Daily News | Cost of Pennsylvania governor’s race sets new record amid ‘campaign finance arms race’
HARRISBURG — The total cost of the governor’s race in Pennsylvania topped $100 million in this last election cycle, a staggering amount that set a new spending record in the race to snag the state’s highest office.The steep spending puts on full display Pennsylvania’s distinction as having some of the most lax campaign finance laws in the country — ones that place no limits on how much money candidates can accept from deep-pocketed donors.
In all, Shapiro and the nine Republicans spent $100.2 million in both the primary and general election between the start of last year and the end of November, according to the latest campaign finance reports. That iswhat it costs to run Pennsylvania’s Department of State, which oversees elections, for an entire year.
In 2014, the four Democrats and incumbent Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, who was trying for a second four-year term, spent a combined $82.8 million. Shapiro, for instance, received $1 million each from Karla Jurvetson, a philanthropist and a major Democratic contributor from Silicon Valley, and Bill Harris Jr., the one-time head of PayPal. He received another $2 million from physician Jennifer Duda of California’s Menlo Park and got $120,000 from relatives of Democratic megadonor George Soros.
Corporate donations are prohibited, but there is a loophole: top-level executives in a corporation can and do launch their own political action committees. Those PACs can then donate unlimited amounts to candidates. So can their lobbyists.
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