The three biggest-spending conservative super PACs raised $30.3 million in September. Conservative super PACs soar

Despite being outraised by Democratic super PACs all year long, the top conservative groups played to a draw in September and are in a strong position to continue matching — and possibly surpassing — their rivals leading up to Election Day.

Conservative megadonors worried the Democrats’ surprising advantage in super PAC spending could cost the Republicans the Senate poured a flood of million-dollar checks into GOP-allied groups last month.


The three biggest-spending conservative super PACs — the Karl Rove-conceived American Crossroads, the Joe Ricketts-funded Ending Spending Action Fund and the Koch brothers-backed Freedom Partners Action Fund — raised $30.3 million in September, according to a POLITICO analysis of reports filed over the past few days with the Federal Election Commission.

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The top three Democrat-aligned super PACs — the Harry Reid-linked Senate Majority PAC, the Nancy Pelosi-backed House Majority PAC and the Tom Steyer-led NextGen Climate Action — raised $30.5 million last month.

Still, for the 2014 cycle, the top three liberal groups are trouncing the conservatives in super PAC fundraising, $134 million to $58 million, and the left has by far the most generous donor of disclosed cash in Steyer, a retired San Francisco hedge fund billionaire. He has given $41.6 million to his group this year, including $15 million last month alone — accounting for all but $2 million of the fundraising for NextGen, which is motivated by environmental issues.

The fundraising disparity heading into Labor Day led to increasingly urgent pleas to donors from the Republicans like Rove who run the super PACs. They had worried that an unanswered deluge of liberal attack ads might allow the Democrats to retain control of the Senate despite electoral trends tilting against them — especially since the Democrats’ congressional party arms also have outraised their GOP counterparts. And the recent reports — as well as donor interviews — suggest that the alarmist message resonated.

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“It’s easy to see that if you don’t do something to counter that, that the conservative candidate doesn’t have a chance, and so that’s motivated me all the more to give,” Arkansas poultry producer Ronnie Cameron said earlier this month. In September, Cameron, through his Arkansas-based Mountaire Corp., donated $500,000 to Freedom Partners Action and another $250,000 to American Crossroads. Cameron said he would “probably continue” giving, but added “each opportunity is a separate decision.”

To be sure, it can be challenging to buy advertising with money that comes in later in the campaign season, since the best time slots and rates tend to get booked earlier. And there are scores of smaller-spending super PACs allied with the respective parties that were not part of this analysis. Plus conservatives still enjoy a major advantage in spending through nonprofits registered under sections of the Tax Code — 501(c)(4) and 501(c)(6) — that do not require groups to report their real-time finances or their donors’ identities to the Federal Election Commission. For example, a network comprised primarily of such groups helmed by the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch intends to spend roughly $290 million on advocacy in 2014.

But the majority of that spending legally cannot be as pointed as the types of attack ads that super PACs pay to air, which expressly advocate votes for or against candidates. The distinction led the Koch brothers allies for the first time to create a super PAC of their own over the summer — the Freedom Partners Action Fund — that under the law can launch pointed partisan attacks that expressly advocate votes for Republican candidates or against Democratic ones, rather than issue-related ads. It raised about $8.4 million last month, and has provided important air cover to several GOP Senate candidates who have found themselves under siege from Senate Majority PAC and NextGen.

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The massive Democratic super PAC spending edge had vexed Republican big-money operatives, since their side had traditionally enjoyed a deeper pool of extremely wealthy benefactors willing to write seven-figure checks. They had more enthusiastically embraced the type of unlimited political spending that reshaped American politics after the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision struck down laws limiting political ad spending as unconstitutional infringements on free speech.

But earlier this year, it appeared as if the richest conservatives may have been nursing a hangover from 2012, when they spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to defeat President Barack Obama and retake the Senate — to no avail.

Wealthy liberals, who initially had largely resisted the new big money game, started to see its practical benefits. A combination of established donors like billionaire financier George Soros and newer players like Steyer enthusiastically came to the table in 2014, allowing the three Democrat-allied super PACs to spend nearly triple their GOP rivals — $112 million to $37 million — through the end of last month.

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Yet thanks to the aggressive spending by the Democratic super PACs throughout the year, the top Democratic and GOP super PACs as of Sept. 30 had nearly identical bank accounts with which to savage each other down the stretch. The conservative PACs had $22.4 million on hand, while the liberal ones had $24.2 million in the bank.

Paul Lindsay, a spokesman for American Crossroads, which had $9 million in the bank at the end of last month, said his group “is determined to use our resources in these closing weeks to counter the Democrats huge spending advantage in key Senate battlegrounds.”

The super PAC has a sister 501(c)(4) nonprofit called Crossroads GPS, which last month collected a $10 million donation from Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, and has exponentially outraised the super PAC. Together, the groups recently added to existing ad buys boosting the Senate campaigns of Republicans Cory Gardner in Colorado and Joni Ernst in Iowa, while also airing ads for the first time in the New Hampshire Senate race on behalf of Scott Brown.

And, in some ways, the momentum appears to be favoring Republicans in the big money race, as a wider array of donors are now stroking six- and seven-figure checks.

Ten donors gave more than $1 million to the three top conservative super PACs in September, totaling $18.2 million:

• New York hedge fund tycoon Bob Mercer: $3.5 million ($2.5 million to Freedom Partners and $1 million to Ending Spending).

• TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts: $3.2 million ($2.7 million to Ending Spending and $500,000 to American Crossroads).

• New York investor Paul Singer: $2.25 million ($1.25 million to American Crossroads and $1 million to Ending Spending).

• Public Storage founder B. Wayne Hughes: $2 million to American Crossroads.

• Chicago hedge funder Ken Griffin: $1.5 million ($800,000 to Ending Spending and $700,000 to American Crossroads).

• Wrestling executive Linda McMahon: $1.45 million ($750,000 to Ending Spending and $700,000 to American Crossroads).

• Robert Rowling: $1.2 million ($1 million through his company TRT Holdings and $200,000 to Freedom Partners).

• Michigan real estate investment firm McKinley Associates: $1.1 million to Ending Spending.

• Wisconsin roofing mogul Diane Hendricks: $1 million to Freedom Partners.

• Nebraska trucking magnate Clarence Werner: $1 million to Freedom Partners.

While Steyer’s massive check nearly equaled those from the top conservative super PAC donors combined, the Democratic super PACs had only three other million-dollar donors last month:

• Investor Ian M. Cumming: $1 million to Senate Majority PAC.

• San Francisco hedge fund manager Meridee Moore: $1 million to NextGen.

• Arkansas-based holding company HFNWA, LLC, which is linked to the colorful developer Franklin Haney: $1 million to Senate Majority PAC.