News Clips

Bloomberg’s campaign presents “novel challenges” because it was funded entirely with his own money, according to Beth Rotman, campaign finance expert at Common Cause, a nonpartisan good government nonprofit. This makes the $18 million donation through his campaign look like a new way to evade the contribution limits put in place to deter corruption and ensure equality in political campaigns. “It’s very troubling that Bloomberg appears to be evading the federal contribution limits of an individual to a party committee,” Rotman said. Common Cause is considering filing a complaint with the Federal Election Commission challenging this donation.

Common Cause, a Washington-based watchdog group, filed complaints against all four lawmakers — Burr, Loeffler, Inhofe and Feinstein — with the Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Senate Ethics Committee, citing the STOCK Act. “These potential violations of insider trading laws and the STOCK Act by these Senators ... show what appears to be contempt for the law and further a contempt for the American people these Senators have sworn to serve," Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause, said in a statement.

Also Wednesday voting rights advocacy group Common Cause called for states to suspend in-person voting at least for the next few weeks. The group previously recommended expanded vote-by-mail access.

In all three states that voted, some polling places were moved or closed because of a lack of workers, shortages of cleaning supplies, or to relocate polls from senior centers. “It made for a day at the polls really not like any we’ve seen before,” said David Vance, spokesman for the voting rights group Common Cause.

In Florida, Palm Beach County had some of the worst disruptions in the state, said Liza McClenaghan of Common Cause Florida: By midmorning, some polling places had not opened, some opened late and some were understaffed.

Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause, said the challenges in the primaries will give election officials an opportunity to find remedies such as allowing more mail-in voting by the November election. “Today we’re faced with a challenge unlike anything we’ve seen in our 50 years of advocacy, a global pandemic where all 50 states have now declared a state of emergency,” she said.