THE STUMP FEBRUARY 1, 2012
-
Read Later
READ LATERAvailable only to subscribers. SUBSCRIBE TODAY
-
Listen
ARTICLE AUDIO
- Font Size
Sorry, Florida, but the biggest political news Tuesday was not Mitt Romney’s predictable win after his carpet-bombing of Newt Gingrich, but the long-awaited release of the financial disclosures for the Super-PACs that, courtesy of the Roberts Court, will utterly dominate the 2012 campaign. As Dan Eggen and Tim Farnam lay out in today’s Washington Post, Barack Obama’s record-breaking small-donor machine will be sorely tested by the big-dollar Republican donors who, liberated by Citizens United and other rulings, are giving in truly eye-popping sums. American Crossroads, the group co-founded by Karl Rove, raised more than $50 million last year and has just used $500,000 of it to put up another ad attacking Obama over the Solyndra fiasco; the Super-PAC supporting Romney, Restore Our Future, raised $30 million in the second half of 2011 from just 200 donors, including a handful of hedge fund titans who gave $1 million each. By contrast, Obama raised $68 million from 583,000 donors in the 4th quarter of 2011, with 98 percent of the donations $250 or less and the average contribution $55.
To put things in perspective: Obama needs 18,182 donors making his average $55 contribution to balance out a single $1 million check to Romney’s Super-PAC. Thanks, SCOTUS!
But enough bewailing big money for now. Instead, let’s marvel at something else that comes through in the disclosure forms: the sheer promiscuity of deep-pocketed donors, who spread their love with about as much abandon as the Holstein studs that Virginia is shipping to Russia, courtesy of an unusual economic development venture by Gov. Bob McDonnell. Consider, for one, Bob Perry, the Texas homebuilding magnate who was a major funder of the Swift Boat ads against John Kerry. Perry is a longtime supporter of Rick Perry (no relation) and Gov. Perry, as I described in my September profile of him, has repaid Bob in kind:
In another case, Perry created a whole new government body, the Texas Residential Construction Commission, to allow building contractors to self-regulate rather than fight claims in court. Among those pushing hardest for the new board was the homebuilder Bob Perry (no relation), who gave the governor $175,000 in the two years prior to the board’s creation in 2003 and whose own corporate counsel was given one of the seats on it. (Bob Perry’s other priority has been fighting immigration restrictions that could drive up his labor costs—which some Texans point to as one possible explanation for Rick Perry’s moderate stance on illegal immigration.)
But this bond was only so strong come the 2012 campaign. Bob Perry was already writing checks early in 2011, including $500,000 to Restore Our Future, the Romney Super-PAC, in March, and $5,000 to Tim Pawlenty (remember him?) in April. But that was before Perry’s mid-summer entrance into the race, after which Bob Perry dutifully coughed up $100,000 for Perry’s Super-PAC, Make Us Great Again. But then came Perry’s less-than-stellar debate performances. And by early December, Bob Perry was already batting eyelashes at Romney again—on December 7, he gave $500,000 more to Restore Our Future, which proceeded to spend the rest of the month running ads in Iowa for Newt Gingrich, the man Perry would eventually endorse. All along, Bob Perry was also cutting big checks to American Crossroads, far bigger than what he gave Rick Perry—a total of $2.5 million in 2011. Around the time that Rick Perry was getting into the race, there was a lot of talk about the threat he would pose to Rove, his longtime nemesis, who relied on many of the same big Texas donors for his Crossroads operation. Well, let’s just say that Crossroads felt the impact from the Perry challenge about as much as a speeding truck on I-10 in West Texas feels the carcass of a jackrabbit.
Bottom line: these people have more money than they know what to do with, and thanks to Roberts et al, they don’t really have to choose—it’s like Hefner at the mansion. Though here and there in the FEC filings, one can discern heartwarming hints of true loyalty. Take, for instance, Nate Walton, a 26-year-old from lovely Marblehead, Mass. Walton, who helped lead a group of Romney supporters from Massachusetts’ North Shore to campaign for him in New Hampshire, has tapped out on the $2,500 maximum allowable donation to Romney’s campaign. So what did he do? He gave another $1,000 to the Super-PAC, Restore Out Future. There he was, at the bottom of the disclosure list, way down below the hedge fund kings and their $1 million checks. Ah, to be a 26-year-old giving to a Super-PAC! I gave Walton a call to ask him about his giving, and he cordially declined to talk. “I appreciate your inquiry, but I don’t have any comment,” he said. Spoken like a true footsoldier in the Super-PAC era.
follow me on Twitter @AlecMacGillis
10 comments
I watched All the President's Men last night. A significant event in the story was when Woodward and Bernstein learned that CREEP had collected $1 million in unreported cash contributions from donors that was kept in a safe for use as walking around money. Woodward and Bernstein knew they had uncovered something big in the developing story of corruption. I laughed.
- rayward
February 1, 2012 at 3:09pm
A while back Romney wanted to make a $10K bet, I think about the accuracy of his book or something like that. Anyways, it got me thinking. Romney is said to have earned something like $250 million during his time at Bain. If we take that as a starting point for estimating his total wealth, and then compare that to MY total wealth, $10K represents about 0.004% of his total wealth, which is the equivalent of about $2 of my total wealth. "Bottom line: these people have more money than they know what to do with". Yah, I'd say so!
- mdichner
February 1, 2012 at 3:10pm
Obama's small-donor operation may be tested, but look for Democratic superPACs in the general election funded by the likes of George Soros, Steve Jobs's widow and maybe even Warren Buffet. I reckon the primary effect of Cititzens' United will not be to privilege either party, but to privilege (even more than already) tv advertising as the dominant form of political discourse and, as you have suggested, to increase the influence of wealthy individuals on the policy choices of officials from both parties. One giant leap towards oligarchy... A onetime regular poster here at TNR with a personal interest in Russia used to refer to Putin's state as "Nigeria North". I'm starting to think we could refer to the USA as Russia West.
- AaronW
February 1, 2012 at 3:54pm
BUT people don't want to discuss the power of money.
- Sophia
February 1, 2012 at 4:49pm
Short of outright graft, it is difficult to imagine a more pernicious system for influencing the choice of elected officials than that engendered by Citizen's United. Not only does it open the spigots to unlimited spending by corporations and individuals, but it explicitly hides the relationship between the money and the candidate. In essence, CU forces big money underground, giving the candidates plausible distance from the messaging it buys, thus freeing that money to buy the most dishonest and misleading type of message. But shame too on the electorate who buy into this crap. How did we get an electorate so blind to their own gullibility that swift boat baloney actually works?
- IowaBeauty
February 1, 2012 at 5:28pm
From time to time, conservatives will say that America's poor aren't that bad off, because they have microwave ovens and color teevees. That's pretty much BS, but still - if rich toffs have that much money to waste on pissing into the wind and bankrolling candidates for president they wouldn't trust to plant their azaleas, then they clearly are not over-taxed.
- GeoffG
February 1, 2012 at 5:31pm
Why don't they just revoke the tax exempt status of the Super Pacs? Make them pay tax on the money they receive (with no deduction for the expense of political campaigns). Politicians are getting a tax free benefit from the Super Pac expenditures (and they intend to earn it). At least get the lost tax money from the Super Pacs to pay the national debt. Free speech does not mean tax free speech. If it did, you can bet we'd all pretend to be in that business.
- Nusholtz
February 1, 2012 at 6:08pm
The funny thing is though I saw that crossroads ad on Fox news. Talk about pissing money away. I wonder how much advertising dollars will be wasted as stupidly as that. All of Fox news is propaganda already. And I wonder how effective it would be on MSNBC or liberal outlets. Maybe the money worked when Conservatives are fighting conservatives on conservative media, I wonder how effective the money will be since our media outlets are now so diffuse. Do any candidates ever advertise on Nat Geo, or Discovery, or the NFL network? I think the story of this election is not how much money will be spent, but who can target the spending most effectively. And most importantly, how it builds upon itself. I don't use Facebook much at all, but get a ton of links from friends all the time (sent to my email account). Do give a quick comparison, 25,000,000 people are on Barack Obama's facebook page, 1,426,000 are on Romney's page. On recent posts Obama's far outpaces Romney on the comments section as well.
- blackton
February 1, 2012 at 6:10pm
Something else really sad about this - that money could really do something useful, you know?
- Sophia
February 2, 2012 at 2:29am
This is truly evil. Pairing a headline including the word "promiscuity" with a photo of Karl Rove. Thanks for ruining my weekend.
- miceelf
February 2, 2012 at 10:35am