Michael Beckel

Money in Politics Reform Director Michael Beckel is a nationally recognized expert on money in politics and election administration issues.

Beckel — who worked for 9 years as Issue One’s research director — has been following money in politics for nearly 20 years, including attending the oral arguments of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark campaign finance case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which ushered in a new era of big money in politics. His expertise is regularly cited by media outlets, and for more than a decade, he has trained journalists on how to follow political money and uncover donors to secretive political dark money groups.

Since joining Issue One in March 2017, Beckel 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.
• Questionable leadership PAC spending.
• High turnover rates among election officials.
• The election administration challenges faced by election officials.
• Creative poll worker recruitment approaches.
• The need for better pay for congressional staffers.
• The political influence of social media companies.

He has also spearheaded crosspartisan advocacy efforts on campaign finance reform and transparency issues, including:

• helping drive an amicus brief warning about the corruption risks associated with large contributions to super PACs that was filed with the First Circuit Court of Appeals in 2025 by 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;
• managing a polling project in 2025 that illustrated how the Supreme Court got Citizens United wrong and showed bipartisan momentum for money-in-politics reforms;
• encouraging all Democratic and Republican presidential candidates in 2020 and 2024 to voluntarily reveal information about their elite campaign fundraisers (also known as “bundlers”); and
• helping win the passage of a bipartisan bill, signed into law by President Trump in 2018, that required Senate candidates to join all other federal candidates in electronically filing their campaign finance reports.

Beckel previously 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 2005 graduate of Colorado College. He currently lives in Colorado, where he enjoys hiking, camping, paddleboarding, and helping with the behind the scenes running of elections as a poll worker.