Peter Overby
Peter Overby has covered Washington power, money, and influence since a foresighted NPR editor created the beat in 1994.
Overby has covered scandals involving House Speaker Newt Gingrich, President Bill Clinton, lobbyist Jack Abramoff and others. He tracked the rise of campaign finance regulation as Congress passed campaign finance reform laws, and the rise of deregulation as Citizens United and other Supreme Court decisions rolled those laws back.
During President Trump's first year in office, Overby was on a team of NPR journalists covering conflicts of interest sparked by the Trump family business. He did some of the early investigations of dark money, dissecting a money network that influenced a Michigan judicial election in 2013, and — working with the Center for Investigative Reporting — surfacing below-the-radar attack groups in the 2008 presidential election.
In 2009, Overby co-reported Dollar Politics, a multimedia series on lawmakers, lobbyists and money as the Senate debated the Affordable Care Act. The series received an award for excellence from the Capitol Hill-based Radio and Television Correspondents Association. Earlier, he won an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton for his coverage of the 2000 elections and 2001 Senate debate on campaign finance reform.
Prior to NPR, Overby was an editor/reporter for Common Cause Magazine, where he shared an Investigative Reporters and Editors award. He worked on daily newspapers for 10 years, and has freelanced for publications ranging from Utne Reader and the Congressional Quarterly Guide To Congress to the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post.
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For the first time ever, a political operative got prison time for illegally coordinating between a superPAC and a campaign. It could have implications for the 2016 presidential race. -
Since the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, money in politics has exploded. To make it in the 2016 presidential race, candidates need their own billionaire. Here's who's lining up with whom. -
A new poll shows Americans think the rich have too much influence and that the political money system needs an overhaul, but they rate it low on the priority list. -
Doug Hughes flew into Washington, D.C., on something resembling a hybrid bicycle and helicopter. He did it to protest money in politics, but he could face up to a decade in prison. He has no regrets. -
Candidates, people likely to become them and their supporters on both the left and right — from Hillary Clinton to Jeb Bush — are exploiting holes in campaign-finance law loopholes. Here's how. -
The lofty target for the superPAC of not-quite-a-candidate Jeb Bush is one more sign of the cash gusher — and legal gray areas — opened up by recent campaign finance decisions. -
Under narrow definitions of corruption, candidates courting billionaires to fuel their White House bids doesn't qualify. But some activists, on the left and the right, argue that it should. -
The Supreme Court has increased campaign spending limits, but not when it comes to judges. It found an "unavoidable appearance that judges who personally ask for money may diminish their integrity." -
Since Hillary Clinton launched her presidential run, her family's foundation has been scrutinized. The Clintons responded, calling it the most transparent organization of its kind. But is that true? -
Clinton called campaign finance reform one of the "four big fights" of her campaign. But does this idea of a constitutional amendment to restrict or eliminate big money stand a chance?
