Campaign Cash: The Independent Fundraising Gold Rush Since ‘Citizens United’ Ruling

Center for Public Integrity:

For many powerful GOP operatives and allied fundraisers, the luncheon last April felt like one part reunion and one part strategy summit for the fall. In reality, the get-together at Karl Rove’s house and office on Weaver Terrace in Washington, D.C., was a bit of both.

The crowd of about two dozen had assembled at the behest of Rove and former Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie. The powerful pair had teamed up earlier in the year to help launch American Crossroads, a non-profit group with separate political advocacy and grassroots lobbying arms that together plan to spend $52 million this year to help a few dozen GOP Senate and House candidates with television ads and get-out-the-vote drives.

Gillespie’s invitation to the April 21 luncheon had a casual tone, asking old political comrades to attend an “informal discussion of the 2010 political landscape.”

But as the crew of old GOP friends munched on chicken pot pies, Rove and Gillespie had another, larger agenda: expanding cooperation. And they found an altogether receptive audience. Among those in attendance: Bill Miller, the political director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce which has announced a record election budget of $75 million; former Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota, the CEO of the American Action Network, a fledgling group that’s hoping to spend about $25 million to help Senate and House candidates; Steven Law, a former general counsel at the Chamber and the president of American Crossroads; and Greg Casey, the president of the Business Industry Political Action Committee which aims to spend $6 million this year to boost the pro-business vote.

Altogether, the groups represented at the lunch — and a few others, some of whom have attended subsequent sessions — plan to pour some $300 million into ads and get out the vote efforts to help scores of GOP Congressional candidates in battleground states such as Colorado, Nevada, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Some have likened their effort to a shadow GOP.

For Gillespie, Rove and other attendees the rationale to expand their coordination was simple: Democratic allied groups in recent elections had considerable success using cooperative tactics and GOP strategists wanted to match and even one up them. “I’m glad we’re taking a page out of their playbook,” Gillespie told the Center.

These independent GOP allies represent the leading edge of the new world of campaign finance, 2010 edition. Sensing a possible takeover on Capitol Hill, they have aggressively tapped a network of angry corporate and conservative donors, a task made easier by the Supreme Court’s famously controversial January ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. That decision overturned decades of campaign finance law and gave the green light to corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts on ads and other campaign activities that can urge voters to directly oppose or support individual candidates. Some companies in sectors hit hard by new regulations — including financial, energy and health care interests — are grabbing for their checkbooks, and they are actively seeking the anonymity provided by new and older independent groups in the post-Citizens United world
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