STUDY: Dark Money Funds 40% Of Congressional Ads

USA Today reports:

Secret donors financed more than four out of every 10 television ads that outside groups broadcast this year to influence November’s high-stakes congressional elections, according to a USA TODAY analysis of Kantar Media data.

Leading the way: organizations affiliated with billionaire industrialist Charles Koch, whose conservative donor network plows hundreds of millions of dollars into politics and policy debates each election cycle. Two Koch-affiliated groups account for more than one-quarter of the House and Senate advertising from groups that don’t disclose their donors, according to a tally of broadcast ads tracked by Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group.

Those Koch advocacy groups, Americans for Prosperity and Concerned Veterans for America, have trained their advertising fire on five Democratic senators up for re-election from red and purple states: Sens. Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Jon Tester of Montana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin.