People For’s President Michael Keegan has a new op-ed in the Huffington Post today examining the impact of anonymous donors on this year’s midterm elections. He looks at the difference between spending by shadowy groups like the American Future Fund and another type of big spender in elections: self-funded candidates.

Polling shows that the vast majority of Americans really don’t like the idea of corporations and interest groups pouring money into elections…and also really don’t like it that outside groups don’t have to reveal the major sources of their money.

But not liking the idea of wealthy people or corporations or powerful special interest groups trying to buy elections isn’t much help when you’re seeing a convincing ad on TV from a group with a name like the “Commission on Hope, Growth, and Opportunity” — and have no way of finding out what the money and motivations behind the ad are.

Self-financed candidates are, to a large extent, “known knowns.” When a candidate is bankrolling her own campaign, voters go into the polling place knowing full well who’s most invested in that candidate’s success and where the money comes from. Voters knew that Carly Fiorina made her fortune by sending jobs overseas, and Linda McMahon made hers by selling misogyny. But when a candidate is backed by millions of dollars from shadowy interest groups, the equation gets more difficult. The money’s there, but it’s difficult if not impossible to tell where the money comes from and what exactly it’s meant to buy.

The system as it is hands a huge advantage to candidates who advance pro-corporate policies, and also rewards those who avoid wearing their corporate allegiances on their sleeves.

When the 112th Congress convenes, its members will include politicians who campaigned on radical pro-corporate policies — eliminating health care reform, privatizing Social Security, deregulating Wall Street. Corporate America and the Tea Party movement have been closely linked since former Wall Street banker Rick Santelli issued his infamous battle cry on CNBC. But the unlimited, undisclosed corporate money poured into the campaigns of Tea Party candidates has made the union complete. We may not know exactly who our new Congress is indebted to, but we do know that that debt is enormous.

Read the whole thing at the Huffington Post. Then call your senators and urge them to vote for the DISCLOSE Act.