NY Times-President Obama: Is The GOP Getting Foreign Campaign $$$?

President Obama at a rally in Philadelphia: Steven Crowley/NY Times

(Story reported by Peter Baker for the NY Times)

PHILADELPHIA — With his party facing losses in next month’s election, President Obama pressed his argument Sunday that the opposition is trying to steal the election with secret special-interest money, possibly including money from foreign companies.

In a speech to a large rally here and in a new television advertisement, Mr. Obama and the Democrats escalated their efforts to present the Republicans as captive to moneyed interests. But Republicans and their allies fired back, dismissing the assertions as desperate last-minute allegations with no evidence to back them up.

“You can’t let it happen,” Mr. Obama told thousands of supporters gathered at a school park in a predominantly African-American, working-class neighborhood in northern Philadelphia. “Don’t let them hijack your agenda. The American people deserve to know who’s trying to sway their elections, and you can’t stand by and let the special interests drown out the voices of the American people.”

Mr. Obama has increasingly turned to the issue of campaign finance to motivate his supporters as the elections grow nearer and the polls remain bad for Democrats. With his party outmatched in advertising sponsored by groups that do not have to disclose their donors under a Supreme Court decision issued earlier this year, Mr.
Obama has suggested that the sponsors of campaign advertising have sinister motivations.

“You don’t know,” he said here. “It could be the oil industry, it could be the insurance industry, it could even be foreign-owned corporations. You don’t know because they don’t have to disclose. Now that’s not just a threat to Democrats, that’s a threat to our democracy.”

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