In what may be one of the most pointed political jokes since Jonathan Swift's Modest Proposal, Stephen Colbert's satirical mystery tour has arrived in South Carolina.
As of Wednesday, the political action committee that the comedian founded amid much fanfare last year had spent $65,000 buying time in Charleston, S.C. to air a series of ads: one attacking Republicans who benefit from super PAC spending in general; another attacking Mitt Romney in particular, and a third suggesting that a vote for the now-non-candidate Herman Cain is a vote for faux-candidate Colbert.
Earlier TV ad campaigns by ...
Continue readingSuper PAC profile: Pro-Ron Paul group has corporate address
Heading into the South Carolina primary, Santa Rita super PAC had created seven ads that appear on its YouTube channel. According to FEC records the PAC spent $317,500 producing ads and buying time on 14 channels for a promised 11-day ad blitz before Palmetto State voters head to the polls Saturday.
The president and treasurer of Santa Rita PAC is a Donald Huffines, the co-owner of Huffines Communities, a Texas-based real estate development company. Though the PAC is being run out of the same Dallas office suite as Huffines Communities, it is not registered as a corporate PAC and ...
Continue readingSuper PAC profile: 1911 United—a new kind of committee?
Although one of its founders is a longtime D.C. political insider found by an independent probe last year to have wasted D.C. taxpayers’ money, the pro-Obama super PAC 1911 United claims to have a more populist bent than other independent committees that have sprung up in the wake of the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling.
The super PAC plans to focus on seven swing states with high African-American populations and will spend its resources on voter mobilization and training, as well as something more common to independent-expenditure-only committees: advertising.
The group will set itself apart in three ...
Continue readingWill Super PACs Determine the 2012 Election?
The Advisory Committee on Transparency is hosting an event, “Will Super PACs Determine the 2012 Election? Should they be more transparent?”... View Article
Continue readingBain Capital tops list of Romney’s career political supporters
Bain Capital, the private equity firm that Mitt Romney has touted as the source of his business acumen and one of his opponents for the Republican nomination has labeled "vultures" is the largest source of political money for the former Massachusetts governor over the course of his career.
Current and former executives and family members of Bain Capital have contributed more than $2.7 million to Romney's federal and state campaigns, federal and state leadership PACs, the Restore Our Future super PAC that supports Romney, and his gubernatorial inauguration fundraising committee.
Sunlight analyzed federal campaign finance data from the ...
Continue readingSuper PAC profile: Citizens for a Working America flies under the radar
Citizens for Working America is not the biggest or the most influential of the super PACs, but it may provide one of the clearest illustrations of how hard it is to track the shadowy organizations that have sprung up to influence elections in the wake of the Supreme Court's landmark Citizens United decision.
The group first surfaced in 2010, when it became one of the big spenders in a successful GOP campaign to unseat House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt from a seat that the South Carolina Democrat occupied for 28 years.
In July, when the PAC, filed its ...
Continue readingAs campaigns head south, super PACs dominate the airwaves
As the Republican presidential race turns south, the key players to watch appear to be not the candidates emerging from Tuesday's New Hampshire primary but the super PACs who are supporting or opposing them.
In South Carolina, where the next votes will be cast in a Jan. 21 primary, local political observers and television executives tell Sunlight that the new political entities—most of which have yet to disclose any sources of their funding—are dominating the airwaves, far outspending the candidates. In Florida, which holds its primary on Jan. 31, a super PAC backing New Hampshire winner Mitt ...
Continue readingNew Super PAC seeks expansion of role for corporate, connected PACs
Dan Backer, the attorney behind the hybrid super PAC rule that allows political action committees contributing to members of Congress and other candidates to also accept unlimited contributions to make independent expenditures, is trying to extend the favor to political action committees tied to corporate entities.
In a new Advisory Opinion Request filed with the Federal Election Commission, Backer asks the commission to allow Stop This Insanity Employee Leadership Fund, a new independent expenditure-only committee attached to the nonprofit Stop This Insanity organization, to be permitted to have separate accounts to contribute to candidates and make independent expenditures.
MORE: See ...
Continue readingSunlight Drafts SUPERPAC Act to Address Hidden Money in Elections
As the second anniversary of the Supreme Court’s disastrous Citizens United decision approaches, the Sunlight Foundation has drafted the Stop... View Article
Continue readingSuper PAC profile: Obama supported by Priorities USA Action
Priorities USA Action defines its mission as "committed to the reelection of President Obama." The group is currently opposing Mitt Romney with media ad buys.
The following ad uses Romney quotes, mostly out of context, and the tone of an apocalyptic movie trailer to suggest that a Romney presidency that "is not a pretty picture."
The people behind Priorities USA Action are well connected to Obama and the Democratic party. The political strategist for the organization, Bill Burton, formerly served as the president's deputy White House press secretary. Before that, he was a spokesman for Obama's 2008 campagn ...
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