A giant photo of Rep. Mike Thompson graces the front page of Politico today, leading off a story on the large amounts unregulated and undisclosed cash both parties are raising in advance of anticipated legal fights over this year’s congressional redistricting.

Thompson has been tasked with heading fundraising for something called the National Democratic Redistricting Trust, which will fund his parties legal challenges against redistricting decisions that go against Team Blue. His counterpart across the aisle is Rep. Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia. Both sides are coming under fire from clean-government types who protest a recent Federal Elections Commission decision that allow contributors to such funds to remain anonymous:

The FEC’s decision “opens the door to the return to the corruption of the soft-money era that Congress slammed shut with the 2002 McCain-Feingold” law, said Paul Ryan, FEC program director and associate legal counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, a watchdog group. Soft-money fundraising was banned for the national party committees by the McCain-Feingold bill, although in this case, the FEC ruled 5-1 that donations to the National Democratic Redistricting Trust “will not fund attempts to influence elections.”

See the whole story here.