In the run-up to Wisconsin’s June gubernatorial recall election — where American Majority Action, Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks played big roles using their respective voter database technologies — “I was getting reports from people about the right using paid canvassers with itouch devices that had voter lists on them and it was the first time we’ve seen that,” Rosenthal said.

“We’ve seen evidence with some of the voter registration and early voting numbers that there is more of a ground game there this time,” Rosenthal said, adding “With the ground stuff, it’s almost like we leap frog each other. We do stuff on our side, they do stuff on their side.”

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The shift to independent paid canvassing also highlights another market force under-girding the new unlimited money political universe. Groups are eager to prove to the donors who funded their historic 2012 spending spree that their huge checks weren’t squandered on expensive ad buys, but instead went towards build the capacity of the conservative movement beyond Nov. 6.

That pressure is particularly acute in the Koch brothers’ network of groups, which met recently in Washington to discuss ways to quantify voter outreach and other accomplishments.

“The Koch people are investing a lot of money to get out the vote,” said a source familiar with the brothers’ political operation. “Any group has a plausible scenario for doing voter turnout is going to come away with something.”

That’s led to a host of requests, including from Ralph Reed, and his evangelical voter mobilization nonprofit called Faith and Freedom Coalition. It has partnered with the Karl Rove-conceived nonprofit Crossroads GPS, but it’s unclear if Reed’s group received cash through the Koch operation.

Other sources said that Sean Noble, a Koch operative, has been steering cash to groups in swing states – including many that pay canvassers – to bus or fly in out-of-state tea party activists and homeschooled high school students to do canvassing.

“This is a national effort – we’re taking kids from where they’re available to where they’re needed,” said Mike Farris, president of the Home School Legal Defense Association. “Fifty kids can outwork 100 union members every single time. The energy levels are just dramatically different.”

It’s “terrific government education,” Farris added. “You can’t get this kind of education in public schools.”

His conservative nonprofit group has dispatched homeschooled students – expenses paid – to work as volunteers in the past for Republican campaign and party committees. But this year it’s dispatching 1,700 students to work 18 House and Senate races around the country, mostly through well-funded outside groups including Americans for Prosperity in New Hampshire and CitizenLink in Colorado.

But some veteran Republican operatives worry that introducing big money into a ground game once fueled mostly by pure volunteer passion will diminish enthusiasm and make it harder to recruit people in the future.

It’s one thing to pay to fill gaps in your ground game, said Matt Schlapp, a former political director for President George W. Bush, but making paid canvassing the norm for outside groups sets a bad precedent.

“The strength of a political movement or a party is largely based on the desire of citizens across the country to voluntarily give of their financial resources and their time,” he said. “It’s harder to make the case that your cause is filled with citizen advocates when it’s actually filled with citizen mercenaries.”

That’s not the case with Americans for Prosperity, says Phillips.

Phillips didn’t immediately know the percentage of AFP’s more than 37,000 engaged activists who had accepted payment for their efforts, but asserted cash was not a motivating factor in most cases. “Certainly the majority of our people say ‘look, I don’t want anything, I’m good, thank you for even suggesting it, but I’m just a grassroots volunteer and I want to remain in that vein fully.’”