Issue One elevates Michael Beckel to lead money in politics reform work

Issue One has elevated Michael Beckel to be director of the organization’s money in politics reform program. Beckel, a nationally recognized expert on money in politics issues, has served as Issue One’s research director for the last nine years.

“For nearly 20 years, Michael Beckel has been one of the most stalwart and talented reporters and researchers exposing the influence of money in politics,” said Issue One Founder and CEO Nick Penniman. “Beckel has produced scores of reports that have had a profound impact on our understanding of the broken campaign finance system. Along the way, he’s gained the respect and trust of countless reporters and good-government advocates. Moving Beckel into this role is an essential next step for Issue One, and an important leap forward in the fight to restore our democracy.”

Added Beckel: “I am honored to be taking on this new role to continue pushing for meaningful campaign finance reform. Our political system today is awash in big money and scandalous examples of pay-to-play regularly make headlines. So it’s more important than ever to advance novel and necessary approaches to fix our broken campaign finance system. By engaging with citizens, lawmakers, and policymakers from across the political spectrum, we can — and will — build a system that works for everyone, not just the wealthy and the well-connected.”

In his time at Issue One, Beckel has led several crosspartisan advocacy efforts on campaign finance reform and transparency issues.

Last year, Beckel helped Issue One produce an amicus brief warning about the corruption risks associated with large contributions to super PACs. This legal brief was filed by a bipartisan group of two dozen former elected officials who are part of Issue One’s ReFormers Caucus — 12 of whom served in public office as Democrats and 12 of whom served in public office as Republicans.

Last fall, Beckel also managed a polling project for Issue One that illustrated how the Supreme Court got its controversial 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling wrong, with nearly 8 in 10 Americans saying that large political expenditures by wealthy donors and corporations in elections give rise to corruption and the appearance of corruption. Furthermore, this poll showed bipartisan momentum for money-in-politics reforms, including a proposed ballot measure in Montana to undo Citizens United by redefining what powers corporations are granted by state governments.

Additionally, Beckel helped secure the passage of a bipartisan bill, signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2018, that required Senate candidates to join all other federal candidates in electronically filing their campaign finance reports. And during the 2020 and 2024 election cycles, Beckel spearheaded cross-partisan advocacy efforts to urge all Democratic and Republican presidential candidates to voluntarily reveal information about their elite campaign fundraisers (also known as “bundlers”).

Since joining Issue One, he has authored and overseen the production of dozens of must-read reports that have generated extensive media coverage on topics including:

• the outsized influence of political megadonors;
• secretive dark money groups active in our elections and public policy debates; and
• questionable leadership PAC spending.

Through these projects, Beckel has helped produce tipsheets for investigating political dark money and pulling the veil back on seemingly mysterious limited liability companies.

Prior to joining Issue One  in March 2017, Beckel worked as an award-winning journalist for more than a decade with stints at OpenSecrets, the Center for Public Integrity, Mother Jones, and multiple newspapers in Colorado. He is a graduate of Colorado College.