Last week Sunlight kicked off the new year with a slew of fresh reporting on the influence of Super PACs in the busy Republican primaries. Be sure to check in on our new Super PAC cheat sheet for updated reports on who is supporting or opposing candidates.
Continue readingSuper PAC profile: Former Gingrich aides—and maybe donors—behind Winning Our Future
Even before it formally registered with the Federal Election Commission in mid-December, Winning Our Future, the leading super PAC backing Newt Gingrich, raised more than $2 million, according to founder and president Becky Burkett. That includes “a few” donations above the $100,000 mark, she said.
The haul is far less than that of the super PACs backing Mitt Romney and Rick Perry, and even below what's been spent so far by a pro-Jon Huntsman super PAC. But the money was amassed in a much shorter time. Burkett’s past fundraising success with a now-defunct nonprofit led by Gingrich ...
Continue readingSuper PAC profile: Red White and Blue for Santorum
Before the Iowa contest that catapulted Rick Santorum to front-runner status, the patriotically-named Red White and Blue PAC spent $537,200 and produced two television ads touting the former Pennsylvania senator's conservatism and electability. Borrowing a word from the organizers of a super PAC supporting Mitt Romney, the ad above urged Iowans to "Restore America's greatness."
The PAC is a relatively new one, registering with the Federal Electoral Commission in October 2011. Like most super PACs, Red, White and Blue has yet to disclose its financial backers, but MSNBC identified one of its donors as Foster Friess, president ...
Continue readingSuper PAC profile: Pro-Perry Make Us Great Again has ties to former staff, major donor
One of the highest spending super PACs so far, the pro-Rick Perry Make Us Great Again is headed by the Texas governor’s former chief of staff Mike Toomey. A Texas lobbyist, Toomey is a longtime friend and confidant of Perry's who was behind Perry’s switch in party affiliation in 1985 after he was elected to the Texas legislature. He has a reputation of being Perry's “enforcer.”
The ads run by the super PAC portray Perry as an anti-Washington candidate, with energy and tax reforms as his leading campaign mantra. The video and radio ads feature Perry ...
Continue readingSuper PAC profile: Revolution PAC launches NH ad campaign touting Ron Paul’s ‘compassion’ toward interracial couple
A super PAC supporting Ron Paul's bid for the presidency plans to begin airing a television commercial in New Hampshire this weekend that describes how the GOP presidential candidate helped an interracial couple in Texas, where Paul worked as an obstetrician-gynecologist.
Gary Franchi, treasurer of Revolution PAC, said the group has invested $100,000 to put the commercial on major TV networks in the Granite State in advance of Tuesday's first-in-the-nation primary. Franchi said the video was not produced in response to the controversy that has arisen around a newsletter published under his name in the late 1980s ...
Continue readingSuper PAC spending: $13 million and counting
As the voting for the Republican presidential nomination gets underway, super PACs have already emerged as a big factor, spending more than $13 million so far in Iowa and other early-voting states. Yet a growing number of the independent expenditure groups active on behalf of presidential candidates has made moves to ensure that information on their donors will likely remain hidden until votes are cast in three more states.
Four of the biggest spenders—the pro-Romney Restore our Future PAC, the pro-Santorum Red, White & Blue Fund, the pro-Huntsman Our Destiny PAC, and the pro-Gingrich Winning Our Future, recently changed their ...
Continue readingSuper PAC profile: Ron Paul Volunteers offers contributors’ protection program?
Lack of transparency can be a good thing, declares the treasurer of “Ron Paul Volunteers,” a Miami-based Super PAC he recently established in hopes of raising “in the low six figures” to help support Paul bid in Florida's Jan. 31 presidential primary.
“I think to a certain extent we have an entrenched political establishment that for the most part has a clear punishment and reward system,” treasurer Hector Roos told Sunlight in an interview. “If you are going to put money out there against a candidate it might hurt you immediately in the public light or when it comes ...
Continue readingSuper PAC profile: Restore Our Future helped Romney and infuriated Gingrich
Arguably the most influential political advertisements so far of the 2012 cycle -- ads that helped topple Newt Gingrich from GOP presidential frontrunner to out-of-the-money finisher in Iowa on Tuesday -- were produced and purchased by a super PAC that purports to be making "independent expenditures" in the campaign but that has plenty of connections to Mitt Romney.
Restore our Future, a super PAC established and operated by a group of Romney's former staffers and supporters, spent $4.1 million before the Iowa caucus on an ad blitz aimed largely at Gingrich, the former House speaker who once appeared to be ...
Continue readingSuper PAC profile: Leaders for Families pushed Santorum’s Iowa surge
Rick Santorum's late surge in Iowa was aided by a lately formed Super PAC. Leaders for Families takes its name from the Family Leader, an umbrella name for a pair of nonprofit organizations that oppose Iowa's same sex marriage law. Chuck Hurley, the PAC's treasurer, is president of the Iowa Family Policy Center, the "education division" of Family Leader, and president of the Iowa Family PAC, a state-level committee affiliated with Family Leader.
Hurley endorsed Mike Huckabee in 2007. In an interview with the Iowa Independent in July of that year, Hurley said that Romney's ...
Continue readingPro-Gingrich group moves to delay revealing donors
Another leading presidential super PAC signaled Thursday that it plans to keep its donors' identities under wraps until Jan. 31, meaning voters in four crucial early contests will go to the polls without knowing who is behind two well-funded efforts to influence their decisions.
Winning Our Future, an outside group backing Newt Gingrich, notified the Federal Election Commission that it is changing its filing status to push back a deadline for making donations public by four weeks, copying a move made earlier this month by Restore Our Future, a group backing Mitt Romney, one of Gingrich's chief rivals for ...
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