The Five Interest Groups In Congress

Interest groups are a main source of money during elections for President, Senate, or Congress. They can influence whether a candidate wins or loses. They try to do everything in their power in order to make sure that the candidate they want wins. Lobbyists are people who work for these certain interest groups and what they do is try and get people to vote for who the interest group wants. There are five different interest groups: Public, Public Sector, Ideological, Economic, and Foreign Policy. Interest groups can also start Political Action Committees, or PACs. These committees collect money for the candidates they want through donations and contributions, and then they give this money to the candidates. This money will help the candidate’s
Many PACs and Super PACs contributed to each candidate. There were also a lot of 501c organizations that donated to each person. 501c organizations are nonprofit organizations that do not have to pay taxes. PACs can give up to 5,000 per candidate, while Super PACs can accept unlimited amounts. What is a surprising difference between the two is that Super PACs cannot give their donations directly to the candidate, while PACs can. Elizabeth Warren won the election with 53.7 percent of the vote, with Scott Brown sliding back with 46.2 percent of the
The total number of contributors was 1487. The sector that gave the most was finance, insurance, and real estate. Combined, they gave a total of 624,608 dollars. Leadership PACs also contributed a lot to Scott Brown’s election. Groups such as the Building Our Futures Together PAC, Common Values PAC, and the Country First PAC gave donations of 10,000 dollars each. The typical size for PACs to give is around 5,000 dollars, but some groups give upwards of 15,000 dollars. Ideological interest groups were the ones that contributed a lot as well, with the total coming out to be 451,244 dollars all together. Gun Rights groups and Human Rights groups contributed, as well as Candidate Committees. The PACs that gave the most were PACs that belonged to Business interest groups. They gave up to 81 percent of the total contributions. Individual PACs such as the A.S.A PAC and the AA Homecare PAC gave donations of 5,000 dollars each. One Super PAC that donated exclusively to Scott Brown was called the Rethink PAC that donated 1,158,829 dollars. Businesses were the ones that gave the most contributions to Scott Brown, with 81 percent of the total PAC contributions. The total contributions overall to Scott Brown was 26,022,341