Texas homebuilder Bob Perry is a big time donor to American Crossroads. Texas builder gives Crossroads $7M

American Crossroads raised $15 million in September and early October, with nearly half of that coming from one donor: Texas homebuilder Bob Perry, according to Crossroads officials.

Robert Rowling, CEO of TRT Holdings, the owner of Gold’s Gym and another long-standing GOP underwriter, donated more than $2 million through both his corporate and personal accounts.


Alliance Resource Group, which has interests in the coal industry in Tulsa, provided another $2 million, according to Federal Election Commission reports released Wednesday.

And B. Wayne Hughes of Public Storage in Lexington, Ky., gave an additional $1 million.

When combined, those three individuals and two corporations donated $12 million – or more than two-thirds – of American Crossroads’ donations between Sept. 1 and Oct. 13.

Overall, American Crossroads, which was founded with the help of former Bush White House advisers Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, reported raising $23 million to spend on the elections and indicated it had nearly $8 million in the bank ready to spend in the final three weeks of the campaign.

American Crossroads and its partner organization, American Crossroad GPS, which is organized under a different tax code so it can keep its donors secret, have pledged to spent $65 million to oust the Democratic majorities in Congress.

The two groups have, by virtue of their big donors, taken on the role of the Republican National Committee by providing television air cover and get-out-the-vote assistance to candidate. The RNC is still supporting candidates, but a feud between GOP donors and Chairman Michael Steele has stymied the committee’s fundraising and diminished its influence in the 2010 midterms.

American Crossroads was formed in part to fill that gap and it has already spent $15 million attacking Democratic incumbents. Crossroads, which is focusing on voter turnout operations, has spent an additional $10 million, according to records kept by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks political spending.

Although the structures of the Crossroads organization make it difficult to track their donors, the latest report makes it clear that there has been an increase in the number of corporations jumping into the political scene since the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a ban on business giving in its Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

In addition to Alliance Resources and TRT Holdings, American Crossroads reported corporate donations from Universal Health Care, which gave $25,000; MDI Imaging, which donated more than $73,000; and Weaver Popcorn of Indianapolis, which cut a check for $250,000.

However, most of the GOP corporate money is believed to be moving through the Crossroad Grassroots group, so that it isn’t disclosed publicly.

That helps explain why American Crossroads donations are dominated by a roster of familiar names to campaign finance insiders.

Perry, a longtime Republican donor, gave the organization $7 million in incremental installments from Sept. 1 to Oct. 13. Perry is most noted for his financing of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which in 2004 launched a campaign to undermine Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry and his Vietnam War military record.

When President Obama lashed out at the secret funding fueling GOP attacks earlier this month, Crossroads officials – including Rove – bragged that the White House assault was only energizing their givers.

“The president, by attacking American Crossroads, has helped drive people to our website and has helped to raise the amount of money that we received,” Rove said in an appearance on Fox News.

While the American Crossroads report shows a modest class of small donors, the timing of the White House attacks seems to have been more of a motivational force for the billionaire Perry.

After donating $2 million on Sept. 20, Perry wrote another $2 million check on Oct. 4, and again on Oct. 5, and he followed those up with a $1 million on Oct. 12 – the day before Rove took the airwaves to crow about the burst in small donors to American Crossroad.

In addition to Perry, Crossroads officials said they have received $50,000 from Donald Trump, the New York entrepreneur and television personality who just two years ago donated money to the Democratic presidential bid of Hillary Clinton before switching to Republican John McCain in the general election.

The rise of Perry as American Crossroads biggest donors is a bit of a Republican reunion.

Two other major donors to American Crossroads are Harold Simmons, who cut two $1 million checks from his corporate accounts to support the group, and Carl Linder, who also tapped his business account at American Financial Group to donate about $400,00 to the group.

As is the case with Perry, both men were also donors to the anti-Kerry Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign.

In addition, Simmons was the major underwriter for the American Issues Project, an independent group that ran commercials trying to tie President Obama with Bill Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground organization that claimed responsibility for a dozen bombings in the 1970s.

This article tagged under: American Crossroads