A secret ground game could give Mitt Romney the push he needs on Election Day. Secret cash for GOP door-knockers

The Billion-Dollar Buy: About this series

Like never before, big dollars are having a big impact on politics and governance. This series examines how the new wide-open fundraising landscape will affect the 2012 campaigns.

See also: Inside Koch world | GOP groups plan record $1 billion blitz | Rove hits big: Birth of a mega-donor | Myth of the small donor | Sheldon Adelson: Inside the mind of the mega-donor | IRS's 'feeble' grip on big political cash | The new normal: $9 million for a rural House seat | The billion-dollar bust?



There’s so much secret money in conservative politics that even volunteers are getting paid — and paid well.


Grassroots activists who used to knock on doors and make phone calls for free are the latest beneficiaries of the historic spending spree to defeat President Barack Obama and elect GOP lawmakers.

( PHOTOS: 2012 mega-donors)

Deep-pocketed nonprofit groups — funded by unlimited, and mostly undisclosed, contributions — are offering canvassers and phone bankers wages upwards of $15 an hour and dangling perks such as performances by 3 Doors Down, drawings to win iPads and the chance to stay in a “ posh hotel,” POLITICO has learned.

The privatization of the conservative ground game — perhaps more than any organizing by the actual Republican Party — could give Mitt Romney the boost he needs to overcome what Republicans feared would be a huge advantage for Obama’s vaunted volunteer army and his allies in Big Labor, which has long paid canvassers and is doing so again this year in some states.

( FULL SERIES: The Billion-Dollar Buy)

Liberals, in fact, blazed the path for paid independent canvassing, with unions and environmental groups routinely compensating door-knockers — to say nothing of the 2004 effort by America Coming Together, which used a good portion of the $137 million it raised from rich liberals like George Soros to pay activists to go door-to-door.

Republicans this year were determined to catch up. It’s the free market at work — and a fitting conclusion to an election where a network of independent super PACs and nonprofit groups that form a sort of shadow Republican Party is in the final stages of a planned $1-billion campaign.

( LIST: Republican mega-donors of 2012)

“The ground game on our side in 2008 left a lot to be desired. If we had a repeat of that this time around, and it was a close election, we virtually were assuring ourselves of losing,” said Ned Ryun, president of the conservative nonprofit American Majority Action. “The outside groups are filling in the grassroots ground game that in 2004 was the deciding factor in Bush winning.”

The outside groups, including many backed by the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers, don’t have the contribution limits that parties and candidates have. And they don’t have to tell anyone — let alone the Federal Election Commission — where they got their cash or how they’re spending it, so it’s tough to know just how much they’re paying for canvassing.

( LIST: Democratic mega-donors of 2012)

But there’s mounting evidence that their efforts — including improved high-tech voter contact systems — are making an impact, especially given that tea partiers and parts of the GOP base are less-than-thrilled with Romney. And some Republicans worry that the privatization of get-out-the-vote efforts is encroaching on the traditional turf and activist base of the official Republican Party.

Tim Phillips, president of the Koch-backed nonprofit Americans for Prosperity, says paying canvassers and phone bankers is about rewarding activists who were already working for the conservative cause — and enticing others of like mind to join them.

“There’s been very, very little – if any – of just going to a temporary service and asking for 100 people,” said Phillips, whose free-market group has emerged as a leading anti-Obama force on the television airwaves and in the neighborhoods. “We’re simply taking people who we know are already pretty committed and saying ‘look, you’re sacrificing a lot of time. We want even more of your time, and we’re willing to pay for it.’”

A mid-October AFP email seeking canvassers in Florida played both to activists’ politics and their wallets. “Will work for limited government….and $15.00 an hour!” it proclaimed, before laying out the group’s case: “We know that many of you volunteer because of your dedication to limited government and economic freedom and we appreciate that but we also realize that many of you may be happy to make some extra money in this terrible economy — come see us!”

A socially conservative Ohio nonprofit called Citizens for Community Values Action late last month sent an email offering $15-an-hour for phone calling or door knocking, which urged recipients to spread the word among “members of your congregation or … unemployed conservatives.”

In some states, high hourly rates offered by Koch-backed nonprofits like AFP, which has a $140-million budget for 2012, have forced smaller nonprofits, like American Majority Action, to either boost existing rates or offer wages for the first time.

And some Republicans say the outside money is making it more difficult to get traditional volunteers.

“It’s like trying to pull teeth to get people to come out to drop literature to support the Republican Party’s candidates for free when these groups are paying individuals or giving them extra perks and benefits,” said Mike Murphy, an official with the Milwaukee County, Wis. GOP. “It’s just human nature – of course you’re going to do something for money if you can.”

The irony of free-market groups driving wage inflation isn’t lost on the operatives involved. It’s “the open market – competing for volunteers or for activists,” quipped AFP spokesman Levi Russell.

The last few weeks are the first time that GOP-allied outside groups, empowered by court rulings loosening campaign cash rules, have made widespread use of paid canvassing. But getting paid to walk precincts or make phone calls is nothing new. Party committees on both sides often pay for get-out-the-vote work, and conservative activists told POLITICO that joint victory committees backing Romney in the key swing states of Florida and Wisconsin are paying $12-an-hour for door-knocking.

The 1.8-million-member Service Employees International Union is paying lost wages to members who take off work to knock on doors for Obama in swing states, and has hired 140 paid canvassers in Ohio through a joint project with a nonprofit called Progress Ohio.

It’s also paid $187,000 for canvassing to a Washington, D.C.-based company called Field Works, which, according to FEC filings, has received another $286,000 from the union-backed Workers’ Voice and Environment America Action Fund – two super PACs that have paid for canvassing supporting Obama.

“Their side has been doing this for a long time, and it’s been effective. So we decided, yeah, it was worth the extra investment in order to accomplish our goals,” said Chris Littleton, the Ohio director for American Majority Action. “Most of these programs didn’t start this way, but once you tap out your volunteer pool, and it still isn’t enough, and there’s still some money in the budget, this makes sense.”

American Majority Action is running voter contact programs in Ohio and four other key swing states, paying about 300 field staffers and interns wages starting at $9 or $10-an-hour . Ryun, the group’s president, said such arrangements seem to work better than pure volunteer canvassing in some cases.

“The model might be changing. I think I can be more efficient and lightweight with a smaller nucleus of paid college interns,” Ryun said. “This is the way that politics now works, thanks to the new finance laws. If you could still run all that soft money into the parties, I’m just not sure that some of the stuff on the outside would exist in as a robust way.”

Ryun’s group also has been spending heavily on another phase of the ground game where conservative outside groups arguably have taken the lead over the official GOP in closing the gap with the left — voter data technology.

American Majority Action’s “Gravity” voter contact platform is being deployed by canvassers from a number of conservative groups, including the deep-pocketed national tea party organizing nonprofit FreedomWorks, ahead of Election Day. So, too, is a competing system called “Themis” developed by Charles and David Koch’s political operation, which intends to steer $400 million ahead of Election Day through the brothers’ network of rich conservatives to favored groups, including the senior-focused 60 Plus Association and the social conservative nonprofit CitizenLink.

The Gravity and Themis data, which contains volumes of incredibly specific information on targeted voters, is downloaded onto tablets used by canvassers to map and log door-knocking routes and enter even more data.

AFP boasts that it’s on pace to make 10 million phone calls and knock on 3 million doors using a custom application called “Prosperity Knocks” using Themis, which is also utilized and supplemented by other Koch-backed groups. In a recent email, 60 Plus offered $10-an-hour for Ohio phone bankers and door knockers, noting that the latter “will be using electronic tablets pre-loaded with maps and walking lists for efficiency.”

American Majority Action – using Gravity – expects soon to pass 1 million voter contacts. One-third of those are so-called “live knocks” where canvassers actually engaged voters on their stoops, instead of just leaving literature behind, according to the group.

The results have become apparent in voting data that should worry Democrats, said Steve Rosenthal, a former union political director who ran America Coming Together in 2004, and has since co-founded a group called Atlas Project that helps liberal groups develop voter outreach strategies in battleground states.

In the run-up to Wisconsin’s June gubernatorial recall election — where American Majority Action, Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks played big roles using their respective voter database technologies — “I was getting reports from people about the right using paid canvassers with itouch devices that had voter lists on them and it was the first time we’ve seen that,” Rosenthal said.

“We’ve seen evidence with some of the voter registration and early voting numbers that there is more of a ground game there this time,” Rosenthal said, adding “With the ground stuff, it’s almost like we leap frog each other. We do stuff on our side, they do stuff on their side.”

The shift to independent paid canvassing also highlights another market force under-girding the new unlimited money political universe. Groups are eager to prove to the donors who funded their historic 2012 spending spree that their huge checks weren’t squandered on expensive ad buys, but instead went towards build the capacity of the conservative movement beyond Nov. 6.

That pressure is particularly acute in the Koch brothers’ network of groups, which met recently in Washington to discuss ways to quantify voter outreach and other accomplishments.

“The Koch people are investing a lot of money to get out the vote,” said a source familiar with the brothers’ political operation. “Any group has a plausible scenario for doing voter turnout is going to come away with something.”

That’s led to a host of requests, including from Ralph Reed, and his evangelical voter mobilization nonprofit called Faith and Freedom Coalition. It has partnered with the Karl Rove-conceived nonprofit Crossroads GPS, but it’s unclear if Reed’s group received cash through the Koch operation.

Other sources said that Sean Noble, a Koch operative, has been steering cash to groups in swing states – including many that pay canvassers – to bus or fly in out-of-state tea party activists and homeschooled high school students to do canvassing.

“This is a national effort – we’re taking kids from where they’re available to where they’re needed,” said Mike Farris, president of the Home School Legal Defense Association. “Fifty kids can outwork 100 union members every single time. The energy levels are just dramatically different .”

It’s “terrific government education,” Farris added. “You can’t get this kind of education in public schools.”

His conservative nonprofit group has dispatched homeschooled students – expenses paid – to work as volunteers in the past for Republican campaign and party committees. But this year it’s dispatching 1,700 students to work 18 House and Senate races around the country , mostly through well-funded outside groups including Americans for Prosperity in New Hampshire and CitizenLink in Colorado.

But some veteran Republican operatives worry that introducing big money into a ground game once fueled mostly by pure volunteer passion will diminish enthusiasm and make it harder to recruit people in the future.

It’s one thing to pay to fill gaps in your ground game, said Matt Schlapp, a former political director for President George W. Bush, but making paid canvassing the norm for outside groups sets a bad precedent.

“The strength of a political movement or a party is largely based on the desire of citizens across the country to voluntarily give of their financial resources and their time,” he said. “It’s harder to make the case that your cause is filled with citizen advocates when it’s actually filled with citizen mercenaries.”

That’s not the case with Americans for Prosperity, says Phillips.

Phillips didn’t immediately know the percentage of AFP’s more than 37,000 engaged activists who had accepted payment for their efforts, but asserted cash was not a motivating factor in most cases. “Certainly the majority of our people say ‘look, I don’t want anything, I’m good, thank you for even suggesting it, but I’m just a grassroots volunteer and I want to remain in that vein fully.’”