American Crossroads Rakes In Half Its Haul From a Single Donor

[ProSense]

The Hill: American Crossroads raises $15M from September through mid-October

An arm of one of the GOP-aligned groups under siege from attacks by President Obama and Democrats will report having raised $15 million between Sept. 1 and Oct. 13.

American Crossroads, the 527 organization affiliated with former George W. Bush administration officials Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, will report having raised approximately $7 million in September and $8 million between Oct. 1-13 in Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings Wednesday evening.

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American Crossroads Rakes In Half Its Haul From a Single Donor

By Jesse Zwick

When Obama reprimanded groups like Crossroads GPS and the Chamber of Commerce for soliciting secret funds to fuel GOP attack ads, Karl Rove bragged on Fox News, “The president, by attacking American Crossroads, has helped drive people to our website and has helped to raise the amount of money that we received.”

But American Crossroads’ last filing with the Federal Election Commission makes it clear that when Rove said “people,” he mainly meant Texas homebuilder Bob Perry, who donated $7 million of the $15 million that the group raised in September and early October. Perry, a prominent GOP donor best known for financing the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ad campaign against John Kerry in 2004, was joined also by Robert Rowling, CEO of TRT holdings (who made both a personal and a corporate donation); the Alliance Resource Group, which has interests in the Tulsa coal industry; and B. Wayne Hughes, founder and chairman of Public Storage. Together, their donations total $12 million — or more than two-thirds of Crossroads’ haul for the period.

The donations to American Crossroads’ sister organization, Crossroads GPS, were not disclosed because it is registered as a Section 501(c)(4) nonprofit. Many speculate that a greater proportion of corporate money is flowing to the group for that reason. Yet a number of companies, in addition to Alliance Resources and TRT Holdings, did donate directly to American Crossroads this quarter, including Universal Health Care, MDI Imaging and Weaver Popcorn of Indianapolis.

The Eleven Million Dollar Man

Posted by Michael Crowley

I missed this yesterday, but according to new campaign finance reports the Houston-based housing mogul Bob Perry, best known in politics for his support of the 2004 anti-John Kerry Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, has donated at least $11 million this year to independent Republican campaign groups operating under section 527 of the tax code. Seven million dollars of that money went to American Crossroads, the group founded (and funded) with the help of senior George W. Bush advisors Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, and which is running negative ads against Democrats nationwide. (For esoteric tax reasons about which you can read more here, American Crossroads must periodically disclose its donors; its sister organization, Crossroads GPS, can provide complete anonymity to its givers. Here's the latest Crossroads GPS broadside against Harry Reid.) Perry has given at least another $4 million to Haley Barbour's Republican Governors Association, which also discloses its donors periodically.

Let's put this in perspective. The federal limit for one individual's contribution to any given candidate is just $2,400 per election. (A primary and a general election count separately). You can give $5,000 to any given Political Action Committee. And if you're feeling really profligate, you can give a whopping $30,400 to a national party committee. But the law also says that your total contributions to whichever candidates and committees you choose can't add up to more than $115,500 within a two-year election cycle.

So Bob Perry's contributions to American Crossroads and the RGA alone--and who knows how much more he's given to groups that do not disclose donor information--totals nearly 100 times the federal limit for giving to other types of political committees. (Read more about Perry's history of political activity here.) Never mind that these 527 outfits provide much the same function as, say, the National Republican Senatorial Committee. (One key legal distinction: The 527 groups can't coordinate with candidates or party committees, though in practice they're run by experienced pols who game out what that coordination would entail and try to emulate it without actually picking up the phone.)

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P.S. Republicans argue that Democrats have played the very same game in recent years to far less public scorn. And it is true that in 2004 527 groups like the Media Fund and America Coming Together spent more than $100 million on advertising and voter turnout operations to help defeat George W. Bush. For instance, a lesser-known liberal 527 (which in turn donated heavily to ACT and the Media Fund) known as the Joint Victory Campaign took in $16 million from Progressive Insurance founder Peter Lewis and another $12 million from George Soros. But the difference between then and now is that those liberal outfits were 527 groups which did periodically disclose their donors. Many of the conservative outfits now in operation, unlike American Crossroads and the RGA, don't have to reveal anything about where their money comes from. (That list includes that top Obama nemesis, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.) And that, reformers say, undermines a fundamental principle of post-Watergate campaign finance law.

Also, despite what Karl Rove may say, some top reformers did complain about those liberal groups back in 2004.

[Historic NY]

1. But the RW willl scream Soros...

[ProSense]

3. Yeah, that

and where is Obama's birth certificate.

[fugop]

2. Americans are so screwed

It's just freakin' terrified how screwed we are.