By Jeremy Duda and Luige del Puerto | Arizona Capitol Times
Determining the most influential people of 2014 becomes far more difficult when so many of them are anonymous.
Such was the case in Arizona, where a predominant feature of the election cycle was “dark money,” the anonymous campaign spending that has proliferated in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Citizens United ruling in 2010.
Of the $25.5 million spent by independent expenditures in state-level races in 2014, at least $8.6 million came from unknown contributors who gave their money to a host of 501(c)(4) nonprofit groups. That figure does not include money given by dark money outfits to other independent expenditure committees that disclose their contributors.
