Mystery PACs appearing across country in tight races

Fredreka Schouten, USA TODAY | USATODAY

WASHINGTON – Last week, a brand-new Republican super PAC made a big splash in the Michigan Senate race -- spending $1 million on a biting TV ad that attacks Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow as a tax scofflaw.

However, The Hardworking Americans Committee, as the group is called, hasn't disclosed its donors and won't have to until a month after Election Day.

"In due time, we'll file our reports," said Stuart Sandler, a former Michigan Republican Party official who is the group's treasurer. In the meantime, the group plans to "educate the public on issues and candidates," he said.

The committee is one of a crop of newly active outside political groups racing to shape presidential and congressional contests in the waning days of the campaign. Overall, 67 super PACs and other independent groups have launched their political activity in the last month, according to a tally by the non-partisan Sunlight Foundation, which tracks political spending.

Together, these late-spending organizations have pumped more than $36 million into federal contests since Oct. 1. Of the 10 groups spending more than $1 million each, all but two back Republican candidates.

"All of a sudden, groups with names that don't mean anything are coming out of the woodwork at the tail end of the election," said the Sunlight Foundation's Bill Allison. "We won't know who's behind it until after Election Day, and in some cases we'll never know."

Super PACs, as these political action committees are known, are a potent force in American politics, born of two federal court rulings, including the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision. These groups can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money from individuals, corporations and unions to influence elections. They are barred from coordinating their spending with the candidates they support and must publicly report the sources of their money.

A tangle of federal election laws and IRS rules regarding disclosure, however, has kept voters in the dark about some of the last-minute spending in the nation's most hotly contested races.

In Connecticut, for instance, a little-known super PAC pumped nearly $1.1 million into advertising to influence a competitive House race in mid-October and spent another $900,000 this week on commercials in the battleground state of Ohio to oppose President Obama's re-election. The Government Integrity Fund Action Network's biggest donors are non-profits that don't have to publicly reveal their funders.

Another Republican-affiliated super PAC created two weeks ago spent $1 million last week on advertising to oppose two Democratic candidates, Montana Sen. Jon Tester and former North Dakota attorney general Heidi Heitkamp and to support Heitkamp's Republican opponent Rep. Rick Berg. The group, Freedom Fund North America, hasn't disclosed its funders.

Michael Adams, a Washington lawyer who serves as general counsel for the Republican Governors Association, is listed on Federal Election Commission filings as the group's treasurer. He did not return telephone calls.

"I think the whole thing stinks," Heitkamp told USA TODAY. "I think the American people are saying, 'Who are these people who want to buy an election and are insulting us on the airwaves?' "

Outside groups – about evenly divided between Republican and Democratic-aligned organizations – have spent more than $15 million to shape the battle for North Dakota's open Senate seat. RealClearPolitics' average of state polls calls the the race a tossup.

In the Michigan Senate race, however, Stabenow leads Republican Peter Hoekstra in fundraising and the polls. Sandler said the $1 million advertising buy brings "legitimate issues to light." The commercial highlights Stabenow's failure to pay property taxes on a Capitol Hill townhouse six years ago.

"Debbie Stabenow: Failing to pay her taxes, while she's raising yours," the narrator says in the 30-second spot.

Stabenow paid nearly $1,200 in interest and penalties in 2006, according to online property tax records in Washington, D.C. Campaign spokesman Nate Byer said they resulted from late payments.

"Debbie has always paid her taxes in full," he said. "When she was made aware of errors six years ago, she corrected them."

Byer said the commercials were having no impact on the race "because voters know Sen. Stabenow has a clear record of standing up for Michigan's middle-class families.

"Still, the fact that desperate, false attack ads paid for with secret money are being launched at the last minute across the country is clearly bad for our democracy."

In a suburban Chicago House race, meanwhile, the candidates have bickered over whether last-minute spending by one outside group amounted to improper coordination between a lawmaker and a super PAC.

The Now or Never PAC recently spent $2 million against Democrat Tammy Duckworth, a disabled war veteran who is trying to oust Republican Rep. Joe Walsh. When the group disclosed its funders last month, the filings showed 86% of the nearly $2.3 million it collected during the third-quarter of this year came from one donor: Americans for Limited Government, a non-profit group that does not publicly reveal its donors.

On his congressional website, Walsh said he helped launch the group. In an interview, Duckworth called the relationship "highly suspicious."

Walsh spokesman Justin Roth said the congressman left his employment at Virginia-based group more than 10 years ago and has had no discussions with anyone there.

Americans for Limited Government's spokesman Richard Manning said his group donated to the super PAC because Now or Never shares its "free-market principles." Both Manning and super PAC spokesman Tyler Harber say the non-profit group did not direct spending.

Should voters know more about who funds Americans for Limited Government? "We follow the law, and we don't apologize for doing that," Manning said.