foundation ($300,000).

It funds journalism, too. One beneficiary is the nonprofit Reason Foundation, which operates Reason magazine and received $60,000. The Daily Caller News Foundation, the nonprofit sister entity of the Daily Caller that describes itself as producing “original investigative reporting from a team of professional reporters that operates for the public benefit,” received $50,000. The American Spectator Foundation, which publishes The American Spectator magazine, got $10,000.

The Charles Koch Foundation also reported in 2013 to the Internal Revenue Service that it pre-approved college grants for 2014. The largest of these went to The Catholic University of America ($860,000), Clemson University ($498,000), Baylor University ($444,000), Florida Southern College ($400,000), Southern Methodist University ($333,000), Florida State University ($310,594) and Ohio State University and its nonprofit foundation ($300,000).

Media reports also note that the Charles Koch Foundation made huge financial commitments in 2014 to the United Negro College Fund and University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. The foundation is slated to file its next federal tax return in November.

Fred C. & Mary R. Koch Foundation

Reported net assets through Dec. 31, 2013: $30.5 million

Description: Both Charles and David Koch are directors of this foundation that primarily funds scholarships and provides funding to select colleges and educational organizations. During 2013, the Fred C. & Mary R. Koch Foundation spent about $1.71 million, and Koch Industries Inc. was its largest single contributor, giving $410,000.

The foundation’s largest single contribution — $544,500 — went to Youth Entrepreneurs Kansas, the Wichita, Kan.-based office of Youth Entrepreneurs, a nonprofit group that “teaches business and entrepreneurial education in 41 high schools across Kansas and Missouri.”

It likewise funded dozens of scholarships — typically worth $2,000 — to students. “New scholarships are “limited to dependents of full-time employees of Koch Industries Inc. and its subsidiaries,” the foundation’s tax return states.

Other major recipients include the Bill of Rights Institute, an Arlington, Va.-based nonprofit that “develops instructional materials and educational programs that engage students and teachers with America’s founding documents and principles.” Colleges receiving direct funding include several Kansas institutions: Friends University ($34,000), Kansas State University ($30,500), Newman University ($24,000), Wichita State University ($15,000) and Benedictine College ($7,500).

It also sent $137,000 to the Koch Cultural Trust, another Koch-led private foundation.

In 2014, the foundation reportedly contributed millions of dollars to a $11.25 million overall Koch gift to Wichita State University that will fund a variety of initiatives, including athletics, scholarships and entrepreneurship programming. The foundation is slated submit its 2014 tax return in November.

David H. Koch Charitable Foundation

Reported net assets through Dec. 31, 2013: $5.57 million

Description: Led by David Koch, who personally serves as his eponymous foundation’s president, the David H. Koch Charitable Foundation made a $10 million grant to the City Center of Music and Drama Inc. for a renovation of Lincoln Center’s New York State Theater — in 2008, renamed the David H. Koch Theater. It’s part of a reported $100 million pledge David Koch has made to the facility. Indeed, the David H. Koch Charitable Foundation told the IRS it has approved $45 million in future payments to City Center of Music and Drama Inc., which manages the theater.

Knowledge and Progress Fund

Reported net assets through Dec. 31, 2013: $18.1 million

Description: Charles Koch is a director of the Knowledge and Progress Fund, which in 2013 made a single contribution: $4.85 million to Donors Trust, a Virginia-based charity. Donors Trust is primarily used by conservative foundations and individuals to pass money to a vast network of think tanks and media outlets that push free-market ideology in the states.

Koch Cultural Trust

Reported net assets through Dec. 31, 2013: $16,278

Description: Led by Elizabeth Koch, Charles Koch’s wife, the Koch Cultural Trust received most of its funding in 2013 from the Fred C. & Mary R. Koch Foundation, which itself receives significant funding from Koch Industries.

During 2013, the Koch Cultural Trust provided more than 30 musicians and artists with grants ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 each for musical instruments and studies in music, dance, vocals and other arts.

Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation

Reported net assets through Dec. 31, 2013: $0

Description: The Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation terminated itself during 2013 and transferred most of its remaining assets, valued at nearly $2.3 million, to a Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, through which account holders may make “grant recommendations from their accounts to qualified 501(c) (3) public charities immediately or in the future.” Charles Koch was a director of the foundation.

Charles Koch is also a director of the Charles Koch Institute, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit group that recently split from the Charles Koch Foundation and exists to promote “advancement of liberty and economic freedom by educating students in a classroom.” During 2013, the Charles Koch Institute helped fund internships, fellowships and similar programs that “prepare professionals for careers that improve well-being by advancing free societies.” It reported $270.96 million in net assets through Dec. 31, 2013. The Indiana University Foundation ($30,000) and University of North Carolina ($22,500) received direct Charles Koch Institute grants in 2013.

Sources: Internal Revenue Service tax filings, Center for Public Integrity research

Last year, a top lieutenant of Charles and David Koch’s vast network of philanthropic institutions laid bare the billionaire brothers’ strategy to evangelize their gospel of economic freedom.

Political success, Kevin Gentry told a crowd of elite supporters attending the annual Koch confab in Dana Point, Calif., begins with reaching young minds in college lecture halls, thereby preparing bright, libertarian-leaning students to one day occupy the halls of political power.

“The [Koch] network is fully integrated, so it’s not just work at the universities with the students, but it’s also building state-based capabilities and election capabilities and integrating this talent pipeline,” he said.

“So you can see how this is useful to each other over time,” he continued. “No one else has this infrastructure. We’re very excited about doing it.”

The Center for Public Integrity obtained a previously unpublished audio recording of the meeting, which focused on the Kochs’ higher education funding strategy, from liberal activists who produce The Undercurrent, an online video program.

Higher education has become a top Koch priority in recent years. And funding — as well as pushback against it — is increasing.

During 2013, a pair of private charitable foundations Charles Koch leads and personally bankrolls combined to spread more than $19.3 million across 210 college campuses in 46 states and the District of Columbia, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of Internal Revenue Service tax filings.

That represents a significant increase from the $12.7 million the Koch foundations distributed among 163 college campuses in 41 states and the District of Columbia during 2012. It’s also exponentially more than what the Koch foundations together spent directly on higher education a decade ago.

The Center for Public Integrity reviewed hundreds of private documents, emails and audio recordings that, along with interviews with more than 75 college officials, professors, students and others, indicate the Koch brothers’ spending on higher education is now a critical part of their broader campaign to infuse politics and government with free-market principles.

Spreading the free-market gospel

It is no secret that the Kochs’ network has invested hundreds of millions of hard-to-track dollars in conservative political nonprofits that influence elections. The brothers, who earned their billions leading private oil, chemical and manufacturing conglomerate Koch Industries Inc., were dominant forces in recent election cycles. They’re now poised to rank among the most influential Americans shaping next year’s presidential and congressional vote.

Much less well known: their activities on college campuses.

The Kochs are among many wealthy political patrons who give money to education, including conservative Robert McNair, independent Michael Bloomberg and liberal billionaire financier George Soros. (The Center for Public Integrity receives funding from the Open Society Foundations, which Soros funds. A complete list of Center for Public Integrity funders is found here.)

The Kochs’ giving, however, has a laser-like focus on a specific, politically relevant discipline — free market economics — unmatched by other political mega-donors. Koch officials routinely cultivate relationships with professors and deans and fund specific courses of economic study pitched by them.

Detractors argue the Koch brothers’ college-focused money, by helping advance a philosophy of economic liberty, is eroding a fundamental aspect of higher education: academic freedom.

But some conservatives and libertarians consider the Kochs’ investments in higher education a much-needed counterweight to an American higher education system that historically tilts leftward.

And they explain the Kochs’ decision to influence education most certainly does not spring, as many liberal partisans would like the body politic to believe, from the compulsions of steel-souled industrialists more concerned about fortune and power than, say, protecting the environment or helping the poor.

“Since the ‘60s, they’ve been imbued with the sense that the world would be a better place if the country instituted their libertarian values,” author Brian Doherty said of the brothers.

“For Charles, his time horizon, as he gets a little older, has become a little shorter. He has lots of money, and he wants to see action in his lifetime,” continued Doherty, the author of “Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement” and senior editor at Reason who’s interviewed both Koch brothers.

“I’m not doing anything I’m ashamed of,” Charles Koch himself told Forbes last month. “You’ve gotta change the hearts and minds of the people to understand what really makes society fairer and what’s going to change their lives. And it’s not more of this government control.”

The Kochs educational giving, while rarefied, isn’t the nation’s largest. With his wife, Betty, Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel, this year pledged $100 million to the California Institute of Technology — and allowed the school to spend it as it sees fit.

Koch defenders also note, accurately, that the pair has donated generously to educational causes not necessarily animated by political considerations: the Smithsonian, public television, media organizations, music scholarships, medical research and a variety of others. David Koch, for his part, has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into medicine and the arts over the years.

But it’s clear where there is an ideological bent to their giving: Tax returns, as well as emails and private documents exchanged among Charles Koch Foundation officers and various college and university officials, indicate the foundation’s commitment to funding academics is deep and growing. Koch education funding, which is almost singularly focused on economics, also sometimes comes with certain strings attached.

Recruiting new believers

At the College of Charleston in South Carolina, for example, documents show the foundation wanted more than just academic excellence for its money. It wanted information about students it could potentially use for its own benefit — and influence over information officials at the public university disseminated about the Charles Koch Foundation.

It sought, for one, the names and email addresses — “preferably not ending in .edu” — of any student who participated in a Koch-sponsored class, reading group, club or fellowship. The stated purpose: “to notify students of opportunities” through both the Charles Koch Foundation and the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University.

And the foundation certainly did not want the College of Charleston to speak to news reporters about its Koch-funded programs without prior consent from the Charles Koch Foundation.

“[I]f you intend to engage in press releases or other media outreach associated with programmatic activities, please notify us in advance,” Charles Koch Foundation officials Charlie Ruger and Derek Johnson wrote Peter Calcagno, director of the College of Charleston’s Center for Public Choice and Market Process. “We consider media outreach a collaborative effort and would appreciate the opportunity to both assist and advise.”

Donors are often sent unpublished press releases about programs they fund “as a courtesy so that they will know the contents,” school spokesman Mike Robertson said.

At Florida State University, one of the nation’s top educational recipients of Koch foundation money this decade — about $1.38 million from 2010 through 2013 —  a similar request is more direct.

“FSU will allow [the Charles Koch Foundation] to review and approve the text of any proposed publicity which includes mention of CKF,” reads a memorandum of understanding signed between the university and foundation in 2013.

Such provisions aren’t new at Florida State University: the Center for Public Integrity last year reported that the Charles Koch Foundation first attempted in 2007 to place specific conditions on its financial support of the school, when it initially considered providing funding.

Among the proposed conditions: Teachings must align with the libertarian economic philosophy of Charles Koch, the Charles Koch Foundation would maintain partial control over faculty hiring and the chairman of the school’s economics department — a prominent economic theorist — must stay in place for another three years despite his plans to step down.

Florida State University ultimately didn’t agree to the initial requests when, in 2008, it reached a funding agreement with the foundation. It’s also tightened and clarified policies that affect private donors’ contributions to the university.

Relationships between certain school officials and the Charles Koch Foundation personnel nevertheless blossomed. One gatekeeper to Charles Koch’s riches practically became family — if not by blood, then money.

“Thought you might want to see our ‘nephew!’” wrote executive assistant Tonja Guilford to David Rasmussen, her boss and dean of Florida State University’s College of Social Sciences and Public Policy.

Attached to the October 2014 email were photos of this “nephew” — the tow-headed toddler son of John C. Hardin, director of university relations for the Charles Koch Foundation.

Hardin and his family had previously visited with Florida State University officials in Tallahassee. Talk of future get-togethers, and more pictures of Hardin’s son in a Superman costume, aloft in his father’s arms, would follow.

“I was just thinking this morning I needed new pictures to post outside my door,” Guilford fawned to Hardin in an email. “He is just way too cute in his superman costume. He’s my ‘little’ superman – I just love him!”

Friend-raising

Rasmussen, who routinely pursues private funding on behalf of his department, declined interview requests from the Center for Public Integrity, as did Guilford.

Florida State University spokesman Dennis Schnittker described the email exchanges as “friendly correspondence between individuals,” adding that collegial communications are a valuable part of school culture.

“Most university presidents would tell you before you can fundraise, you have to ‘friend raise,’” Schnittker said.

Today, the Kochs’ friendship with Florida State University appears stronger than ever.

An email written in September 2014 by Jesse Colvin, Florida State University’s College of Social Sciences and Public Policy development director, indicates the Charles Koch Foundation is committed to funding the work of economic department doctoral students “during 2015-2016 and in subsequent years.”

A series of other meetings and conversations between Hardin, from the Charles Koch Foundation, and Florida State University officials followed, documents indicate.

In November 2014, Florida State University officials huddled in the office of newly installed university President John Thrasher for a meeting entitled “Koch briefing.” Schnittker, the university spokesman, said the meeting was an “opportunity for our new president to be briefed by university staff about a gift agreement that obviously preceded his tenure.” Hardin of the Charles Koch Foundation was not present, Schnittker said.

Meanwhile, when officials at the Florida State University Project on Accountable Justice went hunting for funding, the Charles Koch Foundation factored into their strategy.

The Koch brothers, after all, were telegraphing their intent to make criminal justice reform a personal priority, reasoning that “overcriminalization,” like overregulation of industry, is resulting in more Americans enjoying fewer economic freedoms.

Not everyone at the Florida State University Project on Accountable Justice appeared thrilled at pursuing Koch cash.

“I know you really hate them, but we really need to send them some stuff,” then-Chairman Allison DeFoor wrote Executive Director Deborrah Brodsky late last year. “They have money. We don't.”

Reached separately by phone last week, DeFoor, an unabashed conservative, and Brodsky, a Canadian whose politics point more leftward, both laughed off the exchange as comedic banter between longtime colleagues.

But they confirmed they had pursued the Charles Koch Foundation. It hasn’t yet funded the project but did provide the organization “strategic support,” including co-hosting a forum on criminal justice.

DeFoor would conclude, following presentations in Washington, D.C., to both the Charles Koch Foundation and the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, that Koch interest in issues the project researches “is sincere, potentially aggressive and deep.”

As a small, three-year-old “research- and evidence-based” program, the Florida State University Project on Accountable Justice will gladly take money from most anyone along the ideological spectrum who’s dedicated to its study of and work on criminal justice system reforms, Brodsky said. She counts liberal lions such as the American Civil Liberties Union, Southern Poverty Law Center and Human Rights Watch as partners.

The Charles Koch Foundation executives declined to be interviewed individually. Trice Jacobson, a foundation spokesperson, instead provided a statement that she said “captures what we all hope to share for this piece.”

“Like many charities, the Charles Koch Foundation recognizes the importance of supporting a diversity of ideas so scholars and students can continue to push the frontiers of knowledge and help people discover new and better ways to live fulfilling lives,” the statement read. “Our giving has expanded to support new research and programs on critical issues ranging from criminal justice reform to corporate welfare.”

In a separate statement of its “academic giving principles,” the Charles Koch Foundation asserts that it is “committed to advancing a marketplace of ideas and supporting a ‘Republic of Science’ where scholarship is free, open and subject to rigorous and honest intellectual challenge.”

It also notes that scholars and students “who are free to teach, learn, research, speak, critique and receive support for their work without interference” are in the “best position to discover the advances that will help improve well-being.”

George Mason, aka Koch U

Nowhere is expanded Koch involvement in higher education more evident than at George Mason University, which receives more funding from the Kochs than any other school.

The large, diverse public school in northern Virginia, about 20 miles from the White House, today houses and lends its name to what’s effectively Charles Koch’s personal academic workshop. The Charles Koch Foundation in 2013 donated more than $14.4 million to George Mason University and the research centers it hosts. That’s on top of tens of millions in Koch dollars that George Mason University and the affiliated research centers have collectively received in recent years.

Charles Koch himself is a George Mason University fixture. He’s the recipient of an honorary doctorate in science from the university, which boasts a student population of more than 33,700. He is a director of the university-based Mercatus Center — Mercatus means “market” in Latin — that Charles Koch Foundation Vice President Ryan Stowers described at the 2014 Koch gathering in California as “critical” to advancing policy priorities.

Koch also enjoys the company of several current and former George Mason University affiliates who play multiple roles across the Koch brothers’ sprawling educational, corporate and political network.

Chief among them is Gentry, who presided over the Koch’s closed-door higher education workshop last year.

Gentry possesses unique knowledge about the interconnectivity of the Koch’s various interests and operations because he embodies its reach. He’s a Charles Koch Foundation vice president and a key fundraiser for the Kochs’ political action arm. He’s a former vice president of both the Mercatus Center and the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University. And today, he’s even Eastern vice chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia.

Brian Hooks, now president of the Charles Koch Foundation, is another key Koch network player.

Hooks served as the Mercatus Center’s executive director and chief operating officer from 2005 until 2014 and remains a Mercatus Center board member. The year Hooks took over, the Mercatus Center posted $4.9 million in total revenue, according to tax filings. The year he left, it posted nearly $20.7 million.

“Our job is to make sure that we’ve got a strategy for our work to have a disproportionate impact,” Hooks said at the Kochs’ conference in 2014, noting that the Mercatus Center is the “largest collection” of “free market faculty” at any university in the world. “These guys are producing research that groups in this network can rely on to advance economic freedom every single day.”

Scholarly research performed by academics at Koch-funded schools and programs is indeed sometimes used by Koch-backed nonprofit organizations that, in turn, overtly advocate for political candidates or causes.

For instance, to support assertions made in a recent, 67-page policy paper, Koch-supported American Encore regularly cites and quotes Mercatus Center research and mentions the center nearly a dozen times.

Among the academic work American Encore’s paper highlights: a 2014 Mercatus Center study by Keith Hall, a senior research fellow who had previously served as commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and a 2014 commentary about a federal regulations tracking and measurement tool by Patrick A. McLaughlin, another senior research fellow.

“Yet another study has confirmed what we already knew — states with lower taxes do better,” read an article by the Kochs’ flagship nonprofit, Americans for Prosperity, about a study published July 7 by the Mercatus Center. “Overall, the rankings provide more evidence that economic freedom works, and bigger government means bigger trouble.”

And the 60 Plus Association, a retiree-focused nonprofit that’s benefited from tens of millions of dollars of the Koch brothers’ money over the years, for a time tapped Walter Williams, a George Mason University economics professor, syndicatedcolumnist and Rush Limbaugh Show fill-in host, as a member of its “truth squad.” His mission: to “battle” against Democrats on Social Security and Medicare programs.  

Congress takes notice

Congress is also paying more attention to the Mercatus Center, which from 1999 to 2008 was mentioned by name 32 times in either the Congressional Record or congressional committee reports. Since 2009, it’s been mentioned 93 times, often in reference to Mercatus Center faculty who were testifying before Congress.

This year, Congress even cited Mercatus Center research in the text of budget bills. House Concurrent Resolution 27 and Senate Concurrent Resolution 11 note that a Mercatus Center study “estimates that Obamacare will reduce employment by up to 3 percent, or about 4 million full-time equivalent workers.”

Mercatus Center Vice President Carrie Conko, while declining to address critics’ “ad hominem attacks” of Charles Koch, stressed the institution’s work is the product of hard work and high standards — not the whims of some patron puppet master.

“As a university research center, our scholarship is independent and subjected to rigorous peer review,” Conko said. “Our researchers are interested in understanding what shapes societies and economies and that covers a spectrum of research from the history of economic thought to the application of economics to questions of public policy.”

Conko also noted that the Mercatus Center abides by a strong conflict of interest and research independence policy, which she described as “stronger than those of most found with typical academic centers or departments.”

Mercatus Center officials note that the center isn’t part of George Mason University the same way as, say, its chemistry or psychology departments. Instead, it’s organized as a stand-alone nonprofit, and as such, George Mason University isn’t directly responsible for it.

The Mercatus Center doesn’t receive direct funding from George Mason University, Conko said.

But George Mason University and its students do receive millions of dollars in annual financial benefit from the Mercatus Center, according to federal tax filings.

That alone is a major incentive for a public university in Virginia, where state funding of higher education is dwindling, to host a privately funded operation on its campus — today, a fairly common practice among public schools.

The Mercatus Center spent $3.64 million during that time to “support graduate students at George Mason University” by “training future scholars and decision-makers to advance and apply a research agenda for understanding institutions and change,” according to a tax filing.

The Mercatus Center helped fund $1.82 million worth of communication efforts that included promoting its research and ideas “to the media and opinion shapers.”

And it made a $10,000 grant to the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, which operates a “global network of more than 400 free market organizations.” They include several Koch-backed nonprofit groups such as Americans for Prosperity, the American Legislative Exchange Council and Americans for Tax Reform.

McAuliffe mum?

The Mason-Mercatus-Koch nexus may seem like rich fodder for a Democrat such as Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, whose national party brethren makes demonizing the Koch brothers a central strategy of their electoral and fundraising agenda.

McAuliffe’s own political committee, Common Good VA, bashed  the “ultra right wing Koch Brothers” in an email earlier this month, accusing them of working against “expanding health care for all” and “ensuring a living wage.”

But McAuliffe — the outspoken former chairman of both the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign — declined Center for Public Integrity requests to discuss George Mason University’s relationship with the Koch brothers.

George Mason University’s top undergraduate leader, Student Body President Khushboo Bhatia, also declined comment.

University spokesman Michael Sandler explained that George Mason is among the nation’s most diverse campuses, and “this notion of diversity and inclusion that is so central to our mission applies to our donors, as well.”

Sandler said the university appreciates the Charles Koch Foundation’s donations, as well as those from thousands of other donors.

“While we are grateful for all of the gifts we receive, we value academic freedom above all else,” Sandler said. “This freedom allows our faculty and researchers to ask questions and make discoveries that others wouldn’t otherwise pursue, and we will not compromise that freedom for anything or anyone.”

Jennifer Victor, a George Mason University politics professor who specializes in how individuals and groups influence government, is skeptical.

George Mason University’s marriage to an ideologically motivated donor with a policy agenda to achieve “raises some eyebrows,” Victor said. “I don’t really see what Mason gets from them, and I don’t think the situation is healthy or consistent with the university’s teaching mission.”

No comment on Koch funding

Some college officials such as Sandler are willing to discuss the financial support their schools receive from Koch-run private foundations, with many emphasizing that gifts from donors, whether liberal or conservative, don’t affect coursework or the manner in which students learn. They also note that their schools receive hundreds, and sometimes thousands of contributions each year from individuals, private foundations and the like.

But it’s not uncommon for other school officials to button up.

Take Victor Nakas, a spokesman for The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

Posed a series of questions about the $215,000 the university received in 2013 from the Charles Koch Foundation, he emailed a pair of dated press releases announcing grants.

“We will be unable to provide you with more than links to these announcements,” he said.

Follow-up messages went unreturned.

Michael Schoenfeld, the vice president for public affairs and government relations at Duke University, declined to say how the school used the $37,000 it recently received from the Charles Koch Foundation.

“As a rule, we do not comment on individual donors or contributions without the donor’s permission,” he explained.

Officials at Oklahoma State University likewise offered no details about how the school used the $69,000 the Charles Koch Foundation recently gave it.

Why the silence?

An email exchange between two Florida State University officials, obtained by the Center for Public Integrity, offers a measure of explanation.

In it, the officials indicate deep concern about the potential effects of releasing more information about the school’s moneyed donors in response to activist demands.

“[R]equiring donors to disclose more than they already do will likely result in fewer gifts and smaller gifts, and it will impose an additional administrative hurdle for the university,” wrote Thomas W. Jennings, vice president for university advancement, to David Coburn, Florida State University chief of staff.

Revealing donor gift agreements, even for donors who have not requested anonymity, might “have a negative effect on FSU’s relationships with many of its donors, who don’t want that kind of attention,” Jennings continued.

The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill received $115,000 from the Charles Koch Foundation in 2013, one of nearly 100 schools that year to receive a five-figure contribution from a Koch foundation.

But that’s information not easily accessed by students. Whether by design, happenstance or ignorance, “most individuals don’t know where any of the university’s funds come from,” University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Student Body President Houston Summers said.

University spokesman Jim Gregory confirmed the school received $110,000 for the Charles Koch Visiting Scholars Program in UNC-Chapel Hill’s Philosophy, Politics and Economics Program, conducted in collaboration with Duke University. Donors are allowed to remain anonymous, if they choose.

However, some universities are facing blowback over scant information about school donors from increasingly organized anti-Koch groups and activists.

The umbrella group UnKoch My Campus, for one, has staged protests, demanded meetings with administrators and launched chapters at George Mason University and Florida State University, among others. The organization accuses the Kochs and their allies of undermining issues many students care about, such as environmental protection, workers’ rights, healthcare expansion and public education.

Its immediate goal, beyond convincing colleges to de-Koch themselves?

“Transparency, because students should have the capability to be more aware of who’s funding their school and their education, and where funding might conflict with student interests,” said Kalin Jordan, an UnKoch My Campus organizer. “The universities — most don’t do a good job of informing students at all.”

Said Colin Nackerman, a student activist at George Mason University: “You should know, if you’re going into a classroom, that $30 million is going into your school from someone who wants you to think a certain way.”

Largely silent in the past, the Charles Koch Foundation has begun to push back at such dissenters.

“They don’t want students and scholars to expand their educational horizons,” Hardin, the foundation’s university relations director, wrote in a May 26 Wall Street Journal op-ed. “Rather than engage in a vigorous and civil debate about the merits of different ideas, they seek to prevent those with which they disagree from ever being heard.”

Liberals give big, too

If George Mason University is Charles Koch’s academic playground, Bard College is that of Democratic bankroller George Soros, often viewed as the Koch brothers’ pre-eminent liberal foil.

The tiny New York liberal arts school nestled along the Hudson River is renowned for both scholarship and hippy-dippyness. It received more than $11.2 million from Soros’ private foundation in 2013 — part of a $60 million, multiyear commitment.

But for Soros, himself a multibillionaire with wealth comparable to the Kochs, his contributions to Bard College aren’t generally earmarked for core academics or domestic political considerations.

Instead, Soros’ money mainly helps fund Bard College’s Center for Civic Engagement, which houses a broad portfolio of both U.S. and overseas programs aimed at “advancing the ideals of an innovative, hands-on liberal arts education through a myriad of opportunities across the globe.”

This tracks with Soros’ broader tack on educational giving: The vast majority of his tens of millions of dollars in education-related contributions fund foreign schools and programs, particularly in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. (Soros lived his early life in Hungary, where as a Jew, he survived Nazi occupation before emigrating.)

Among the U.S. schools Soros does aid, many of his most sizable grants are earmarked for programs with international goals, such as $500,000 to Harvard University funding a project on economic growth in Albania, and $159,834 to The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., to “develop effective and influential public policy leaders in Central Asia.”

Soros’ foundation even gave George Mason University more than $22,500 — not to fund economics programs, but to organize meetings in Mexico and Peru about conflict reconciliation.

“As a general rule,” Soros said in 2011, “I do not support higher education in the United States.”

Soros does make exceptions.

An avowed advocate of campaign finance reform, Soros has used his private foundations to fund certain domestic college initiatives squarely rooted in American politics and elections.

One Soros foundation, for example, gave New York City’s Fordham University $200,000 in 2013 to study the “role of money in democratic process.”

The money is part of a $1 million, multi-year grant to determine how disclosure of campaign money influences voters — an awfully political endeavor by any measure.

But school officials say the research they conduct is free of outside influence and subject to the highest academic and legal reviews and standards.

“None of this work is ‘political’ per se in terms of any ideological dimensions … it is all strictly nonpartisan,” said Costas Panagopoulos, director of Fordham’s Center for Electoral Politics and Democracy, who is leading the program.

Penn State University’s economics department in 2013 benefited from $150,000 in Soros money to help build a research center focused in part on “interactions between new media and society.”

And the Ohio State University Research Foundation received $50,000 to conduct a research project aimed at better understanding the role independent expenditures play in federal elections and “how those expenditures influence the legislative process.”

Bard College officials do hear their share of criticism for taking a massive amount of money from Soros’ private foundation, said Jonathan Becker, the school’s vice president for academic affairs and director for civic engagement.

But, similar to some of the schools that accept Koch money, the school’s tenuous budget situation means that it’d take funding from just about anyone so long as the transaction was legal and wasn’t intended to fund an initiative “antithetical to our vision,” Becker said.

That vision, in the words of its student handbook, imagines a “supportive, intellectually rich environment where students can engage themselves to the fullest while respecting all members of the community.”

So what if the Charles Koch Foundation wanted to donate $1 million to Bard College?

Or $10 million?

“We would say ‘thank you,’ and we would cash the check quickly,” Becker said.

Other conservative donors

Unlike the Kochs, Soros and many other prominent political donors, both left and right of center, have charitable agendas that largely diverge from their domestic political agendas.

Robert McNair, the Houston Texans owner who this year alone has spread $3 million among five super PACs backing several Republican presidential candidates, used his private foundation to give millions of dollars to various medical schools and a scholarship program for doctors performing research in areas such as breast cancer, juvenile diabetes and neuroscience.

Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, two other top-shelf Republican donors whom 2016 presidential candidates have endlessly wooed, directed almost all of their university-related private foundation funding — millions of it in 2013 — to medical research.

A private foundation co-run by former World Wrestling Entertainment honcho Linda McMahon, a major GOP donor who herself twice unsuccessfully ran self-funded U.S. Senate campaigns, gave its most sizable, six-figure contributions to substance abuse help group Liberation Programs.

Then there’s one late Republican superdonor whose philanthropy has been at war with his political giving: Harold Simmons.

The Texas businessman bankrolled his eponymous foundation, but his liberal daughters run it. In doing so, they saw to it that Planned Parenthood — the ultimate Republican scourge of late — received more than $300,000 of his money during 2013. It’s also given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Public Campaign, a Washington, D.C.-based money-in-politics reform group also supported in 2013 with $300,000 from a private foundation led by liberal hedge fund manager Jonathan Soros, son of George Soros.

Money the Harold Simmons Foundation did give to colleges in 2013 mostly went toward infrastructure and general operating expenses.

University of Dayton says ‘no thanks’

While more schools than ever are engaging with Koch foundations, at least one school — the University of Dayton in Ohio — has seemingly soured on Koch cash, which it has previously accepted in five-figure amounts.

Jay Riestenberg, a research analyst at campaign reform advocacy group Common Cause and University of Dayton alumnus, earlier this year emailed the school’s Interim Provost Paul H. Benson, asking him if the University of Dayton is still funded by, or seeking new funding from Koch foundations.

Attached was an op-ed Riestenberg has written for the school’s student newspaper. In it, he explains that his education at the small Catholic school inspired him to care about other people, protect the environment and fight for social justice.

“UD accepting Koch funding is in clear violation of the institution’s Catholic Marianist values,” Riestenberg wrote in the April 28 email.

Benson replied later that night. His answer: The University of Dayton no longer accepts Koch cash, and it will not in the future — despite the efforts of Koch-backed organizations.

“There have been instances in which other foundations who are funded in part by the Koch Brothers have tried to interest us in establishing centers at UD,” Benson wrote Riestenberg. “We have not supported those proposals, precisely for the reasons you cite.”

Benson declined an interview request by the Center for Public Integrity.

In a statement, University of Dayton spokeswoman Cilla Shindell explained that the school did reject a recent proposal from a “foundation that is in part funded by the Koch family” because it “would have been structured in a way that would limit oversight by the university in such areas as curriculum and faculty hiring.”

She did not name the foundation.

South Carolina’s legislators like to complain about how little money they earn from their part-time jobs running the state. But for some of them, the $10,400 salary is the ticket for a far more lucrative pursuit — profiting on business deals with state and local governments.

It’s almost impossible to say with certainty how much money flows from government coffers to lawmakers because the state’s reporting laws are littered with loopholes and inconsistency. It’s a murky system, created by lawmakers, that makes it difficult for the average voter to see just where the money is going and to whom.

Since 2009, 20 current and former lawmakers reported ties to about $16 million in contracts with state and local government, an analysis by The Post and Courier and the Center for Public Integrity shows.

Separately, some reported that they, their businesses, their associates or their immediate family members earned more than $3 million in work for entities that lobby state government and nearly $17 million from work representing people, businesses or government bodies in government matters, such as worker’s compensation cases and adoptions.

Many of these 55 lawmakers and their colleagues also reported that they or their family members earned salaries directly from state and local government beyond what they earned as legislators.

Some earned cash from the very agencies whose budgets they oversee.

Legislators’ business deals and relationships raise serious questions about conflicts of interest involving lawmakers who profit from state and local government while determining the laws that regulate those businesses.

Lawmakers pulled in money for everything from public relations campaigns to engineering work, health care contracts and legal services through their businesses or those of their immediate family members, an analysis of state financial disclosure filings and other public records shows.

This profit-making out of state and local governmental coffers is perfectly legal in a state where the 170 legislators make and enforce the ethics rules that govern their behavior.

Lawmakers insist there is nothing wrong with this arrangement: It’s simply a byproduct of having a part-time legislature that’s in session for six months. The lawmakers need outside jobs to earn a living. Critics contend the system is ripe for conflicts of interest, abuse and corruption.

At the very least, the practice highlights the intertwined and cozy relationships among lawmakers, their private business interests and the governmental entities they regulate.

Consider Rep. G. Murrell Smith, a Sumter Republican, who sits on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee and chairs a subcommittee that oversees state health care spending and laws.  He reported that his health care businesses received more than $2.1 million since 2009 in income from public employee health plans, Medicaid payments and the state Department of Health and Human Services, whose budget he oversees.

Smith, who also sits on the House Ethics Committee, said his committee posts played no role in his companies obtaining state business.  He said the companies, Reliable Medical Equipment and the now-defunct Abacare Home Medical, mostly sold personal medical equipment, such as wheelchairs. Smith said much of the money his companies received from the state was for purchases of such medical equipment for people covered by insurance, including Medicare and Medicaid — programs that Health and Human Services administers.

During the same six-year period, Smith’s ethics filings show that his law firm, Lee, Erter, Wilson, Holler and Smith, LLC, took in more than $818,500 from contracts with state and local governments and reported $1.5 million in income from state and local entities including the city of Sumter, the state Insurance Reserve Fund and the State Accident Fund.

“I don’t see any inherent conflict of interest in this,” Smith said of both the medical and law firm payments.

Smith isn’t the only legislator to earn taxpayer money on the side.

Take, for example, Republican Sen. Kevin Bryant of Anderson. He reported contracts for $10.2 million since 2009 in government payments to his family’s pharmacy and medical supply company from Medicaid and the state health plan. He said that total represents gross sales figures and he gets 30 percent of what’s left after expenses are paid.

His position as a lawmaker plays no role in the money his family company gets from the state, he said. “We have a contract that any other pharmacy can have with the state. I’ve got about six competitors within a square mile. There’s nothing exclusive.”

Big earners

Lawmakers who are lawyers like Smith do a lot of business with the state, records show. At least 24 present and former legislators who also have worked as lawyers, including House Speaker Pro Tem Tommy Pope and Senate Ethics Committee Chairman Luke Rankin, reported more than $16 million in legal work representing people, businesses or government bodies in government matters, such as worker’s compensation claims, adoptions or land use issues, since 2009.

Smith and others say these figures can be misleading, as they often represent overall work done by the lawmaker’s firm and not the specific amount of money that went into the lawmaker’s pocket.

For example, Republican Rep. Jenny Horne of Summerville listed on her ethics filings more than $1.8 million combined in contracts with state agencies in 2011, 2012 and 2014.

Horne, a lawyer, said the bulk of that money actually went to Senn Legal, a Charleston law firm that hired her to work on cases for the state Insurance Reserve Fund.  Her actual cut was about $6,700, reports show.

She had to list the total amount paid out because state reporting rules require a full picture “if you are affiliated in any way,” Horne said.

Democratic Sen. Darrell Jackson of Hopkins said the reporting requirements make him appear to be a big earner. In actuality, he said, he doesn’t see a dime of the money that flows into the public relations firm he founded, Columbia-based Sunrise Communications.

From 2009 through 2014, Jackson reported earnings of $264,000 from contracts Sunrise had with organizations that employed lobbyists to woo lawmakers. Most of the money came from public relations work for the private Palmetto Health Alliance, which operates five hospitals in Columbia. Jackson sits on the Senate’s Medical Affairs Committee, which oversees health care issues.

Of that total, Jackson’s firm earned $48,000 providing marketing and consulting services to the South Carolina Ports Authority in 2011 and 2012. A contract shows the firm was hired to promote efforts to deepen Charleston’s harbor to accommodate huge container ships that will call on East Coast ports following next year’s Panama Canal expansion.

Jackson, a full-time pastor with Bible Way Church in Columbia, said he reported the earnings because he is the owner and a shareholder of Sunrise, but he no longer deals directly with clients and he receives no compensation from the firm. He said he has kept it going because it provides job opportunities to young minority professionals.

“I am proud of the fact that I have not taken one dollar, not one dime, from the company in 15 years,” he said.

Sunrise’s day-to-day operations are run by its president and CEO, Antjuan Seawright, a former deputy director of the Senate Democratic Caucus who now advises senators on legislative strategy as a consultant. Seawright said he sees no conflict between that work and his efforts to advance the interests of Sunrise clients, such as the Ports Authority.

“That had nothing to do with public policy,” he said of his work for the Ports Authority. “That was community stuff, strictly in the community. It never involved lawmakers.”

Erin P. Dhand, the Ports Authority’s spokeswoman, said Sunrise Communications has been a “respected and capable advocate” for the port, organizing, participating in and ensuring “the Port was represented at numerous community events.” She offered no specifics, and said no reports were submitted detailing the work Sunrise did. Seawright said he couldn’t recall specific details about what Sunrise did for the $48,000 it was paid.

Rep. Mia McLeod, a Columbia Democrat, also works as a communications consultant and took in $34,000 from the city of Columbia in 2013 and 2014. Exactly what she did for that money is unclear.

McLeod did not return two phone calls or an email requesting comment. She has previously told The State newspaper that her work included helping the city with its search for a new police chief. A city of Columbia spokesman said a Freedom of Information Act request was needed to get copies of the city’s contracts with McLeod. The FOIA request remained pending as of publication. The spokesman did not respond to a follow-up email seeking comment on the work McLeod’s firm performed.

Misconduct feeds suspicion

House Ethics Committee Chairman Kenny Bingham said he understands why some people get suspicious of lawmakers’ dealings. He said that’s especially true after ethics scandals such as the one that took down former GOP House Speaker Bobby Harrell last year for converting campaign funds for his own benefit. Still, Bingham said, lawmakers must be allowed to earn a living in their chosen professions since their $10,400 legislative salaries, plus about $20,000 more in money for expenses, won’t keep them afloat.

Bingham, a Republican from Cayce, is a civil engineer by trade. His companies, American Engineering Consultants and Bingham Properties, earned more than $1.2 million over five years from government entities and another $300,000 from private companies that employ lobbyists to influence lawmakers. Clients for his engineering company have included the town of Lexington, energy company SCANA, the City of Columbia and the University of South Carolina.

Bingham said his company won that work by offering competitive bids and performing quality work — not because he serves as a lawmaker.

“We have to go in there and compete for it just like anyone else,” he said. “We do very good work.”

Bingham invited a Post and Courier reporter to examine contractual documents, as well as reports and plans his firm had produced for clients. He also opened his company books to show he had actually lost money on some of the projects in question, including an $11,907 erosion control project at the state-run Wil Lou Gray Opportunity School.

Bingham also serves on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, which helps set the state’s spending budget. He said he has never used his legislative role to win jobs. Much of the work his firm specializes in, such as waste-water management, is in the public sector, he said.

“How else am I supposed to make a living? This is what I have been doing all my life.”

Republican Sen. Paul Campbell of Goose Creek said such crossover is inherent with citizen legislatures. He, for instance, serves as executive director of Charleston County’s Aviation Authority, which runs the state’s busiest airport, while sitting on the Senate’s Transportation Committee, which deals with airport issues.

Campbell landed the now $225,000-a-year job in 2013 after the county’s Aviation Authority opted to bypass a wide search and hire the sitting lawmaker. Authority members said it was his business acumen — Campbell is a retired regional president of aluminum giant Alcoa — that made him the ideal candidate, not his legislative position. Still, Campbell said most authority members wanted him to keep his Senate seat.

 “They thought it was important to maintain some influence on what goes on,” he said.

Campbell said he couldn’t recall an instance where he has had to recuse himself from a vote due to his airport job. He has, however, abstained from county legislative delegation deliberations on new appointments to the Aviation Authority, as that would put him in the position of picking his own bosses.

“I don’t get involved in those types of things,” he said.

They need to make a living

Experts familiar with ethics laws across the country say rules to ban or restrict business between part-time lawmakers and governmental agencies are difficult to draw.

Meredith McGehee is policy director at the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit opposed to the influence of big money on local and national politics. She said it’s not realistic to ban part-time legislators from doing business with their state and local governments, especially in small states where the number of businesses in any particular field could be very small.

South Carolina is one of 40 states whose legislators serve part time to varying degrees. Legislators in 24 of those states, including South Carolina, say they spend about 70 percent of the equivalent of a full-time job making policy, campaigning or working with constituents, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

California, which has a full-time legislature, is among the few states that have fairly strict limits on outside work by its lawmakers. The majority of states don’t.

Such states need to erect safeguards, impose some restrictions and require a fair, open and transparent bidding and hiring process, McGehee said. Otherwise the deals will have “a fishy odor … there’s opportunity for all kinds of mischief,” she said.

Mark Quiner directs the Center for Ethics in Government for the National Conference of State Legislatures and tracks ethics laws across all 50 states. He said his organization provides no gold standard model for ethics laws because the needs of each state are so varied. “Each state has to decide what’s appropriate,” he said.

Since legislatures act as their own “judge, juries and hangman,” they have to learn how to walk through the bumpy field of policing ethics, Quiner said. In general, he suggests they take a “front page” approach to deciding what’s ethical and what’s not. He tells them to ask themselves: “Would you be comfortable if your local newspaper ran a front page story on you?”

South Carolina’s lawmakers made national headlines in the summer of 1990 when the FBI nailed more than two dozen legislators, lobbyists and others in “Operation Lost Trust,” which was characterized at the time as the largest legislative public corruption prosecution in U.S. history.

In those pre-“Lost Trust” days, some influential state legislators received huge retainers or consulting fees from businesses or organizations and performed no real work, said John Crangle, director of Common Cause in South Carolina. They were, in effect, lobbyists with the power to make laws and spend state money, he said.

Reforms have since been enacted. But Republican Rep. Jim Merrill of Charleston said the only way to completely wipe out potential ethical conflicts in South Carolina is to reduce the length of the Legislature’s six-month sessions or make the job full time. Under the current set-up, “there’s no time for people to make a living,” he said.

Merrill doesn’t make money doing business with the state. But he does make money off other state lawmakers.

He runs the mass mailing business Geechee Communications and has received more than $215,000 since 2008 from other state lawmakers who paid his firm campaign dollars to send mailings to voters to gather their support, raise money or keep them informed.

Merrill said his expenses significantly cut into his actual earnings. He wouldn’t reveal what that profit was, but said the industry average is 15 percent to 18 percent.  And, he said, “I guarantee you, if there was any profit, it was well below that.”

Some of the money Merrill received came in 2008 while he served as House majority leader. He left that leadership post shortly after elections in November 2008.  He sees nothing improper about accepting business from fellow House members while serving as one of their leaders. In his view, the post carried very little power.

Crangle doesn’t agree. The majority leader is an “influential figure” who serves as the right hand of the powerful House speaker to mobilize votes and keep legislators on board with the party leadership’s legislative goals, he said.

”Anytime a legislator has more power, it creates a greater opportunity for conflicts-of-interest,” Crangle said.

The unknown is a bigger problem

For Crangle, the main way to effectively limit conflicts of interest and ethical violations in a part-time legislature is to impose stringent transparency rules. They should, at a minimum, require competitive bidding for all state and local government business and full disclosure of lawmakers’ income sources.

Currently, legislators do not have to report income unless it comes from state or local governmental agencies, or from businesses or groups that officially lobby or have contracts with government. If a lawmaker gets income from a business or organization that does not lobby the state or have government contracts, neither the source of the income nor the income has to be reported.

And that is a huge problem, Crangle said, because the public has no knowledge that such lawmakers might be voting on matters that might impact their income and the business or organization that pays them.

Consider Senate President Pro Tem Hugh Leatherman, who for years did not disclose that he owned stock in Florence Concrete Products, which has earned about $8.5 million from state contracts since July 2009, mostly from the state Department of Transportation, according to records from the State Comptroller General’s Office.

Leatherman, a founder and former president of the company, did not declare that he was a minority stockholder until 2013, when the websites FITSNews and The Nerve raised questions about his stake in Florence Concrete. Leatherman, a Republican, has still not revealed how much, if any, income he derives from that stock or the size of his ownership interest beyond being a minority shareholder. He did not return calls for comment.

South Carolina ranked 45th out of 50 states in the Center for Public Integrity’s 2012 State Integrity Investigation that assessed potential corruption risks, largely because of the state’s weak regulations.

Republican Sen. Larry Martin of Pickens has been a leader in efforts to push ethics reform in the Senate, where such efforts failed during the last session. One measure he supported was a bill to require that lawmakers report the sources of outside income, but not the amount, which many legislators objected to revealing. Martin said he figured that requiring lawmakers to reveal the sources of their income would give the public the ability to know what outside financial connections exist.

Martin reasoned that if lawmakers didn’t have to report the amount of income, they might have little problem revealing the source. But the effort failed. And, Martin said, “that does raise a whole set of questions about what they are doing.”

Ashley Landess is president of the South Carolina Policy Council, a nonprofit organized to promote limited government. Her 2013 letter to Attorney General Alan Wilson alleging “possibly criminal violations of state ethics laws” led to Speaker Bobby Harrell’s resignation and conviction last year on ethics-related charges. Landess agreed with Crangle, saying requiring lawmakers to be completely transparent, especially about all of the sources of their income and the amounts, is “the most urgent priority.”

Landess said the root problem lies in the structure of government, which leaves virtually all power in the hands of the legislators.

“They are making the laws. They appoint judges and control almost all of the executive power. They police themselves,” Landess said. “Until we tear down the concentration of power and secrecy in this state, there’s no reform possible. It touches on every area of citizens’ lives.”

This story was reported by Glenn Smith, Doug Pardue and David Slade of The Post and Courier and Rachel Baye and Ben Wieder of The Center for Public Integrity. It was written by Glenn Smith and Doug Pardue.

This story was co-published with The Post and Courier.

Voters in Ohio rejected a ballot initiative that would have legalized marijuana Tuesday despite millions of dollars spent by investors hoping to profit from the measure’s passage.

Ohio’s Issue 3 would have made the state the first in the Midwest to legalize the recreational use of marijuana.

But with most of the state’s precincts reporting, 65 percent of voters rejected the measure, even though the pro-pot advocates paid an estimated $7.1 million to air TV ads supporting it, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of data from Kantar Media/CMAG, a media tracking firm. The television spots said the measure would help sick children and hurt drug dealers, among other benefits.

The measure was controversial in Ohio due to what opponents called its “monopoly” provisions. The proposed constitutional amendment called for allowing only 10 farms to sell wholesale marijuana — farms owned by the investors bankrolling the campaign.

“Issue 3 was about greed, not good public policy,” said Curt Steiner, who directed the campaign opposing the measure. “Never underestimate the wisdom of Ohio voters. They saw through the smokescreen of slick ads, fancy but deceptive mailings [and] phony claims about tax revenues.”

Opponents cobbled together a broad coalition of groups representing doctors, churches, sheriffs, accountants and other professionals. In their messages, they decried the measure’s “monopoly” and the possibility of children getting their hands on legal pot.

Pro-pot advocates aired more than 10 times the number of TV ads opponents aired.

“The electorate in this off-year election was an electorate that was into the debate and reliant on more than just the TV ads,” said Democratic state Rep. Mike Curtin, who opposed legalization. “If they were just turning on the TV ads, then we were in trouble, because we’ve been outspent.”

The controversial marijuana legalization measure divided even pro-marijuana activists, with some groups offering tepid support and others keeping a safe distance. Ohio resident Aaron Weaver, who would like to see marijuana legal in Ohio, campaigned against Issue 3 on social media and at debates and town halls across the state.

He said early Tuesday that he would be “immensely disappointed in the intellectual capacity of Ohio voters” if Issue 3 passed.

Ohio pot activists who didn’t like Issue 3’s monopoly provisions are already gearing up to try to pass a pro-legalization ballot initiative in 2016, this time without the controversial components.

“Poll after poll shows that Ohioans are overwhelmingly in favor of legalization, but this year's initiative failed because a greed-driven monopoly plan is wrong for the state of Ohio,” said Ohio marijuana activist Sri Kavuru in an email. “Some activists were let down tonight because they put their faith in a bad plan, but their efforts have brought us a step closer to legalizing marijuana in 2016.”

The failed Ohio measure indeed may have shifted some attitudes: Ohio Auditor Dave Yost, a vocal opponent of the pot measure, said Tuesday he now supports legalizing medical marijuana alone, partly thanks to conversations he had while campaigning against Issue 3.

At least five other marijuana legalization measures are expected to appear on ballots across the country in 2016. One prominent marijuana advocate said the loss in Ohio won’t matter for those other races, because it came in an off-year election and a win would have been surprising to many.

“A defeat in Ohio will really not be very significant for the national movement,” said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.

Across the country, voters decided 22 statewide ballot measures Tuesday, with five attracting television advertising. Among them:

• Mississippi voters said no to a measure that would have required state lawmakers to fund public schools at promised levels.
   
• Political TV ads in Maine must now list their top three funders after a ballot measure passed Tuesday that also upped public funding for elections and stiffened penalties for campaign finance violations. Proponents of the measure, backed by national campaign finance advocacy groups, spent nearly $400,000 on ads supporting it.
   
• In Washington, a pro-animal group backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and the Humane Society spent nearly $140,000 on ads to support a measure to stiffen penalties for trafficking rare animal species. Election results were not available at the time of this post.
   
• And in San Francisco, a group backed by Airbnb spent more than $2.8 million on ads to oppose a local measure to increase regulation of short-term housing. Results of that contest were also not available at post time.

Republicans won several key races in the states Tuesday, including a stunning upset in Kentucky’s gubernatorial contest. The GOP held on to most offices in Mississippi and kept control of Virginia’s legislature.

The successes came even though Republicans spent less on average than Democrats on political ads to get out their message.

In Kentucky, businessman Matt Bevin was elected governor, only the second Republican to hold the position in more than four decades. He beat Attorney General Jack Conway by a margin of 53 percent to 44 percent.

There was some good news for Democrats in Pennsylvania, however. Democratic candidates for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court won all three seats up for election on the seven-person court.

Voters decided major races there and in four other states.

The Republican victories came despite a major advertising push by Democrats and the independent political groups that back them. Democratic-affiliated advertisers spent more than $155,000 on political ads on average compared with the $85,000 that Republicans spent on average in the mainly red-leaning states, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of data from media tracking firm Kantar Media/CMAG.

“The ad spending in these races can almost be like trench warfare,” said Kyle Kondik, a political analyst at the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. “You put in a bunch of resources and the lines don’t move that much.”

Altogether, more than $73 million had been spent on TV airtime for 2015 state-level races through Monday, according to Kantar Media data. The firm monitors 211 media markets around the country. The figures do not include ads for radio, the Internet, direct mail or TV ads that air on local cable systems. The estimates do not include the cost of making the ads.

The win in Kentucky means that Republicans will hold the top job in 32 states depending on what happens in Louisiana. Voters there go to the polls on Nov. 21 to vote for governor. Republican David Vitter is behind in the polls.

Here’s how the races shook out: