Ground Zero for Dark Money: The road to the White House in 2020 still runs through Wisconsin--and so does the pipeline for outside cash.

• Author: Graves, Usa
• Position: On Wisonsin

Brad Parscale, then manager of President Donald Trump's re-election campaign, recently boasted that his team had raised nearly a billion dollars by midsummer. What he left unsaid was that it had already spent more than $650 million. That includes a texting operation that reaches more than forty-five million voters, or about one-third of the total number of Americans who voted in 2016.

Despite this massive spending without a contested primary, Trumps polling numbers have continued to fall as the President fails to mitigate the deadly pandemic. His failures have resulted in more people dying of COVID-19 in the United States than in any other country in the world, as well as surging unemployment, and widespread foreclosures and evictions. The U.S. death toll could top 200,000 by Election Day.

But Trumps war chest for ads and fundraising, while fearsome, is just one part of the spending to come. Indeed, it is the only part of the 2020 coffers that includes caps on how much any one donor can give to an individual candidate or political party.

Trumps campaign spending will be amplified by rightwing groups across the nation, especially in swing states. In 2016, these outside groups--even leaving aside Russia's documented interference--played a key role in delivering Wisconsin to Trump by fewer than 23,000 votes.

Like a shadow that's larger than the person who casts it, spending by outside groups may well exceed spending by the campaign itself. Some of that money is required to be disclosed shortly after it's donated--if it is spent by super PACs or 527 groups. But due to the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision, there are no limits on how much money any given person or group can funnel through these channels, as there are for giving to a candidate or political party.

Other types of spending will be from dark money sources and will not be tallied until nearly a year after the election. That is when nonprofit groups that have run issue ads or "education" campaigns around the election (without expressly asking people to vote for or against a particular candidate) must report their disbursements to the IRS.

For such groups, there are no caps on contributions or spending. There is not even a bar on foreign donors--the U.S. Senate found that the National Rifle Association acted as a "Russian asset" and received funds to help Trump win in 2016. Plus, there is no requirement that the identities of major donors to such groups be disclosed to the...