Our guest blogger is Billy Corriher, associate director of research for Legal Progress.

Despite spending nearly half a billion dollars to buy the White House for Mitt Romney, rich conservatives were not able to leverage the Supreme Court’s election-buying decision in Citizens United into a bought-and-paid-for presidency. Yet, in state-level races, where candidates are far less well-known than President Obama, outside spending can do far more to change the results of elections. In state supreme court races across the country, Super-PACs and other outside groups raked in millions in unlimited donations—often anonymously. The 2012 race shattered spending records as $27.8 million was spent on television advertising, according to Justice at Stake, and more than half of this money came in the form of independent spending.

Here are four of the biggest beneficiaries of this spending:

North Carolina – Justice Paul Newby

North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Paul Newby was reelected with the help of more than $2.5 million in independent spending. Both candidates participated in the state’s public financing program, but this system was overwhelmed by money from interest groups like the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity and the state Chamber of Commerce. The RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company chipped in $100,000, after it benefited from a 2009 ruling, authored by Newby, in a dispute with tobacco farmers. The largest donation, by far, was $875,000 from the Republican State Leadership Committee, a group that helped the state’s Republican legislature draft its recent redistricting maps. Civil rights groups have filed a lawsuit alleging that the map disenfranchises minority voters, and the state supreme court will soon review the case.

Mississippi – Justice Josiah Coleman

Josiah Coleman won a seat on the Mississippi Supreme Court election with a million dollars in independent spending, and nearly half of that money coming from a shadowy, Virginia-based organization, the Law Enforcement Alliance of America (LEAA). According to a Legal Progress analysis of Kantar Media’s CMAG data, LEAA spent an estimated $449,160 on television ads in this race, and the Improve Mississippi PAC spent an estimated $626,000, for a total of $1.07 million. LEAA has been active in judicial races around the country, and although it refuses to disclose its donors, it has been associated with the National Rifle Association and U.S. Chamber of Commerce.  The rest of the independent spending came from the Improve Mississippi PAC, which received $200,000 from a physicians’ PAC and donations from PACs representing the insurance, finance, and energy industries.

Michigan – Justices Stephen Markman and Brian Zahra

The Michigan Association of Realtors spent $400,000 on ads supporting the three Republican candidates for Michigan Supreme Court, two of whom kept their seats this month, although that was admittedly small potatoes compared to at least $10 million in spending by the two major parties on this race. Nevertheless, the significant amount of spending from the Realtors raises serious questions about Justices Markman and Zahra’s ability to impartially judge cases where this interest group has an interest.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD)

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) has, in recent years, become the leading force in the U.S. House of Representatives for campaign finance reform. As chief sponsor of the DISCLOSE 2012 Act, which was blocked from even getting a hearing in the Republican-controlled House and filibustered to death by the Republican minority in the Senate, he has been the chief advocate for greater transparency for outside groups like Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS that keep their donors secret.

In an exclusive interview with ThinkProgress, Van Hollen expressed optimism that his Republican colleagues may be more open to DISCLOSE and other reforms next year after they too faced secret-money attacks in their own campaigns. Public pressure, he said, will be key in getting the legislation and other reforms aimed at mitigating the damage caused by the Supreme Court’s 5-4 Citizens United ruling. And, he noted, he hopes Federal Election Commission and election reform will also be priorities for the Obama administration and the 113th Congress.

Here are some highlights of Van Hollen’s comments:

The DISCLOSE Act:

The best I can say is I hope after this election, we have more converts on this issue. It was very ironic to hear [defeated] House Administration Committee Chairman Dan Lungren (R-CA) complain of all the secret outside money coming into his race. He refused to even hold a hearing on the DISCLOSE Act as Chairman, which meant we had to hold a “rump” hearing, not an official Congressional hearing. I think you’re going to see greater interest from our Republican colleagues. But this will only move with outside pressure. You’ve got people like Sen. Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who is the sworn enemy of disclosure. He did a 180 — he used to be for full transparency and disclosure. He opposed McCain-Feingold saying we need full disclosure, not this. Then he flip-flopped, after Citizens United. What gives me hope is the public is totally on the side of disclosure and transparency – they believe the public has a right to know who’s spending gobs of secret money to influence these elections.

Other Campaign Finance Reforms:

I’m gonna continue to press on a number of fronts, including urging the IRS to determine whether or not a lot of these organizations were using the cover or their tax-exempt status in order to pursue political and electoral objectives, whether they’re meeting the tests that provide them with tax-exempt status and give them the ability to hide their donors… A number of other avenues dealing with shareholder rights with respect to corporate giving: both shareholder notice (at the very least, shareholders should be notified of corporate contributions) and shareholder approval. We saw a major development with Chevron contributing a lot of money to one of the Congressional super PACs [the company gave $2.5 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC that ran attack ads against Democratic candidates]. There are corporations that essentially launder their money through other organizations to hide their identities, it’s important to shine a light on that secret money. A lot of corporations prefer to do their direct expenditure contributions in the dark.

Election Reform:

This is another important area: in addition to blatant efforts of some states to limit the democratic process, you also have indirect impediments placed on participation. Requiring someone to stand in line for 3-4 hours to vote is a limit on their rights. First, you had some states trying to limit the right to early voting. On top of that, [some states] created circumstances where you have long lines. It’s a clear impediment to people’s right to vote. It’s too early to say whether it’s bipartisan, but we’re working on a number of pieces of legislation now to deal with this set of issues. Read more

Our guest blogger is Billy Corriher, associate director of research for Legal Progress.

Spending on television ads for this year’s state supreme court races reached a record high of nearly $28 million, according to Justice at Stake. The race for the Ohio Supreme Court was one of the most expensive, with candidates reporting more than $2 million in campaign contributions and undisclosed millions in independent spending. One candidate in that race, however, refused to accept campaign cash and ran on a platform of cleaning up the state’s judicial elections. Judge Bill O’Neill won a seat on the high court with the campaign slogan, “Money and Judges Don’t Mix.”

This message, which criticized incumbent justices for accepting campaign cash from parties and attorneys before the court, did not sit well with the Ohio State Bar Association. The bar association called on O’Neill to refrain from making “statements that impugn the court’s integrity and imply that justice is for sale.” The legal industry has traditionally been the largest source of campaign contributions for high court candidates.

In an interview with ThinkProgress, O’Neill responded, “I am not implying that justice is for sale. I am stating it as a matter of fact.” As an example, O’Neill points to campaign cash from power company First Energy, which recently contributed to two justices while it had a case before the court. “If that’s not an attempt to buy the court, I don’t know what is,” he said.

The Center for American Progress issued a report in August on corporate interest groups influencing the law through campaign contributions. The report found that the high courts which have seen the most campaign cash, including the Ohio Supreme Court, are more likely to favor corporate defendants over individual plaintiffs. A 2006 New York Times article studied the correlation between campaign donations and the Ohio Supreme Court’s rulings, and it found that the justices voted for their contributors in 70% of the cases studied.

Outside spending enabled by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision surpassed $840 million this election season, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Super PACs and nonprofits have lavished the bulk of these funds on Mitt Romney and Republican candidates.

Just 858 individuals who contributed at least $50,000 each comprised 60 percent of all the money collected by super PACs, with the top 149 donors raising $290 million. The money overwhelmingly went to produce negative ads, which ate up 88 percent of pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future’s funds, and 95 percent of Karl Rove’s American Crossroads expenditures. Pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA, while far outspent by its right-wing counterparts, spent 100 percent of its $57 million on negative ads.

Nonprofit organizations also played a huge part, with GOP nonprofits outspending Democratic ones by more than 8 to 1. These nonprofits, which are allowed to keep their donors secret, injected more than $245 million in so-called “dark money” into the election.

Romney heavily drew from wealthy donors, while the Obama campaign has been buoyed by grassroots supporters. 34 percent of the Obama campaign’s donations came from individuals who gave $200 or less, while they donated just 18 percent of Romney’s funds.

But super PACs have helped the Romney campaign overcome Obama’s grassroots fundraising, as Brad Smith, Republican lawyer and former chairman of the FEC openly admitted:

[Super PACs] have helped to level the playing field between Romney and Obama, whereas otherwise Obama’s spending advantage would have been substantial.

Should Romney win the election, he will be deeply beholden to these large donors. A ThinkProgress analysis identified 8 of Romney’s most generous supporters, all of whom work in either finance or the energy industry.

Citizens United has also given Romney a boost by loosening up the rules preventing employers from directly talking to employees about politics. Many conservative groups and business owners are taking advantage of this new flexibility by pressuring employees into contributing to Romney’s campaign or warning them that their jobs are in jeopardy if Obama wins.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court agreed to review a lower court decision striking down an Arizona law making it more difficult to register to vote, an announcement that was someone surprising because the justices recently denied an attempt to stay the decision blocking the Arizona law. This decision, however, is only the first of at least three major cases the justices are likely to hear this term which could turn the 2014 election into even more of a free-for-all for big money donors and vote suppressing lawmakers than the 2012 election:

• Voter Registration Roadblocks: The Arizona lawsuit concerns a ballot initiative requiring voter registrars to “reject any application for registration that is not accompanied by satisfactory evidence of United States citizenship.” A federal appeals court struck down the law on the grounds that it conflicts with federal voter registration law. The case does present a genuinely interesting question of whether state elections law is more likely to be preempted by federal law than other state laws, so it is possible the the Supreme Court will simply resolve that question without upholding the Arizona ballot initiative. One thing is clear about this Arizona law, however, and that is that it raises unnecessary barriers to voter registration without addressing any real problem. Both Florida and Colorado initiated voter purges this year seeking out non-citizen voters, and they turned up virtually no non-citizens who vote.
• More Election Buying: Currently, federal law caps an individual’s contributions to candidates, political party committees and similar organizations at $117,000 every two years. A lawsuit brought by the Republican Party seeks to eliminate this cap, and it is almost certain to be heard by the Supreme Court. If the justices strike down this cap, it will move the country a significant step closer to GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s preferred regime, where Wall Street billionaires can write unlimited checks directly to his campaign.
• Gutting The Voting Rights Act: The Voting Rights Act, which forbids laws that disproportionately prevent racial minorities from voting, currently requires certain states to “pre-clear” any new voter laws with a federal court or the Department of Justice before those laws may take effect. For this reason, it has prevented some of the worst recent attempts to limit the franchise from taking effect, including some states’ voter ID laws. The Court is widely expected to hear a challenge to this part of the Voting Rights Act, however, and appears more likely than not to strike it down.