Skip to footer

Election 2012: top seven super PACs

Decoder profiles the seven top super PACs, the organizations that have spent the most trying to influence the elections – and still have the most money in the bank.

2. American Crossroads

Michael Bonfigli/The Christian Science Monitor
American Crossroads Chairman Mike Duncan (red tie) and President Steven Law (orange tie) speak at a Monitor sponsored breakfast at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington, DC on June 24, 2011.

American Crossroads has spent $43.5 million supporting Republican candidates, including $25.3 million for ads opposing President Obama. It has raised $56.8 million for the 2012 campaign cycle, as of Oct. 4, with millions in reserve for the last weeks of the campaign. 

The group is lead by GOP mainstays like Mike Duncan, who was chairman, treasurer, and general counsel of the Republican National Committee, and Carl Forti former deputy campaign manager for Romney in 2008 and cofounder of Restore Our Future. Karl Rove, a leading GOP strategist and top aide in the George W. Bush administration, is the group's cofounder and adviser.

In addition, Crossroads GPS – its affiliate group, organized under section 501(c) of the tax code, also founded by Mr. Rove – has spent another $20.9 million to build public support for conservative policy over the current current campaign cycle. Together, the two organizations have spent $51.6 million on TV ads, 100 percent of which have been negative. They have targeted presidential battleground markets, as well as Vermont, Massachusetts, Maine, Michigan, and Montana.

American Crossroads endorses no particular candidate on its website, but has supported Republican candidates in New York, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico, as well as spending $97,500 in support of Romney. It still has some $27 million in reserve, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The largest donor to American Crossroads has been Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons and his company Contran Corp. Mr. Simmons has donated $6 million to American Crossroads, and overall Contran Corp has given $13 million. Simmons has been a major contributor to conservative candidates, including Newt Gingrich, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R) of Minnesota, Sen. John McCain (R) of Arizona, and Gov. Rick Perry (R) of Texas.

Sourcing this Report:

Several sources were used to compile this report. 

The figures for total expenditures, total money raised, and totals spent in support or opposition of specific candidates were taken from Open Secrets. Open Secrets is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that tracks money in US politics and its effect on elections and public policy. The website, which was launched in 1996, is project of The Center for Responsive Politics, which was founded in 1983 by US Sens. Frank Church (D-Idaho) and Hugh Scott (R-Pa.), in order to track money in politics, public policy, and elections. 

All figures were taken from the 2012 election cycle, and were based on data released by the FEC, and last updated Oct. 4. For Open Secrets' full report on spending by all 900 super PACs click here.

Advertising figures and specific markets targeted were taken from the Washington Post's Mad Money feature, which tracks the cumulative and weekly spending on television advertising by candidate and by the groups supporting them. The Post also calculated the percentage of ads that have been negative vs. positive. Their data was last updated Oct. 3.

The Center for Public Integrity, and the New York Times were used for background research on top donors and organizers of each super PAC. 

Other sites used include the official webpages for each super PAC, the Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group, NBC News, as well as some local news sources like the Dallas Morning News and the Denver Post.

2 of 7
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.