Rich conservatives have been re-energized by the 2010 elections. | AP Photos GOP's big money men return

Some of the Republican party’s biggest donors — businessmen like Texas homebuilder Bob Perry and Manhattan hedge fund tycoon Paul Singer — have a message for President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats: They’re back.

After reducing their check writing during the latter days of George W. Bush’s presidency and John McCain’s 2008 failed campaign to succeed him, wealthy conservatives have been re-energized by the 2010 midterm election, giving to GOP candidates and campaign committees as well as the independent groups that back Republicans in unprecedented amounts.


Since Obama took office, ten of the most active conservative donors identified by a POLITICO analysis have contributed $19 million to Republican candidates and the political committees that boost them — a pace that far eclipses their giving at this point in the 2006 and 2008 election cycles, according to professional fundraisers, as well as anything big Democratic donors have done.

The numbers analyzed by POLITICO — compiled from campaign finance reports filed with the Internal Revenue Service, Federal Election Commission and various state campaign finance agencies — reflect personal donations as well as contributions from immediate family members and their corporations.

But the tally does not take into account the money these donors may be giving to the proliferation of right-leaning groups registered under section 501(c)4 of the IRS code — the groups that Obama attacked last week for airing a “flood of deceptive attack ads sponsored by special interests using front groups with misleading names.” By law, the groups aren’t required to reveal their contributors’ identities — only their overall fundraising tallies and expenditures months, and only months after Election Day.

Though GOP electoral prospects are getting a boost from newly engaged — and anti-establishment — grass-roots tea party activists, the major conservative money is anything but grass roots or anti-establishment.

Rather, the money coming from roughly the same people who funded Bush-era big-money Republican efforts. Perry and fellow Texan Harold Simmons, for example, were among the major funders of the swift-boat attacks on Democrat John Kerry that helped reelect Bush in 2004.

And it’s going to groups that play heavily to concerns among the GOP’s moneyed class about tax hikes driven by the rise in federal spending caused by the stimulus and health care reform. The fundraising pitches from these groups are delivered in many instances by veterans of the 1994 Republican Revolution and the Bush-era Republican National Committee.

For instance, the top 10 donors have given a combined $7.6 million to American Crossroads — a group formed this year at the urging of ex-Bush political advisers Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, who have tapped their big-donor rolodexes to fund it and a sister 501(c)4 group that doesn’t disclose its donations — and $5.4 million to the Republican Governors Association, headed by Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a leader of the 1994 Republican takeover.

Fred Malek, himself a substantial donor ($70,000 this cycle) who leads a major donor outreach effort for the RGA and heads an active 501(c)4 group called American Action Network, said the Obama administration’s “anti-business policies” have caused “unprecedented alarm” among conservative business leaders. “And it is resulting in unprecedented giving by those in the position to give who want to protect what we have built over the last century in America.”

Among the top GOP givers this cycle are:

• Bob Perry: $2.9 million.

The Texas homebuilder, who over the years has been among the biggest Republican financiers of outside groups registered under section 527 of the IRS code, and particularly generous to Barbour’s RGA, giving it $2.5 million since 2009.

He and his wife also have donated a combined $280,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee, both steered by Texans. And they’ve maxed out to the Florida congressional campaign of Allen West, who, along with Senate candidates Marco Rubio of Florida and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania are among the only tea party heroes to get much big donor support.

• Harold Simmons: $2.7 million.

An investor with an estimated net worth of $4.5 billion, Simmons controls a pair of Louisiana-based companies, Southwest Louisiana Land LLC and Dixie Rice Agricultural Corp., that combined to give $2 million to American Crossroads.

Simmons, his wife and another company he controls, Contran, have together given $150,000 to the RGA, $100,000 to Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s reelection campaign, $89,000 to the NRSC and NRCC, $35,000 to GOPAC.

They’ve also given a total of $35,000 to two other 527 groups that are popular among major donors and are headed by old guard Republicans: The Republican State Leadership Committee, which is run by Gillespie and which this cycle has received $430,000 from the 10 donors listed here, and American Solutions for Winning the Future, which is headed by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and which raised $275,000 from the 10 donors.

• Trevor Rees-Jones: $2.3 million.

A Texas natural gas billionaire who is a relative newcomer to big-money politics, he also has given $2 million to American Crossroads, which has benefitted from Rove’s connections with big Texas money.

Rees-Jones and his wife donated $100,000 to Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s unsuccessful challenge of Perry, and a maximum $60,800 to the NRSC.

• The Koch family: $2 million.

Largely unknown until they attracted attention this election cycle because of their support for Americans for Prosperity, one of the key groups behind the tea party movement (and which is not required to disclose its donors), the Koch family has left a trail of donations to hundreds of mostly conservative candidates and committees across the country.

David Koch and Koch Industries, the company he co-owns with his brother, Charles, have given $1.05 million to the RGA since last year. Koch Industries, its subsidiary Georgia-Pacific and various Koch family members have doled out more than 500 donations this cycle to candidates for state offices in places they do business. In Kansas, where Koch Industries is based, the family has given $35,000 to the state GOP and $10,000 to the gubernatorial campaign of Sen. Sam Brownback.

David, Charles, their wives and another brother, Bill, who’s not involved in Koch Industries, gave a combined $149,000 to the NRCC and the NRSC. The latter committee included Koch Industries PAC on the host committee for a Thursday fundraiser for California Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina.

• Jerry Perenchio: $1.8 million.

The former Univision chairman, who now runs a Los Angeles investment firm, has been a major GOP donor for years and in July gave $1 million to American Crossroads from a trust he controls.

Perenchio and his wife are among only a few of the major donors listed here to have given maximum contributions to the Republican National Committee. This year, they also gave $104,000 to GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman’s campaign in California while Perenchio himself contributed $525,000 to the state party.

• The DeVos family: $1.6 million.

The patriarch of this billionaire clan, Richard DeVos, Sr., who co-founded Amway (since restructured as Alticor), now owns the Orlando Magic basketball team, but the family remains very politically generous in Michigan, where son Dick DeVos ran a failed GOP gubernatorial bid in 2006.

This cycle, family members have given $550,000 to the Michigan Republican Party, $255,000 to the Florida GOP, $473,000 to the RGA and $45,000 to Gillespie’s RSLC.

• B. Wayne Hughes: $1.6 million.

The Lexington, Ky.-based billionaire founded Public Storage, and owns a thoroughbred horse stable called Spendthrift Farm. Almost all of his giving this cycle — $1.55 million — has gone to American Crossroads.

• Robert Rowling: $1.4 million.

The press-shy Dallas billionaire has increasingly emerged as a major political money man, cutting a $1 million check in June to American Crossroads from his TRT Holdings company, which owns Omni Hotels and Gold's Gym. He also has spent heavily on Texas state races since the beginning of last year, giving more than $103,000 to Hutchison’s failed gubernatorial run and $27,000 to Attorney General Greg Abbott’s reelection campaign.

• Paul Singer: $1.4 million.

Singer, who is active in hawkish, pro-Israel groups, was a Bush bundler and major funder of pro-Bush 527s in 2004 as well as a leading fundraiser for Rudy Giuliani’s 2008 presidential campaign. This cycle, he has given $850,000 to the RGA, and at a luncheon this week hosted by the Manhattan Institute, which he chairs, Singer introduced Barbour, the keynote speaker, as "the most powerful Republican in American politics."

Since the beginning of last year, Singer has given to the Republican gubernatorial campaigns of Bob McDonnell ($100,000) of Virginia, Whitman ($26,000), Terry Branstad of Iowa ($25,000), John Kasich of Ohio ($11,000) and Brian Sandoval of Nevada ($10,000). He’s also maxed out in what he can give to the NRSC and GOPAC, a 527 that trains political activists.

• Larry Nichols: $1.2 million

Nichols co-founded Oklahoma City-based Devon Energy Corporation with his father in 1971, and the younger Nichols and the company have become major political players, doling out $350,000 apiece to the RGA and RSLC this cycle, as well as $30,000 to McDonnell and tens of thousands more in Oklahoma races. Devon also gave $250,000 to Gingrich’s American Solutions for Winning the Future.

Nichols and Devon’s recent giving is partly an effort to maintain a voice during Democratic efforts to limit and regulate carbon emissions, suggested Devon spokesman Chip Minty. “Congress and the Obama administration are considering a number of proposals that could hamper our industry’s ability to produce domestic natural gas and oil,” he said.

Though Nichols, Singer, Perenchio and some of the other top donors contributed — and even bundled — for McCain’s presidential campaign, major contributions to conservative 527 groups, which can accept unlimited donations that federal campaigns and party committees cannot, slowed to a trickle during the 2008 campaign in 2007 and 2008.

That’s partly because the FEC clamped down on 527 groups and their donors in 2007 and because McCain actively discouraged such efforts, but also because many top GOP donors cultivated by Bush never warmed to the Arizona senator.

That lack of enthusiasm still extends to the Republican National Committee, which has received only a combined $124,000 from these donors.