Peter Overby

No political consultant could write an ad as glowing as billionaire Paul Singer's email for Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio.

"He is ready to be an informed and assertive decision-maker," Singer wrote in the email, which was first published by the New York Times. He went on for nearly ...

In addition to a traditional campaign structure, the unorthodox presidential candidate is investing heavily in promoting his brand as a way to attract votes.

Make America Great Again. It's Donald Trump's campaign slogan. It's on the caps his campaign sells to admirers, and it's also the name of an ostensibly independent superPAC.

Or it was until this week, when the superPAC said it was going out of business. It ran aground on stories in ...

Jesse Benton, a long-time adviser to Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has been acquitted in a federal corruption probe of former Rep. Ron Paul's 2012 presidential campaign.

A jury in Des Moines, Iowa, found Benton not guilty of lying to FBI agents when interviewed about pay-offs made by the campaign of ...

The latest presidential fundraising reports, due last Thursday, might have wrecked the weekend for the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute, but today the institute released its analysis of how the candidates fared.

The big conclusion: Campaigns are not shaking the money loose as effectively as in 2008, the last time ...

Presidential campaigns are trying to show donors how wisely they are spending funds, which highlights the limits to how much superPACs can defray traditional campaign costs.

The juggernaut that was supposed to be Jeb Bush's presidential campaign is looking smaller than predicted.

Bush's campaign says it raised $13.4 million in the third quarter. Campaign manager Danny Diaz noted the number is double the quarterly totals of Bush protege Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and businesswoman Carly Fiorina, ...

The political network led by billionaires David and Charles Koch is building what's meant to be a seamless system of grassroots groups, designed to advance the network's conservative and libertarian goals year in and year out, while also helping like-minded politicians.

This strategy could have come straight out of a ...

The political network headed by David and Charles Koch is known for aggressive ads. But its grassroots work in communities across the country is seeking political change long after the campaign ends.

There's a fresh look at how transparent major companies are when it comes to their political activity.

More than two dozen companies on the Standard & Poor's 500 Index scored 90 percent or better, out of 100, in the new rankings.

The high ratings don't correlate with the companies' ...

A potentially controversial sentence in the prepared text of Pope Francis' address went unspoken when he delivered the speech to Congress.

The line appears to challenge the dominant role of money in American politics.

A paragraph in the prepared text quotes briefly from the Declaration of Independence — the passage ...

What would it take to make the White House wannabes stop chasing after big donors? From 1975 to 1999, the answer was federal matching funds — money that candidates could get by raising more money from small donors and spending less time schmoozing with the well-heeled.

Now, the U.S. PIRG ...

Opportunity and Freedom PAC, and its two siblings, Opportunity and Freedom PAC numbers 1 and 2, were meant to be heavyweight sluggers for Republican Rick Perry, providing big-budget support for his second presidential bid.

But Perry himself turned out to be a welterweight at best. The former Texas governor entered ...

Nobody on Capitol Hill underestimates the lobbying clout of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. For six decades — almost since the birth of Israel — AIPAC has presented itself as the deliberately bipartisan, and frequently victorious, voice of American-Israeli unity.

It has maintained this emphasis on bipartisanship even ...

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is an agenda setter in Washington's Middle East debates. But it lost when Congress didn't block the Iran nuclear deal. How does that affect AIPAC's future?

Candidates with the least money to spend are showing up in TV ads more often. In another twist, nice guys aren't finishing last.

The amount of money in politics since the 2010 Citizens United decision is staggering. Hillary Clinton came out with a plan Tuesday to address it, but it's a daunting issue for a president to take on.

Late August may be the absolutely worst time to launch a political TV blitz. But a Democratic superPAC, Priorities USA Action, is offering up a minicampaign this week and next, warning Republicans that their heated rhetoric on immigration is captured on videotape and being prepped for prime time later ...

When billionaire developer Donald Trump entered the presidential race two months ago, he drew a sharp line between other candidates — needy candidates, always trading favors for money — and himself.

"I'm really rich. I assure you of that," he said as supporters cheered. "And by the way, I'm not ...

GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump touts his ability to finance his own campaign and avoid answering to donors. But now he's started fundraising for his campaign and a superPAC.