The newly formed “super PAC” of abortion rights advocacy group EMILY’s List drew most of the $430,000 it raised in August from just five sources, a Center for Responsive Politics review of campaign finance reports filed Thursday shows.

Last month, the PAC, known as Women Vote!, raised $250,000 from the Service Employees International Union and another $95,000 from four wealthy women philanthropists and investors who have been prolific political donors over the years, according to a Center for Responsive Politics analysis. Such contributions illustrate how relatively few people may now, in the aftermath of major federal court decisions, significantly affect the financial fortunes of certain political groups.

This $95,000 represents more than 50 percent of all non-SEIU contributions Women Vote! collected in August.

The largest individual contribution the group received in August came from New York investor Judith-Ann Corrente, who contributed $50,000.

Along with her husband, Blenheim Capital Management Chairman Willem Kooyker, Corrente is among the top 50 donors to all federal candidates, parties and committees so far this election cycle.

The other women to drop five-figure checks for the committee are as follows:

Anne D. Taft, of Binghamton, N.Y. She contributed $25,000 and her occupation is listed as “investor” on the group’s Federal Election Commission filings

Emily H. Fisher, a philanthropist who lives in Sheffield, Mass. She contributed $10,000 and her occupation is listed as “retired” on the group’s FEC filings

Anne Bartley, of San Francisco. She contributed $10,000. Her occupation is listed as “investor” on the group’s FEC filings. She is married to Larry B. McNeil — who is the director of the SEIU’s Institute for Change and who was a “Saul Alinski organizer for 25 years,” according to an official online biography

Bartley is also currently a trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. (Full disclosure: This foundation is a funder of the Center for Responsive Politics.)

The EMILY’s List’s Women Vote! PAC was established earlier this year for the explicit purpose of making independent expenditures in hot races, for example, running advertisements overtly telling voters to support or defeat specific candidates. It is one of more than two dozen groups to register with the FEC as an “independent expenditure-only committee,” as OpenSecrets Blog has previously written about on numerous occasions.

The group has raised $1.5 million between January and August. It ended August with about $703,000 cash on hand.

It has spent $826,900 since January, including $65,800 on mailings in August touting Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Robin Carnahan and opposing Republican Senate candidate Roy Blunt in Missouri.

During previous election cycles, federal rules limited how much money PACs could collect from individuals. It was illegal to collect more than $5,000 per person, per year. But recent federal legal rulings — including Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission — have changed that.

Committees such as the Women Vote! PAC may now collect unlimited, “soft money” sums from individuals — as well as unions, corporations, trade associations and other groups.

The only restrictions? The groups can’t use that money to make direct contributions to candidates, and they can’t coordinate their expenditures with any candidates’ campaigns.

EMILY’s List is focused on electing women supportive of abortion rights to federal office. Its name is an acronym for Earlier Money Is Like Yeast.

The group was also the lead plaintiff in another recent legal challenge, known as EMILY’s List v. Federal Election Commission. In this, EMILY’s List contested several FEC restrictions, but did not directly challenge the federal contribution limits. The decision in that case, which came in September 2009, suggested that federal restrictions on contributions to special interest nonprofit groups making independent expenditures should be overturned.

In response, EMILY’s List created the Women Vote! PAC. The new committee first ran independent expenditures in January supporting Democrat Martha Coakley and opposing Republican Scott Brown in the Massachusetts special election to fill the Senate seat of the late U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy.

It reported its sole source of funding to produce these ads as coming from wealthy Chicago media mogul Fred Eychaner, as OpenSecrets Blog previously reported.



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