How Payday Lenders (Quietly) Donate to Campaigns

Mitt Romney has made no secret of his disdain for the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. On Jan. 4, the day President Barack Obama went over the heads of the Senate and installed Richard Cordray as the agency’s director, Romney blasted the move as “Chicago-style politics at its worst” and denounced the CFPB as “perhaps the most powerful and unaccountable bureaucracy in the history of our nation.” Two weeks later payday lenders, who are now watched over by the consumer bureau, began lining up behind Romney.

They did so quietly. From Jan. 13 to Feb. 29, payday and auto-title lenders contributed $427,500 to Restore Our Future, the super PAC supporting Romney’s presidential campaign. More than half of that was funneled through limited-liability companies and other corporate entities with nondescript names that obscure the short-term lending industry as the source of the money.