Peter Overby
Peter Overby has covered Washington power, money, and influence since a foresighted NPR editor created the beat in 1994.
Overby has covered scandals involving House Speaker Newt Gingrich, President Bill Clinton, lobbyist Jack Abramoff and others. He tracked the rise of campaign finance regulation as Congress passed campaign finance reform laws, and the rise of deregulation as Citizens United and other Supreme Court decisions rolled those laws back.
During President Trump's first year in office, Overby was on a team of NPR journalists covering conflicts of interest sparked by the Trump family business. He did some of the early investigations of dark money, dissecting a money network that influenced a Michigan judicial election in 2013, and — working with the Center for Investigative Reporting — surfacing below-the-radar attack groups in the 2008 presidential election.
In 2009, Overby co-reported Dollar Politics, a multimedia series on lawmakers, lobbyists and money as the Senate debated the Affordable Care Act. The series received an award for excellence from the Capitol Hill-based Radio and Television Correspondents Association. Earlier, he won an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton for his coverage of the 2000 elections and 2001 Senate debate on campaign finance reform.
Prior to NPR, Overby was an editor/reporter for Common Cause Magazine, where he shared an Investigative Reporters and Editors award. He worked on daily newspapers for 10 years, and has freelanced for publications ranging from Utne Reader and the Congressional Quarterly Guide To Congress to the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post.
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A Supreme Court ruling in 2014 opened the door for an individual to give nearly three-quarters of a million dollars through a committee established by one candidate during the 2016 race. -
Sheldon Adelson has bought The Las Vegas Review-Journal. In addition to making lots of money off of gambling and hospitality, Adelson is one of the most active donors in conservative politics.
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Many large businesses accept climate change. That creates another challenge: a split with many Republican allies in Congress who are still fighting the debate over climate science. -
In addition to a traditional campaign structure, the unorthodox presidential candidate is investing heavily in promoting his brand as a way to attract votes. -
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.
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The groups funded by the Koch brothers have run lots of TV ads, but now they're making a big community-organizing push. They have the money to do it, too, vowing to spend almost $1 billion for 2016.
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In the era of direct spending by corporations in elections, Microsoft and AFLAC Insurance get high marks for openness. Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway received a score of zero. -
The pope spoke for 51 minutes before Congress and read his speech verbatim from prepared remarks. That is, except for one line he omitted about politics not being "a slave to the economy and finance." -
The Public Interest Research Group came up with a matching-funds plan that would benefit candidates who have raised the most money from small donations. -
When former Texas Gov. Rick Perry dropped out of the presidential race, a superPAC supporting him was left with millions of dollars in the bank. So where did it go? And what are the rules? -
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.
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SuperPAC Priorities USA Action released a digital ad blasting Republican candidates for their heated rhetoric on immigration. It's a small campaign for now, but it sends a clear message.
