Every campaign season millions of dollars are spent on TV ads in hopes of wooing voters to support one candidate over another. But it isn’t just the candidates themselves funding the barrage of 30-second clips clogging the airwaves during the silly season. Through what’s know as an independent expenditure, political parties and committees can also spend on advertising as long as their efforts aren’t officially coordinated with a candidate’s campaign. Thanks to a January US Supreme Court ruling, corporations and labor unions are now no longer banned from doing the same.

Last week we launched a new segment we’re calling Ad Nauseum and for our second installment we’ll delve into that decision with Susan Lerner, the Executive Director of Common Cause New York and Bill de Blasio, the New York City Public Advocate.

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