Once mired in blood and disrepute, professional mixed martial arts now ranks among the world’s fastest growing sports. And its advocates are likewise ramping up their activity in another combative arena: Capitol Hill.

Ultimate Fighting Championship, MMA’s leading promotion company, last year spent $620,000 lobbying on a variety of issues affecting its business, making it the No. 3 spender among sports leagues and recreational entities and eclipsing the government affairs  efforts of other well-established and conventional industry contemporaries, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

UFC outspent former heavy-hitters such as Major League Baseball ($310,000) and the National Basketball Association ($125,000) last year. The National Football League remains the top lobbying spender in the live entertainment industry, but the league’s total spending fell from $1.6 million in 2012 to $1.4 million in the previous year, according to federal disclosures.

UFC is continuing its aggressive advocacy this year, spending $80,000 on federal lobbying in the first quarter of 2013, records filed with the U.S. Senate indicate.Video piracy is among UFC’s chief concerns.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich dubbed the national debt a "burden for our children for life."

Ex-Rep. Dennis Kucinich vilified Republicans for adding, by his calculations, $4 trillion to it.

Rep. Michele Bachmann, meanwhile, predicted debt will precipitate a future of "indentured servitude to foreign lenders."

What unites these and other presidential candidates is that they themselves are in debt. Campaign debt.

It's a dubious distinction shared by Democrats and Republicans, eccentric nonagenarians and White House occupants.

Such debt isn't really hurting anyone but creditors — certainly not the nation nor its creditworthiness.

But it is a reminder that despite candidates' soaring rhetoric about fiscal responsibility, they often fail to follow their own prescription for sound budgetary management amid the relentless rush to remain competitive with political rivals during election seasons that are longer and more expensive than ever.

Until the debts are paid, the federal government requires former candidates in most cases to keep their campaign committees open and, technically, active, meaning some of the indebtedness stretches back decades.

Following are the nation’s top presidential campaign deadbeats who still find themselves at least $100,000 in the red, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission:

1.) Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.

Election year: 2012

Debt: $4,595,394

Rep. Mel Watt has plenty of friends in the financial services industry: The North Carolina Democrat whom President Barack Obama has appointed to oversee mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has received more campaign money from financial interests than any other industry or special interest.

Since he entered Congress in 1992, Watt has received $1.33 million in campaign contributions from the finance, real estate and insurance industries, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit research group that tracks money in politics. 

That’s almost a quarter of the total $5.47 million in total contributions he’s received through his career.

Watt’s biggest donors were commercial banks, with the finance and securities industries following at number five, according to CRP. During the last election cycle, the political action committees of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Wells Fargo each gave Watt’s campaign $10,000. Bank of America and Goldman each gave an additional $5,000 to Watt’s leadership PAC.

Watt sits on the House Financial Services Committee and he represents the Charlotte, N.C., area, which is home to Bank of America and was home to Wachovia, until it failed and was purchased by Wells Fargo.

If he’s confirmed to replace Ed DeMarco at the top of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Watt will be tasked with determining the future of the two mortgage giants that were taken into federal receivership in 2008 after catastrophic losses brought them to near collapse.

In the days leading up to last month’s crucial votes on the most significant gun control legislation to come before the Senate in nearly two decades, polls showed that about 90 percent of Americans supported background checks for all gun purchases. But when the clerk called the roll, the centerpiece amendment — requiring background checks for firearm sales at gun shows, through classified ads and on the Internet — got just 54 “yea’s,” six votes short of the 60 vote super-majority required.

Just four months after Adam Lanza killed 26 people at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and President Obama promised tougher gun laws, the vote proved to be the latest in a long-running string of victories for gun rights activists, the firearms industry and particularly the National Rifle Association, the nation’s pre-eminent gun lobby.

The power of the gun lobby is rooted in multiple factors, among them the pure passion and single-mindedness of many gun owners, the NRA’s demonstrated ability to motivate its most fervent members to swarm their elected representatives, and the lobby’s ability to get out the vote on election day. But there’s little doubt that money, the political power it represents, and the fear of that power and money, which the NRA deftly exploits, have a lot to do with the group’s ability to repeatedly control the national debate about guns. Whether that fear is justified is an intriguing question —but it clearly exists. That has, perhaps, never been clearer than it was last month on Capitol Hill.

Environmentalists invested heavily in Rep. Ed Markey — a champion of climate change issues and their preferred candidate in Massachusetts’ Democratic U.S. Senate special primary — who bested rival Rep. Stephen Lynch on Tuesday by 15 percentage points, according to the Associated Press.

The League of Conservation Voters led the way on messaging that expressly advocated either for or against one of the two Democratic candidates, spending more than $830,000 on pro-Markey independent expenditures, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of Federal Election Commission filings. The spending came via LCV’s political action committee, as well as its affiliated super PAC and 501(c)(4) nonprofit arm.

Overall, groups reported spending roughly $2 million to advocate for or against the candidates, according to the Center's analysis. Nearly 90 percent of the expenditures supported Markey or opposed Lynch.

The spending came despite a “people’s pledge” between Markey and Lynch designed to limit the amount of involvement by deep-pocketed independent groups that have proliferated in the wake of the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling.

“Ed Markey has never stopped fighting for us, and we’re going to keep fighting for him,” League of Conservation Voters Chairman Scott Nathan said in a press release after the race was called.

Environmentalists are spoofing AT&T's "It's not complicated" advertising campaign in a new series of big-dollar messages thanking Democratic senators for their votes in March against budget amendments that they believed would have weakened the Clean Air Act.

"What's better: More industrial carbon pollution that leads to more asthma attacks or less industrial carbon pollution that leads to less asthma attacks?" a man in a blue suit asks to four children sitting around a small table in a new ad unveiled today by the Environmental Defense Fund.

Predictably, the children say "less," as they detail their own asthma ailments.

Telecommunications giant AT&T has repeatedly shown a businessman quizzing children about the benefits of being bigger and faster in recent ads.

The five new ads released by the Environmental Defense Fund specifically single out Sens. Kay Hagan, D-N.C.; Tim Kaine, D-Va.; Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.; Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H.; and Mark Warner, D-Va. as worthy of thanks.

Environmental Defense Fund spokeswoman Sharyn Stein told the Center for Public Integrity that the media buy would be "six figures."

The Environmental Defense Fund is organized as a charitable nonprofit under section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. tax code. Campaign finance attorney Joe Birkenstock of the Washington, D.C.-based firm Caplin & Drysdale says that such nonprofits face "no restrictions for running pure issue advocacy."

Federal lobbyists have this year collected nearly $1 million on behalf of national party organizations tasked with helping Democrats retain control of the U.S. Senate and regain control of the U.S. House of Representatives, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of campaign finance disclosures.

A dozen lobbyists bundled $882,000 for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee during the first quarter, records show, while one organization bundled $18,500 for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Top lobbyist bundlers for the DSCC this year include Democratic super lobbyist Tony Podesta of the Podesta Group ($145,000), as well as the political action committees of the firms Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck ($228,750); Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld ($174,450) and Holland & Knight ($97,000).

The National Association of Realtors PAC was the sole lobbyist-bundler for the DCCC during the three-month period. 

Bundlers raise campaign cash from friends and associates and deliver the checks in a “bundle.” They are often receive special access or other perks for their fundraising acumen.

The amount lobbyist-bundlers raised for their GOP counterparts is unknown. That's because earlier this month, both the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee opted to change the frequency of their filing disclosures with the Federal Election Commission.

Today’s dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum will bring together all of America’s living ex-presidents for what will likely be a warm and celebratory event. Protocol for the unveiling of presidential portraits and presidential libraries general calls for an abundance of courtesy and good feelings, with politics to be left at the front door.

Like all presidential libraries, this one — built on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas — largely reflects the president’s own view of his time in office. The library and museum also reflects the 43rd president’s unique demeanor — “straightforward, confident, unapologetic and willing to let history be the ultimate decider of his time in office,” according to the Washington Post.

But there are other views, of course. George W. Bush’s presidency — like most — was also marked by controversy, tragedy, bitter political rancor and failings large and small. As the Bush administration ended in Dec. 2008, the Center for Public Integrity took stock of what went wrong during those years in its Broken Government project. In a comprehensive assessment of systematic failures over the previous eight years, the Center found more than 125 examples of government breakdown.

Read the project: Broken Government

South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham raised more money from lobbyists ahead of the 2012 election than any other member of Congress save one — an impressive feat considering he wasn’t on the ballot.

Roughly 10 percent of Graham’s $2.2 million haul, about $223,000, came from lobbyists acting as “bundlers,” a higher percentage than any other member. Bundlers raise money from friends and associates and deliver the checks in a “bundle.”

Only New Jersey Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez, who did face opposition in 2012, received more bundled campaign cash from lobbyists — about $227,100 — less than 2 percent of his total contributions, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of Federal Election Commission filings.

Graham’s bundlers include organizations and lobbyists whose positions Graham has supported. Among them are an energy giant, the film industry’s main trade association and a former U.S. ambassador who represents clients that would benefit from the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.

Tops on the list, however, were GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and his “victory fund,” which accepted more than $17 million from lobbyist-bundlers. Six individuals raised at least $1 million apiece for Romney’s unsuccessful efforts, as the Center for Public Integrity previously reported.

In all, a dozen candidates and political committees raised at least $100,000 from lobbyist-bundlers ahead of the 2012 election, including the leadership PAC of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Money well spent?

According to FEC filings, Graham’s No. 1 lobbyist-bundler during the past two years was SCANA Corp., a South Carolina-based energy company that ranked among Fortune’s 500 largest as recently as 2011.