Pro-Romney super PAC: $100 million and counting
Restore Our Future has hit a fundraising milestone: The super PAC supporting Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has clocked $100 million in contributions since it was organized just two years ago this month.
That puts the pro-Romney super PAC far ahead of the rest of the PAC pack when it comes to fundraising, Sunlight's Follow the Unlimited Money tracker shows, though just how wide a lead it enjoys won't be possible to determine until the rest of the campaign committees file their latest reports with the Federal Election Commission. Committees that report monthly to the FEC — a group that includes the presidential candidates and most of the super PACs — must file their final reports before the election by midnight tonight. Sunlight is watching the reports as they come in and will be posting as we see news.
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Restore our Future is spending money as fast as it comes in: The committee had made $99.1 million in independent expenditures as of Saturday morning. Most of the recent expenditures have been for ad buys and direct mailings. Sunlight's Political Ad Sleuth, which tracks political ad buys, indicates that Restore Our Future has been most active in the battleground states of Florida, Michigan and North Carolina.
The super PAC has collected many seven-figure checks in the last month. Politico's Dave Levinthal reports that Texas mega-donors Bob Perry and Bob McNair where among those ponying up big checks, as well as William Koch, a member of the GOP underwriting dynasty. McNair is the majority owner of the NFL's Houston Texans; Perry, a homebuilding mogul, was also a major backer of the "Swift Boat" ad campaign that torpedoed the 2004 presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., our friends over at Open Secrets note.
Over at the New York Times, Michael Luo unearthed another intriguing donation: a $100,000 check from a company owned by freshman Republican Rep. Diane Black of Tennessee and her husband. Luo also calls attention to the large number of mystery donors on Restore Our Future's roster: A number of donor names appear to be shell corporations designed to mask the real identities of the giver. But Luo has done a good job as sussing some of them out.
