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Democrats have filed the paperwork to create a new fundraising committee to pay for the partys 2016 presidential convention.

The new committee will be permitted to raise more than $30,000 per donor per year to be put toward the partys quadrennial presidential nominating convention. The money raised for the convention is on top of the donor cash the Democratic National Committee is allowed to raise for political activities like advertising and digital work.

The new Democratic National Convention Committee 2016 was authorized by Congress this month as part of a legal change to campaign-finance laws that was included in the December deal brokered between Republicans and Democrats to avoid a government shutdown.

Republicans are widely expected to form a similar convention committee in the coming weeks.

The new law permits national political parties to create separate entities to fund political conventions, headquarters and building improvements and legal proceedings like recounts vastly increasing the total amount of money that donors can give to political parties.

Its part of the tug of war between political parties and outside groups like super PACs that has emerged in the aftermath of the landmark 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling.

Outside groups like Karl Roves Crossroads network and the network of political nonprofits formed by oil magnates Charles and David Koch have come to dominate the political landscape in the last three election cycles and have replaced many of the core functions of political parties. Those groups are permitted to raise and spend unlimited sums of cash, so long as they dont coordinate with political parties and candidates. Political committees, on the other hand, are limited to collecting about $30,000 per donor per year.

Campaign-finance watchdogs worry that the new changes will vastly increase the amount of money in politics, while supporters of the changes say that they will help level the playing field between outside groups and political parties.

Conventions were once routinely publicly financed by taxpayers, but this year President Barack Obama signed a law ending the publics subsidy of political conventions giving the money to the National Institutes of Health for pediatric medical research.

Democrats will hold their 2016 convention in Brooklyn, N.Y., Philadelphia or Columbus, Ohio. Adecision on the site is expected early next year.

Originally posted here:
Democrats Set Up 2016 Convention Account

RAPID CITY | Nearly four decades ago, Ted Muenster was in the vanguard of a Democratic revolution in South Dakota.

So successful were Democrats that, for one general election in 1978, their voter registration numbers surpassed Republicans.

That has never happened again. In fact, Democrats today have about 17,000 fewer registered voters than they did all those 36 years ago.

The party hit a historic low point in last months election. Democrats won only 20 of the 105 seats in the Legislature, failed to win any of the 13 offices elected by South Dakota voters as a whole, and suffered the biggest percentage-point margin of defeat in any gubernatorial race in state history.

During the 1970s, Muenster was chief of staff for Democratic Gov. Dick Kneip. Muenster has seen some bad elections for Democrats since then, but perhaps none worse than Nov 4.

The Democratic Party in South Dakota is always on the ragged edge of catastrophe, Muenster said. But its now at its lowest point in 50 years.

Muenster made the comment while participating in a panel discussion last month at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion. The discussion was part of a launch event for the second volume of The Plains Political Tradition, a book of essays published by the South Dakota Historical Society Press.

In the book and at the conference, three people offered theories to explain why South Dakota Democrats have fallen so far since their heyday in the late 70s.

In the panel discussion, Muenster said the Roe v. Wade abortion decision and also the failure of the Oahe Irrigation Project, both in the 1970s, divided Democrats.

In essays written for the book, author Tony Venhuizen pinpointed the 1980s farm crisis as a turning point in the declining political influence of Democratic agricultural movements. Author Mark Lempke said the social turmoil of the 1970s undercut Democratic leader George McGovern and his support from mainline Protestant churches.

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South Dakota Democrats adjust after stinging losses

Blunt statements by Philadelphia's most powerful Democrat may signal trouble for Kathleen Kane, even as other Democrats publicly are noncommittal about their support for the embattled attorney general, political analysts say.

Two years into her term as the first woman and Democrat elected attorney general, Kane took the unusual step of announcing her re-election bid two weeks ago while awaiting the outcome of a statewide grand jury investigation into whether she leaked information about a man never charged with a crime in order to embarrass a prosecutor with whom she is feuding.

Recent critical comments from U.S. Rep. Bob Brady, chairman of the Philadelphia Democratic Committee and the state's senior congressman, and in the spring from Gov.-elect Tom Wolf "show significant erosion of confidence in the attorney general among Democrats and may be a harbinger of even more critical treatment from within her party," said Christopher Borick, a political science professor at Muhlenberg College in Allentown.

"If Democrats feel she is beyond the point of a comeback, they will increasingly distance themselves from Kane and start to look at alternatives in the 2016 primary," Borick said. "She is at that tipping point now, if not already past the point of no return."

Kane's aides did not respond to inquiries.

Her remarks insisting that she'll run for a second term, voiced while attending The Pennsylvania Society's annual weekend in Manhattan, were made a few days before a Philadelphia grand jury and District Attorney Seth Williams blasted her for not prosecuting several Democrats accused of bribery.

Williams charged two state lawmakers with accepting cash from an informant. Former Traffic Court Judge Thomasine Tynes pleaded guilty last week to accepting a $2,000 bracelet from the informant. Williams said the investigation continues.

Kane had declined to prosecute the case, citing legal flaws.

"Having been an attorney for 24 years, no two attorneys ever see the same set of facts in an identical fashion," Pennsylvania Democratic Party Chairman Jim Burn said. "This situation will play out in the courts."

But Brady, who could not be reached, told The Philadelphia Inquirer last week that Williams' decision on the so-called "sting case" appeared to show Kane was "asleep at the switch."

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Kathleen Kane's star may be fading for Democrats

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