'Stealth donor' throws million to Mitt

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. /huffingtonpost.com image

Pandora's Box is wide open.

Keeping the lid on campaign cash and corruption has been a vexing problem in American politics for at least 150 years. In New York, the Tammany Hall political machine was fueled with "honest graft" for decades after the Civil War.

A Mitt Romney PAC's mysterious million dollar donor is the first apparent abuse of last year's Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which allowed corporations and unions to make large political contributions. The scheme went something like this:

• In March, a Boston lawyer created Delaware-based W Spann LLC
• In April, W Spann contributed $1 million to Restore Our Future, a political action committee formed by former Romney aides
• In July, W Spann went out of existence with a "certificate of cancellation"

We will probably never know the source of that $1 million. The Romney campaign says it has no control over the PAC, and the PAC has shown no inclination to name the bankrollers of W Spann.

If this is how the game is going to be played, the Citizens United ruling has literally thrown gasoline on the fire.

The 2008 campaign cycle shattered campaign spending records across the board. While capturing his first term in the White House, Barack Obama spent $740 million, nearly matching the spending of all his opponents combined and doubling the spending of George W. Bush and John Kerry in the 2004 campaign. The tab for all federal races in 2008 was a record-setting $5.3 billion.

Just for comparison's sake, with a $5 billion check you could:

• Build a high-voltage undersea power line for off-shore wind farms stretching from New York to Virginia;
• Build or expand several refineries and natural gas facilities in Mississippi;
• Build a desalination plant on the Red Sea.

That's big money. Only big players get to play at the big money table.