GOP mega-donors show PAC loyalty

Just 17 donors shelled out about half of the more than $81 million that's flooded into PACs.

By ROBIN BRAVENDER | 3/31/12 4:30 PM EDT

Big GOP super PAC donors have been stubbornly standing by their favorite presidential candidates — even those with doomed campaigns.
Just 17 million-dollar-plus donors have shelled out about half of the more than $81 million that has already flooded into super PACs supporting Republican presidential hopefuls this election cycle. The vast majority of the big super PAC spenders have remained loyal to a single candidate, according to a POLITICO analysis of the most recent campaign filings.

And while some of the biggest givers, including casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, have signaled that they’ll eventually coalesce around the official GOP nominee, most haven’t — and their dollars haven’t either.

The latest filings show super PAC donations through the end of February, when Mitt Romney’s eventual nomination didn’t appear as clear-cut, and big donors may have been hoping for an underdog uprising. Still, mega-donors’ loyalty is another sign that in the new age of candidate-focused super PACs, party faithful are willing to spend millions of dollars to back their favorite candidates and fuel intra-party spats, instead of moving that cash into GOP infrastructure or groups ready to pivot into the general election.

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Republican Party Is Rotted and Collapsing from Within -- And We Can Thank Super PACs for Exposing It

Super PACs are an affront to the democratic process, but they are hastening the Republican Party's fall.

March 26, 2012

They are anti-democratic and turning the 2012 presidential campaign into an extreme sport for the wealthy, but they are destroying the modern Republican Party in the process. Call it the paradox of the Super PACs. 

 

These big-money operations have made a mockery of campaign finance laws and even the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling by being shadow campaigns for candidates and giving a handful of rich people an unprecedented level of power in the presidential race. But perhaps we also should thank the multi-millionaires writing outsized checks to benefit Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum because their obstinate crusades—and Mitt Romney’s erratic replies—keep reminding anyone paying attention that today's Republican Party is not just a mess, but is collapsing from within.

 

It is not as if the Democrats are a model of unity—although they may have more discipline than today’s GOP. Rather, the super PAC-funded media wars among the Republicans have brought a breach into the open that the GOP establishment can no longer contain: the fight between the Republican Party's hardened right (religious conservatives and Tea Partiers) and the party's business-first corporatists.

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Super Donors: A Guide to the Top Ten Super PAC Givers

Saturday 3 March 2012

by: Ariel Wittenberg, ProPublica | News Analysis 

 

The coming election cycle will likely be the most expensive in history. Thanks to Citizens United and other recent court decisions, individuals, corporations and unions can make unlimited donations to so-called super PACs that support a candidate. The money is flowing in. So, exactly who is donating, and what do they want?

Here’s our guide to the top 10 super PAC contributors through Jan. 31, the latest date for which donors have been required to disclose. Unless otherwise noted, all estimates of net worth are from Forbes. (See our PAC Tracker for an interactive breakdown of all the money going to super PACs and others.)

 

Harold Simmons

Amount donated: $11.2 million (Contran, a company owned by Simmons, has donated $3 million.)

To whom: $10 million to American Crossroads the Republican super PAC affiliated with Karl Rove; $1 million to Winning Our Future, the super PAC supporting Gingrich; $100,000 to Restoring Prosperity Fund, the super PAC supporting Rick Perry; and $100,000 to Restore Our Future, the super PAC supporting Mitt Romney

Net worth: $9.3 billion

 

Residence: Dallas

 

How he made his fortune:    READ MORE

The Devil and Rick Santorum: Dilemmas of a Holy Owned Subsidiary

The father of the Investment Theory of Politics reveals what pundits are missing in the GOP's failure to lead its own electorate.

January 6, 2012

Election night in Iowa was a heavenly moment for Rick Santorum. As he marveled over the late breaking tidal wave of support that in just weeks had swept him from nowhere into a virtual tie with Mitt Romney for first place in the state’s Republican caucuses, the former Pennsylvania Senator gushed to supporters about the secret of his campaign’s success: “I’ve survived the challenges so far by the daily grace that comes from God. . . . I offer a public thanks to God.’’ 

But it was not God who saved Rick Santorum. He survived Iowa rather like a blind mole rat might someday outlive a nuclear exchange – by simply burrowing underground while Romney’s Super Pac incinerated Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry, and while Perry tried to demolish Ron Paul, whom he considered a more dangerous rival. In a state where 60% of those attending the 2008 GOP caucuses described themselves as “born again” or evangelicals, Santorum was the only ultra-conservative left for resigned evangelical leaders to swing behind.

Now, as the wall of Super Money comes down on him like a ton of gold bricks, Santorum is likely fated, like Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, and Perry himself, to flame out after a brief moment of glory and go back to working with the energy and health care enterprises that helped make him a millionaire after leaving the Senate.   READ MORE

The Grotesque Corporate Monstrosity Unleashed By Citizens United

Citizens United invites the worst corruption our democracy has witnessed since the Gilded Age. Mitt Romney is one of its biggest beneficiaries.

January 5, 2012

If Mitt Romney becomes president I’m to blame. Ten years ago I ran for the Democratic nomination for governor of Massachusetts — which would have given me the opportunity to whip Mitt Romney’s ass in the general election.

I blew it. In the final week of the primary I was neck and neck with the state treasurer, but then my money ran out, which meant my TV ads stopped. Declining the suggestion of my campaign manager to take out a second mortgage on my home, I frantically phoned anyone I could find who hadn’t yet contributed $500, the maximum state law allowed. I didn’t raise beans. In the end, the treasurer won the primary, Romney won the general election and became governor, and I went back to being a professor.

But my fantasy of beating Romney may be nothing more than a fantasy because Romney had — and still has — something I never did, and I’m not referring to his gleaming white teeth, carefully-coiffed hairline, or height. He has money, and he has connections to much more money.

Mitt Romney was and is the candidate of big money.  READ MORE