The strategy shift reflects the growing internecine warfare between Republicans. GOP super PACs vs. the tea party

Republican operatives want to help establishment candidates fend off tea party challenges with a new weapon: unlimited cash.

Consultants and attorneys — including the co-founder of the pro-Mitt Romney super PAC — are laying the groundwork or have already filed paperwork for dozens of super PACs organized to support individual candidates running next year.


The effort is the biggest reevaluation of the Republican Party’s outside money strategy since the dawn of the super PAC era — bringing traditional big dollar donors into the primary races that pulled the party in a direction that alienated those donors in the first place.

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“The prime targets for this sort of a strategy are incumbents that expect a primary election challenge,” said Charlie Spies, the co-founder of Restore Our Future, which spent more than $140 million to support Mitt Romney. “Even if candidates trust American Crossroads will step in for a Senate race or American Action Network or Congressional Leadership Fund for a House race, they are more likely to focus resources on general election races than getting involved in primary contests.”

Recent election cycles have been dominated by well-founded conservative groups such as Karl Rove’s Crossroads network and the Koch-linked Americans for Prosperity. But those organizations have largely stayed out of primary fights, where tea party-associated groups have helped unseat more moderate Republicans.

Super PACs — unlike congressional campaigns — are permitted to raise and spend unlimited funds. The downside, however, is that the campaign and the PAC are forbidden from coordinating. The Federal Election Commission requires a strict firewall between a campaign and a super PAC – meaning that a trusted aide usually needs to helm the outside effort.

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The strategy shift reflects the growing internecine warfare between Republicans that will likely characterize the 2014 and 2016 campaigns — as tea party and social conservative factions battle more moderate and establishment Republicans. The Senate Conservatives Fund, for instance — founded by former Sen. Jim DeMint before he decamped to the Heritage Foundation — has vowed to attack GOP candidates deemed insufficiently conservative.

Establishment Republicans say previous efforts to sack moderates only served to boost unelectable candidates like Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell or Missouri’s Todd Akin who blew the GOP’s chances in winnable general elections.

Spies has already set up more than a dozen super PACs in this vein, but declined to discuss the specifics of his efforts. Other top-tier Republican consultants that have Senate or House super PACs in the works also wouldn’t comment, but the names of many of the mysterious groups that have filed with the FEC this year reference key congressional battleground states like Georgia, Arkansas, Idaho, West Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Alaska and North Carolina.

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Others like the pro-Sen. Mitch McConnell Kentuckians for Strong Leadership or the pro-Sen. David Vitter Fund For Louisiana’s Future are already off the ground and running.

Single-candidate super PACs also is a sign party leaders believe donors are unhappy with the results of big money groups in recent years — and are willing to take their checkbooks elsewhere.

Rove’s Crossroads groups budgeted more than $300 million on a plan to defeat President Barack Obama and flip the Senate to the GOP in 2012 — and failed. The perceived stumbles of Crossroads in 2012 led immediately to recriminations within the conservative movement about Rove’s dominance of the outside money apparatus. It also means donors want to know more about how their money is spent.

“I think you will see the donor community very focused on metrics and outcomes,” said John Murray, who founded the Young Gun Action Fund super PAC.

“The donors are refocusing their attention from relationships to accountability,” said Republican political consultant Brian Wise of Wise Public Affairs. “No longer can you call a donor and say I need you to write a check for $500,000. You are finding donors are asking for detailed strategic plans. Even if they have an ongoing relationship with whoever is behind the super PAC.”

In the special Massachusetts Senate election to replace John Kerry in 2013, a single donor bankrolled the deceptively-named Americans for Progressive Action on behalf of GOP senate candidate Gabriel Gomez. California winery owner John Jordan put $1.7 million behind Gomez — even as major GOP groups like Crossroads and Americans for Prosperity took a pass on the race.

Billionaires with progressive priorities have also been busy creating outside groups. But their committees are more often focused around a pet issue than a single candidate.

Liberal billionaire Tom Steyer has poured millions into the campaigns of candidates who share his view on climate change, while New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has done the same on gun control. Steyer’s NextGen Committee super PAC spent big in Masschusetts — and more recently, the Virginia gubernatorial contest.

Crossroads spokesman Jonathan Collegio downplayed the role individual super PACs will play in the 2014 election cycle, noting that many consultants who tried to start candidate-linked super PACs in 2012 failed to raise enough money to be effective.

“Start up super PACs are risky propositions for donors — they may not end up raising enough money to be effective, they may not have a professional or board-driven management structure, and they may end up being little more than conduits for consultants to generate business for their firms,” Collegio said.

Rove — convinced the party had thrown away a half-dozen Senate seats in 2010 and 2012 by nominating unelectable right-wing candidates — announced early last year that he would create a new super PAC that would intervene in GOP primaries on behalf of the most electable Republican candidate.

That effort, Conservative Victory Project, has yet to get off the ground in earnest. In the first half of 2013, the group did not raise any money other than a transfer from its parent committee American Crossroads. The Crossroads groups — two super PACs and a 501(c)(4) nonprofit — were easily matched by similar Democratic leaning in the first half of 2013.

Collegio said that Crossroads was designed in part to stem the cottage industry of outside groups by creating a professional board, working to drive down overhead and producing periodic donor reports modeled after corporate earnings reports.

Democrats, for the most part, are going in the opposite direction from individual super PACs and have largely centralized their outside efforts in just a few key committees —all under the control of loyal party hands. Unlike Republicans, they’re not facing a full-blown civil war between two warring factions over the future of the party. As a result, the party is able to centralize their outside money game under one roof.

One of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s closest confidantes, Susan McCue, is helming both the Senate Majority PAC and an effort aimed at boosting Democratic holdings in state legislatures called the Fund for Jobs, Growth and Security.

Ali Lapp — a former top official at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — is running House Majority PAC, which spends super PAC money in House races.

That arrangement of having a small number of professionalized outside groups run by trusted aides gives leadership — particularly Reid — a level of control over the Democratic outside money game that Republicans are in the process of abandoning.

“This is just further proof that Democrats are in fact more fiscally responsible than Republicans , Lapp told POLITICO. “Having dozens of super PACs out there dramatically increases the amount of money that’s siphoned off by overhead, lawyers, and consultants. House Majority PAC has succeeded as the super PAC for House Democrats because we are a very efficient, effective organization whose only priority is to help Democrats win House races.”

House Majority PAC allows big donors to give to the committee’s overall efforts to flip the House back to Democrats — or to earmark some of their specific contributions to go to specific races.

Exceptions exist. Last year’s primary battle in California between Democratic Reps. Brad Sherman and Howard Berman saw several super PACs focused solely on that race dumped money into that House race.

But despite concerns about efficiency, many Republicans are concerned their evolving model of letting dozens of PACs bloom is the right one.

“Compliance is going to be a problem,” acknowledged Rick Tyler, who worked for Newt Gingrich’s campaign in 2012 before jumping over to the pro-Gingrich PAC Winning Our Future.

But Tyler — who emerged as a vocal critic of Crossroads and Rove after the 2012 election — argued that centralizing an entire party’s outside efforts under one or two umbrella groups can pose its own problems — like making sure that messages are custom-tailored for states and candidates.

“I think that’s an inherently dangerous model,” Tyler said.