Politics

Presidential Candidates Lean on Well-Funded Outside Groups

Published

10 years ago

June 18, 2015

In this June 15, 2015 file photo, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton shakes hands after speaking inside a barn as it rained in Concord, N.H. (AP Photo/Jim Cole, File)

JULIE BYKOWICZ, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Jeb Bush and Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton are asking donors to write the checks to get their campaigns started. Yet these “new” candidates have been fueling their presidential ambitions for months — years, in Clinton’s case — thanks to outside groups that will continue serving as big-money bank accounts throughout the race.

In the 2016 presidential field, creative financing abounds.

While donors can give a maximum $2,700 apiece per election to their favorite candidatdte’s campaign, the presidential contenders offer generous supporters plenty of other options. Outside groups that can accept checks of unlimited size include personalized super PACs that, while barred from directly coordinating with candidates, are often filled with their trusted friends. There are also “dark money” nonprofit policy groups that keep contributors’ names secret.

Super PACs working exclusively to help individual presidential candidates appeared on the scene in the last race, with Restore Our Future supporting Republican nominee Mitt Romney and Priorities USA boosting President Barack Obama. One 2012 super PAC, funded almost entirely by Las Vegas casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, kept Newt Gingrich afloat in the Republican nomination contest by spending millions of dollars on television ads promoting him and attacking other candidates.

This time, the influence of those kinds of groups will increase “by a huge factor,” said Spencer Zwick, the chief fundraiser for Romney.

“Super PACs in 2012 were still not talked about by the campaign apparatus,” he said. Not so in 2016. “You literally have the same leadership group that’s running a super PAC that will then run the campaign, or vice versa.”

Federal Election Commission Chairwoman Ann Ravel called it a Wild West atmosphere, fostered by the 2010 Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case that empowered outside groups to take in and spend unlimited sums. She argues this system is insufficiently policed by her politically deadlocked agency.

The campaign finance watchdog group Democracy 21 has filed complaints against many of the candidates working with super PACs. Its president, Fred Wertheimer, sees “all sorts of edgy, and I would say illegal, coordination going on.”

Others see no cause for alarm. “What could be more American?” asked David Keating, director of the Center for Competitive Politics, which advocates for an end to campaign contribution limits. “More money means more speech. It ensures a robust debate about the future of our country and keeps people interested and involved.”

The cash flood has already resulted in more than $1 million in negative ads, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, in an election still more than 500 days away. This presidential race, with the most aggressive use yet of outside groups, is on track to cost more than the $2.6 billion tab for the 2012 presidential contest.

Bush’s kickoff this week has come with pleas to help fill his empty campaign coffers. But the Republican former Florida governor has already spent six months raising money for Right to Rise, a super PAC that will help him compete by spending tens of millions of dollars on television ads.

Until he became a declared presidential candidate, Bush was free to fundraise for Right to Rise, and he did so with vigor. He told the group’s top donors in April that they had helped raise more money in the previous 100 days than any Republican operation in modern times. Bush will now distance himself from the super PAC, leaving it in the hands of his longtime consultant Mike Murphy. “I’m going to miss him,” Bush recently said about Murphy. “But from here on out, I’m not going to be talking to him.”

Supporters can also contribute to Bush’s separate nonprofit group called Right to Rise Policy Solutions. Such “dark-money” groups — so called because they don’t reveal donors — are limited in how much election work they can do. GOP presidential candidates Rick Perry and Rick Santorum and possible candidates Bobby Jindal and John Kasich are each linked to a nonprofit.

Clinton, who became a candidate in April and is dominating the small Democratic field, is also benefiting from outside helpers. Fundraising emails last week encouraged supporters to become “launch donors” before the Saturday speech in New York City that was the first big rally of her campaign.

There are already 135,000 donors — some dating back two years — who might consider themselves her founding backers. They gave to a super PAC called Ready for Hillary, which was formed by aides in January 2013 to encourage the former first lady and secretary of state to run for president.

Clinton’s campaign recently obtained the super PAC’s donor list, and information on almost 4 million people who signed up with it, by swapping the information with other groups backing her.

One of those, Correct the Record, is blazing an entirely new trail — and one that some election watchdogs say is questionable — by planning to coordinate directly with the Clinton campaign. The group says it can avoid pushback from the election commission by not spending any money on paid advertisements and instead just posting its content for free on social media and websites.

Republican rival Ben Carson, a political newcomer, has gone about all this in reverse.

He started with a campaign announcement May 4, then dispatched top strategists to a still-unnamed super PAC. This approach comes with a drawback: Legally, the former campaign aides must wait 120 days before starting work at the super PAC.

“I put the campaign together, and now I’m going to put the super PAC together because I have the big-money contacts,” said Terry Giles, who served as Carson’s top strategist and will run the super PAC once he can legally do so in September. “I hired all of the campaign people, and I know exactly what their strategy is, so I can very effectively lead the super PAC. It’s unorthodox from a political standpoint, but it is not at all unorthodox from a business standpoint.”

Associated Press writer Thomas Beaumont in Tallin, Estonia, contributed to this report.

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Past, Present, Possible! Oakland Residents Invited to Reimagine the 980 Freeway

Organizers ask attendees coming to 1233 Preservation Park Way to think of the event as a “time portal”—a walkable journey through the Past (harm and flourishing), Present (community conditions and resilience), and Future (collective visioning).

Published

3 weeks ago

October 27, 2025

Oakland Post

Hundreds of residents in West Oakland were forced out by eminent domain before construction began on the 980 freeway in 1968. Courtesy photo.

By Randolph Belle
Special to The Post

Join EVOAK!, a nonprofit addressing the historical harm to West Oakland since construction of the 980 freeway began in 1968, will hold a block party on Oct. 25 at Preservation Park for a day of imagination and community-building from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Organizers ask attendees coming to 1233 Preservation Park Way to think of the event as a “time portal”—a walkable journey through the Past (harm and flourishing), Present (community conditions and resilience), and Future (collective visioning).

Activities include:

Interactive Visioning: Site mapping, 3-D/digital modeling, and design activities to reimagine housing, parks, culture, enterprise, and mobility.
Story & Memory: Oral history circles capturing life before the freeway, the rupture it caused, and visions for repair.
Data & Policy: Exhibits on health, environment, wealth impacts, and policy discussions.
Culture & Reflection: Films, installations, and performances honoring Oakland’s creativity and civic power.

The site of the party – Preservation Park – itself tells part of the story of the impact on the community. Its stately Victorians were uprooted and relocated to the site decades ago to make way for the I-980 freeway, which displaced hundreds of Black families and severed the heart of West Oakland. Now, in that same space, attendees will gather to reckon with past harms, honor the resilience that carried the community forward, and co-create an equitable and inclusive future.

A Legacy of Resistance

In 1979, Paul Cobb, publisher of the Post News Group and then a 36-year-old civil-rights organizer, defiantly planted himself in front of a bulldozer on Brush Street to prevent another historic Victorian home from being flattened for the long-delayed I-980 Freeway. Refusing to move, Cobb was arrested and hauled off in handcuffs—a moment that landed him on the front page of the Oakland Tribune.

Cobb and his family had a long history of fighting for their community, particularly around infrastructure projects in West Oakland. In 1954, his family was part of an NAACP lawsuit challenging the U.S. Post Office’s decision to place its main facility in the neighborhood, which wiped out an entire community of Black residents.

In 1964, they opposed the BART line down Seventh Street—the “Harlem of the West.” Later, Cobb was deeply involved in successfully rerouting the Cypress Freeway out of the neighborhood after the Loma Prieta earthquake.

The 980 Freeway, a 1.6-mile stretch, created an ominous barrier severing West Oakland from Downtown. Opposition stemmed from its very existence and the national practice of plowing freeways through Black communities with little input from residents and no regard for health, economic, or social impacts. By the time Cobb stood before the bulldozer, construction was inevitable, and his fight shifted toward jobs and economic opportunity.

Fast-forward 45 years: Cobb recalled the story at a convening of “Super OGs” organized to gather input from legacy residents on reimagining the corridor. He quickly retrieved his framed Tribune front page, adding a new dimension to the conversation about the dedication required to make change. Themes of harm repair and restoration surfaced again and again, grounded in memories of a thriving, cohesive Black neighborhood before the freeway.

The Lasting Scar

The 980 Freeway was touted as a road to prosperity—funneling economic opportunity into the City Center, igniting downtown commerce, and creating jobs. Instead, it cut a gash through the city, erasing 503 homes, four churches, 22 businesses, and hundreds of dreams. A promised second approach to the Bay Bridge never materialized.

Planning began in the late 1940s, bulldozers arrived in 1968, and after years of delays and opposition, the freeway opened in 1985. By then, Oakland’s economic engines had shifted, leaving behind a 600-foot-wide wound that resulted in fewer jobs, poorer health outcomes, and a divided neighborhood. The harm of displacement and loss of generational wealth was compounded through redlining, disinvestment, drugs, and the police state. Many residents fled to outlying cities, while those who stayed carried forward the spirit of perseverance.

The Big Picture

At stake now is up to 67 acres of new, buildable land in Downtown West Oakland. This time, we must not repeat the institutional wrongs of the past. Instead, we must be as deliberate in building a collective, equitable vision as planners once were in destroying communities.

EVOAK!’s strategy is rooted in four pillars: health, housing, economic development, and cultural preservation. These were the very foundations stripped away, and they are what they aim to reclaim. West Oakland continues to suffer among the worst social determinants of health in the region, much of it linked to the three freeways cutting through the neighborhood.

The harms of urban planning also decimated cultural life, reinforced oppressive public safety policies, underfunded education, and fueled poverty and blight.

Healing the Wound

West Oakland was once the center of Black culture during the Great Migration—the birthplace of the Black Panther Party and home to the “School of Champions,” the mighty Warriors of McClymonds High. Drawing on that legacy, we must channel the community’s proud past into a bold, community-led future that restores connection, sparks innovation, and uplifts every resident.

Two years ago, Caltrans won a federal Reconnecting Communities grant to fund Vision 980, a community-driven study co-led by local partners. Phase 1 launched in Spring 2024 with surveys and outreach; Phase 2, a feasibility study, begins in 2026. Over 4,000 surveys have already been completed. This once-in-a-lifetime opportunity could transform the corridor into a blank slate—making way for accessible housing, open space, cultural facilities, and economic opportunity for West Oakland and the entire region.

Leading with Community

In parallel, EVOAK! is advancing a community-led process to complement Caltrans’ work. EVOAK! is developing a framework for community power-building, quantifying harm, exploring policy and legislative repair strategies, structuring community governance, and hosting arts activations to spark collective imagination. The goal: a spirit of co-creation and true collaboration.

What EVOAK! Learned So Far

Through surveys, interviews, and gatherings, residents have voiced their priorities: a healthy environment, stable housing, and opportunities to thrive. Elders with decades in the neighborhood shared stories of resilience, community bonds, and visions of what repair should look like.

They heard from folks like Ezra Payton, whose family home was destroyed at Eighth and Brush streets; Ernestine Nettles, still a pillar of civic life and activism; Tom Bowden, a blues man who performed on Seventh Street as a child 70 years ago; Queen Thurston, whose family moved to West Oakland in 1942; Leo Bazille who served on the Oakland City Council from 1983 to 1993; Herman Brown, still organizing in the community today; Greg Bridges, whose family’s home was picked up and moved in the construction process; Martha Carpenter Peterson, who has a vivid memory of better times in West Oakland; Sharon Graves, who experienced both the challenges and the triumphs of the neighborhood; Lionel Wilson, Jr., whose family were anchors of pre-freeway North Oakland; Dorothy Lazard, a resident of 13th Street in the ’60s and font of historical knowledge; Bishop Henry Williams, whose simple request is to “tell the truth,” James Moree, affectionately known as “Jimmy”; the Flippin twins, still anchored in the community; and Maxine Ussery, whose father was a business and land owner before redlining.

EVOAK! will continue to capture these stories and invites the public to share theirs as well.

Beyond the Block Party

The 980 Block Party is just the beginning. Beyond this one-day event, EVOAK! Is building a long-term process to ensure West Oakland’s future is shaped by those who lived its past. To succeed, EVOAK! Is seeking partners across the community—residents, neighborhood associations, faith groups, and organizations—to help connect with legacy residents and host conversations.

980 Block Party Event Details
Saturday, Oct. 25
10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Preservation Park, 1233 Preservation Park Way, Oakland, CA 94612
980BlockParty.org
info@evoak.org