The Center for Public Integrity

U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg cost taxpayers in his constituency more than $20,000 when he and his wife sued the city of Billings, Mont., and its fire department in 2010 for damage caused to their property during a fire. Two new ads from Democratic outside spending groups are making sure voters don’t forget.

Rehberg, a Republican who is challenging Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, ultimately dropped the suit, but he was nonetheless hit over the Columbus Day weekend with the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s “Only Out for Himself” and Majority PAC’s “Always There.”

Rehberg and his wife sued the City of Billings and the Billings Fire Department for equipment and property damage during a 2008 fire on Rehberg Ranch Estates. Two days after the fire was contained, it flared up again. The Rehbergs alleged breach of duty and negligence on the part of the fire department, according to the Associated Press.

Majority PAC spent $339,000 on the ad and mailers. It is unknown how much the DSCC spent.

The lawsuit became fodder for his 2010 re-election campaign against Democrat Dennis McDonald, who told the Billings Gazette the lawsuit was “embarrassing for the congressman, who is suing the taxpayers.”

The U.S. House race between Republican Rep. Dan Lungren and physician Ami Bera in central California has already seen more outside money than any other House race, and with a new campaign from the nonprofit League of Conservation Voters Inc., the money continues to pour in.

The League of Conservation Voters Inc. reported spending nearly $382,000 opposing Lungren in California’s rejiggered 7th District this week as part of its “Flat Earth Five” campaign, which targets five Republican representatives for their denial of global warming.

The $2 million campaign includes telephone calls to voters, direct mail and television ads in an effort to unseat Lungren and Republican Reps. Dan Benishek of Michigan, Ann Marie Buerkle of New York, Francisco Canseco of Texas and Joe Walsh of Illinois.

California’s 7th District has seen in $4.3 million in outside spending so far, and $3.1 million of that has been spent opposing Lungren, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The race has attracted many the big hitters, including the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the Service Employees International Union, House Majority PAC and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Within hours of the close of the first presidential debate Wednesday night, the liberal super PAC American Bridge 21st Century and the Republican National Committee fired off spin reports.

The RNC’s “Smirk” shows clips edited together of GOP nominee Mitt Romney criticizing President Barack Obama on the deficit, middle class income, health care and other issues while the camera zooms in on Obama looking down at his notes with his lips pursed and the corners of his mouth slightly turned up.

Obama was accused of smugness during a 2008 debate against his then-opponent, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the Romney team alluded to The New York Times last week that Romney’s strategy included “luring the president into appearing smug.”

American Bridge 21st Century got two Web videos out after the debate: “Not So Fast: Romney’s Own Solyndra” and “I Left My Heart in Grand Cayman.”

The first shows a clip from the debate of Romney criticizing Obama for providing solar and wind energy companies with $90 billion in tax “breaks,” which came as Department of Energy loans. The failure of one loan recipient, solar company Solyndra*, caused a scandal when it was reported that the company’s investors were shown to have connections to the agency and the Obama campaign.

Liberal super PAC End the Gridlock spent more than $534,000 opposing Republican state Sen. Deb Fischer, who is favored to win the U.S. Senate seat in Nebraska.

Fischer faces former U.S. Sen. Bob Kerrey in the race to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson in the Republican-leaning state.

End the Gridlock was established in April in Washington, D.C., and has spent all its funds on ads opposing Fischer.  The group's website says it plans to focus on “high impact races” but only names Nebraska.

Its most recent quarterly filing shows the super PAC took in $229,000 through the end of June. The top donor, Hollywood producer Sidney Kimmel, gave $100,000. Kimmel earned his fortune as founder of the Jones Apparel Group, known for such brands as Jones New York and 9 West. Majority PAC, a super PAC whose goal is helping Democrats maintain control of the U.S. Senate, show transfers to End the Gridlock totaling more than $257,000.

The only Nebraska-based donor currently on record is Richard Holland, who helped build one of Omaha’s largest ad agencies. As of the end of June, he contributed $25,000.

Conservative super PAC American Crossroads released “World,” a particularly misleading attack on President Barack Obama’s actions on the day U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens was killed in Libya.

The video opens with the sound of sirens and crackling fires as shots of protests and burning buildings are shown. A newscaster reads a statement from the White House confirming that the Obama administration considers the killing of the ambassador to Libya and three other Americans to be a terrorist attack.

On that day, the narrator says, Obama “campaigned in Las Vegas.” It also accuses the president of skipping meetings with world leaders at the United Nations so he could appear on a television show.

Obama was not in Las Vegas campaigning on Sept. 11, the day of the attack. Both he and Romney refrained from campaigning that day out of respect for the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Obama went to Las Vegas the next day, the official White House schedule shows, and spoke of the attack.

And the president, as the ad seems to suggest, did not “snub key allies” the day of the attack in Libya to be on “The View.” His television appearance was two weeks after the attack.

The ad claims Obama was busy with “The View” while Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was calling for a new world order at the UN. Ahmadinejad did speak at the UN that day, and the American delegation was absent — because it was boycotting Ahmadinejad’s speech in protest of his strident anti-Israel position.

The political action committee of the American Hospital Association reported spending $968,000 on ads supporting Republican incumbent representatives in Louisiana, Washington, New York and Pennsylvania, all of whom sit on committees that oversee health care issues.

The ads support Reps. Charles Boustany Jr. in Louisiana’s 3rd District, Richard Hanna in New York’s 22nd  District, Tom Reed in New York’s 23rd District, Cathy McMorris Rodgers in Washington’s 5th District and  Jim Gerlach in Pennsylvania’s 6th District.

The American Hospital Association is a trade group representing hospitals and health care networks. It opposes any and all cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, supports lower costs for graduate medical education, wants to simplify regulatory requirements and favors lowering malpractice premiums for doctors.

The spending comes from the association’s regulated political action committee, which, unlike super PACs, can accept a maximum of $5,000 in contributions, but can make direct donations to candidates.

This is the PAC’s first reported independent expenditure in the election. However, it has contributed more than$761,000 to U.S. House and Senate candidates directly, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Its independent spending backs Republicans but its direct candidate contributions slightly favor Democrats.

All six candidates supported by the PAC’s outside spending have voted to repeal President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

Americans for Job Security, a conservative nonprofit organized as a trade association, reported that its ad “Running” cost $8.2 million, a significant figure considering the group’s total take in its 2010 fiscal year was $12 million, according to its most recent tax filing.

“Running,” released Wednesday, is the group’s first reported presidential ad of the election. It shows a mother jogging down the street as she says in the voiceover that she’s “running to forget” the bad economy, her husband’s layoffs and the national debt.

“The future is getting worse under (President Barack) Obama,” she says.

The ad is airing in six swing states.

Americans for Job Security is run by president Stephen Demaura, the former director of the New Hampshire State Republican Committee, out of an Alexandria, Va., office shared with the Republican media buying firm Crossroads Media, the Los Angeles Times discovered.

Crossroads Media was co-founded by former Americans for Job Security president Michael Dubke. Dubke is also a partner at Black Rock Consultancy, a GOP consultancy he co-founded with Carl Forti, the political director of super PAC American Crossroads and nonprofit Crossroads GPS.

A new ad from a veterans’ outside spending group and a major Democratic super PAC accuses Arizona Republican Rep. Jeff Flake of failing to support members of the armed services.

“Congressman Flake voted to send us to that war,” says Steven Lopez, an Iraq war veteran, in the new ad, “and then voted against us when we returned home.”

Flake and former Surgeon General Richard Carmona, a Democrat, are facing off to replace retiring Republican Sen. John Kyl in an increasingly competitive race.

“Uniform” from VoteVets Action Fund, a nonprofit, and Majority PAC draws attention to Flake’s vote against the 2008 GI Bill, which expanded benefits to Iraq war veterans. The bill, now law, provides tuition to public universities for qualified veterans, among other provisions.

The ad launches today and will air for one week at a cost of $280,000, according to a press release.

Flake’s campaign is fighting back. On Tuesday, responding to similar claims made by the Carmona campaign, posted a statement from Republican Sen. John McCain, a Vietnam War veteran and former POW, calling the line of attack “false and negative.” The statement is accompanied by a list of veterans’ bills the congressman did vote for.

Americans for Prosperity, a conservative nonprofit funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, launched a new issue advocacy campaign criticizing President Barack Obama Monday.

The organization reported spending $205,000 on radio ads highlighting what the group calls Obama’s “failing agenda.”

The buy will ramp up to $1.3 million, according a press release, with radio ads and calls to voters targeting 13 states. The campaign is coupled with a national bus tour.

Issue ads can name a candidate but do not expressly advocate a yes or no vote. They must be reported to the Federal Election Commission as “electioneering communications” if, as with the new Americans for Prosperity spots, they come within 60 days of a general election.

Issue advertising all but disappeared when a federal district court required donors to the campaigns be identified. An appeals court, however, recently suspended that decision. Issue ads, unlike “express advocacy” ads can be interpreted as educational and not subject to IRS limits on political activity.

Americans for Prosperity, known for being financed by the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch, is one of the top outside spenders in the election.

Republican Rep. Rick Berg, of North Dakota, once the favorite to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad, has found himself in a tight race, and spending by outside groups is flowing.

Berg faces former state Attorney General Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat.

The Republican congressman absorbs a one-two punch today in ads from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Patriot Majority USA.

Patriot Majority USA, a liberal nonprofit, released “More Proof,” which features the AARP’s criticisms of the Medicare plan Berg supports — Rep. Paul Ryan’s “premium support” plan in which the government gives seniors a set amount of money to buy private insurance.

The DSCC’s “No Change” also focuses on Medicare. It says that while Berg promised that those who are already 55 and older will not see a change in their health care costs, that claim is “absolutely not true,” according to the ad.

Ryan’s budget plan reopens the Medicare Part D “doughnut hole” for prescription drugs — a range of costs in which seniors are responsible for paying for all their medications out-of-pocket, Factcheck.org says.

North Dakota, a state that The New York Times predicted as “Berg’s to lose,”  is solidly Republican when it comes to presidential voting, but the Senate seat has been held by a Democrat since 1960.