The group is growing to cover more House elections and to play into more policy debates. American Bridge watching GOP

If you want a picture of the future of politics, imagine an American Bridge tracker filming a likely Republican presidential candidate — forever.

That’s only a slight exaggeration of what the group has planned for the 2014 and 2016 election cycles. The organization that left a mark on Republican candidates throughout the 2012 election, busting GOP nominees in off-message moments and pushing research on their policy records, is in the midst of a major expansion ahead of the midterm campaign.


Senior officials with American Bridge 21st Century – the group’s full legal name — told POLITICO that the oppo-slinging outfit’s staff will grow to about 90 people, including 50 trackers deployed to monitor GOP candidates throughout the country. That’s more than double the number of camera-wielding operatives it employed last year.

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American Bridge is increasing its staff of researchers to 22 and has already prepared oppo books on 20 Republicans running in competitive elections. The group is broadening its focus to include more House elections and, for the first time, gubernatorial races and is using its nonprofit arm to join the fray in policy debates over immigration, voting rights and more. American Bridge has begun both monitoring the top tier of Republican presidential candidates for 2016 and truth-squadding GOP attacks on potential Democratic candidates in a recently unveiled Correct the Record project.

Between its super PAC and 501(c)(4) arms, American Bridge raised around $3 million in the first six months of 2013, officials with the group said. It plans a budget of $17 million to $18 million for the full cycle.

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All that adds up to a dramatic upgrade in the group’s capabilities as it heads into its second full election cycle. In an interview at American Bridge offices near Washington’s Chinatown, the group’s president, Rodell Mollineau, said the organization’s staffers and donors came out of 2012 convinced that their approach to research and communications works and is worth investing in further.

“The first two years was about building a model that could be trusted, be credible,” Mollineau said. “I think these next two years, it’s about taking the things that we did in 2011 and 2012, improving on them, getting better and then seeing if we can expand our horizons.”

In 2014, Mollineau said, American Bridge will be on the ground in every competitive Senate race and a collection of top-tier House races. So far, it has trackers in place in nine congressional districts. The group already has identified seven or eight Republican presidential prospects to build files on. It’s working closely with a network of Democratic outside groups, including the Senate-focused Majority PAC and House Majority PAC, to prepare hammer-blow ads against GOP candidates later this cycle.

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Already in 2013, American Bridge trackers have recorded more than 1,000 events featuring Republican candidates. Perhaps even more important is that all the footage is going into a video library that’s now easily searchable by candidate, topic and keyword. The video the group compiles now — regardless of its current news value — will be around and quickly accessible, effectively, forever.

In other words, if you think Bridge is a clearinghouse for research in the world of Democratic super PACs now, just wait until 2016.

“We have a two-year head start,” Mollineau said. “We can start some of this research now so that by the time we get to 2015 and the field is a little bit clearer, we’re not killing ourselves to try and finish this research.”

The point, he said, is not just to pounce on Todd Akin- and Richard Mourdock-like candidates saying dumb stuff but also to make sure GOP candidates can’t “Etch-A-Sketch” their records when they run for higher office. “This is the 21st century.

… You can’t go to the Rotary Club and say one thing and then go to the senior citizens center and say the exact opposite,” he said.

House Majority PAC strategist Andy Stone said the absence of a presidential race this year creates more room for deep-dive research into lower-profile candidates.

“Given that it’s a midterm cycle, there’s no presidential race, people are focused more on the Senate and the House. We’re definitely working with Bridge even more closely than we did last cycle,” he said.

The growth of American Bridge comes amid a broader uptick in interest, in both parties, in examining methods of political information-gathering. Republicans emerged from 2012 convinced that they had been outgunned on the research front by Democrats, including American Bridge and President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign. A number of seasoned GOP operatives, including Mitt Romney’s campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, and veterans of the Republican National Committee’s research operation, struck out to form their own outside group, America Rising, to gather opposition research full time.

The legal structure of the GOP group is different from Bridge’s: It’s incorporated as both a super PAC and a limited-liability corporation, which means it can sell research to hard-money entities like the RNC and the National Republican Congressional Committee. But America Rising shares the Bridge goal of amassing a huge trove of information about opposition candidates for high office. The group has deployed a tracker to monitor Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe in Virginia and has started assigning trackers to follow congressional candidates visiting Washington. America Rising also targeted Sen. Ed Markey during the Massachusetts special election last month and takes aim at Hillary Clinton pretty much whenever the opportunity arises.

America Rising has substantial backing from the GOP establishment. It appears to have the “tacit endorsement” of the RNC, Mollineau said, and last week, a collection of former top Romney campaign officials gathered in Washington to raise money for the Republican research operation.

America Rising Executive Director Tim Miller said the group intends to call out Democrats who try to deliver “a different message at home than in D.C.”

Officials with the GOP group declined to share details on its staff and budget at this early stage of the organization’s existence.

“We see Democrats in 2014 and beyond being particularly susceptible to an emboldened Democrat base pushing the party left, creating friction between the national message and what voters care about, particularly in red and purple states,” he said. “America Rising’s objective is to always be tracking their words and actions to ensure they are held accountable.”

American Bridge has long used similar language about Republicans to define its objectives. But if the groups’ goals are similar, the Democrats have a significant head start over their Republican counterparts when it comes to infrastructure and personnel.

Bridge retained its key senior staff from 2012 and recruited multiple top strategists, including Democratic campaign veterans Jessica Mackler and Eddie Vale to serve as vice presidents of Bridge’s PAC and nonprofit, respectively.

Much as America Rising has worked to draw blood from McAuliffe in Virginia, Bridge has pummeled his Republican foe, state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, whom Mollineau called the group’s “first case study” for its post-2013 activities. It is the first gubernatorial race the organization has been involved in.

And the organization has implemented a set of technical upgrades that makes it easier to compile and deploy research, creating a database that automatically generates many Freedom of Information Act requests, as well as a just-add-water program for profiling candidates’ legislative records.

Though Democratic outside groups got off to a slow start in 2013, the party’s independent expenditure community goes into 2014 using what it sees as a successful playbook, with Bridge in a growing role.

EMILY’s List President Stephanie Schriock said that the GOP’s attempt to clone American Bridge — or at least balance it out — is “a pretty good indicator” of the group’s track record in 2012.

“When EMILY’s List trains candidates, we tell them about the importance of research and communications. They’ve been a crucial part of campaigns for decades, but American Bridge has shown that they’re also an integral part of the IE world, as well,” she said.

Ty Matsdorf, the campaign director at Majority PAC and a former senior strategist at American Bridge, said the research group played a key support role in helping “determine the strategy for each of these Senate races.”

“Bridge’s research and tracking helps us build the blueprint to show a contrast between Democrats who are committed to helping the middle class and Republicans,” Matsdorf said.