The Center for Public Integrity

The conservative nonprofit Americans for Prosperity on Wednesday announced a $2.7 million ad buy that will target Democrats in five key Senate races across the country.

The targets are Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., Rep. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., Rep. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., and former Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine.

The first of the ads targets Baldwin and began airing in Wisconsin last week, according to a press release from Americans for Prosperity.

“Tammy Baldwin: Stop Wasteful Spending,” features a handful of Wisconsinites who believe that “Washington can sure learn a lot from Wisconsin, especially how to tighten their belts and balance the budget.”

The Americans for Prosperity ad also points out Baldwin’s vote in favor of the Affordable Care Act, which it claims will cost $2 trillion — “double what was promised.”

In March, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the net cost of the Act would be $1.1 trillion over nine years.

Two other ads that are part of the buy were released online yesterday. “Smarter Spending Not Higher Taxes” targets Kaine, while “Nevada Taxpayers First” targets Berkley.

The remainder of the ads will air over a two-week period. It is not clear when that period began.

The ads are separate from the $25 million ad campaign targeting President Barack Obama that Americans for Prosperity announced in early August.

Liberal nonprofit Patriot Majority USA is behind two major ad campaigns that kicked off Tuesday. One targets billionaire GOP patrons Charles and David Koch and the other is a coordinated effort with super PAC Majority PAC targeting competitive Senate races in four states.

Patriot Majority USA’s $500,000 ad buy produced spots targeting the Koch brothers called “Greed Agenda” and a shorter version, “Tycoons.”

The minute-long “Greed Agenda” claims the Koch brothers are “buying this year’s election” with $400 million in spending, as Politico  reported in May.

Patriot Majority USA claims the Koch brothers and the groups they fund support conservative candidates who will create “tax cuts for the rich, eliminate the minimum wage” and make “big cuts to our schools but big subsidies for oil companies.”

The Koch brothers are known for funding non-disclosing nonprofit groups like Americans for Prosperity, which support an anti-regulatory, free-market agenda. The Kochs are also major funders of conservative think tanks including the Cato Institute and the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

Conservative super PACs dominated their Democratic rivals in the latest round of fundraising, according to reports from the Federal Election Commission filed Monday.

Restore Our Future, a super PAC supporting presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, brought in $7.5 million in July, finishing with an imposing $20.5 million in the bank. Top contributors include Texas homebuilder and super donor Bob Perry, who gave another $2 million.

Perry was already top donor to the group and the latest donation pushes his total to a whopping $8 million. Another major donor was the Renco Group, a family-owned investment company associated with billionaire investor Ira Rennert, which gave $1 million.

Conservative super PAC American Crossroads brought in $7.1 million finishing the month with $29.5 million in the bank. Texas mega-donor and billionaire Robert Rowling’s TRT Holdings, a private holding company that includes Omni Hotels and Gold’s Gym, gave $1 million. TRT also gave $1 million to American Crossroads in February. Rowling personally gave $1 million to the super PAC in May and another $1 million in July.

Meanwhile, the Democratic super PACs didn’t fare quite as well.

The conservative, free-market nonprofit American Future Fund announced the release of attack ads to run in Florida and Wisconsin, battlegrounds for control of the U.S. Senate.

In Florida, Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson is facing $1.9 million in outside spending from conservative independent spending groups, which favor Rep. Connie Mack, R-Fla., according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

In Wisconsin, Democratic Rep. Tammy Baldwin faces former Gov. Tommy Thompson, who won a hotly contested Republican primary and is vying to replace retiring Democrat Herb Kohl. Even before the primary concluded, Baldwin faced a slew of attack ads from conservative super PAC Club for Growth Action and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

American Future Fund’s “1979” attacks Nelson’s tenure, noting “Bill Nelson’s been in Washington since 1979.”

Well, not quite. Nelson was a member of the House from 1979 to 1991, when he ran for governor. He then won election as insurance commissioner and served until 2000 when he won his Senate seat.

“What’s he done in more than a third of a century?” the narrator asks. “Not a balanced budget but a $2 trillion health care law and $15 trillion more in debt.”

In a one-two-punch, dark money group Crossroads GPS is back with a new ad — the second in as many weeks — hitting Heidi Heitkamp, the Democratic contender for U.S. Senate in North Dakota.

“Forgot” comes a week after Crossroads GPS voluntarily pulled another Heitkamp attack ad for what a spokesman called “content issues.” The ad accused Heitkamp of spending taxpayer dollars on private airplanes when she was attorney general of the state, a claim Heitkamp denounced as “completely false.” The planes were, in fact, donated to North Dakota in 1993 by the Department of Defense.

Heitkamp faces Rep. Rick Berg, R-N.D., in the U.S. Senate race to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad.

The new ad accuses Heitkamp of establishing a pay-to-play relationship with an out-of-state trial lawyer when she was attorney general, a position she held from 1993 through 2000. Heitkamp tapped Jack McConnell, Jr., a Rhode Island attorney, to help the state implement its settlement in the Big Tobacco lawsuit of the 1990s, in which 46 attorneys general, including Heitkamp, sued major tobacco companies to recover tobacco-related health care costs.

The ad misleadingly suggests the firm got paid millions from the state’s coffers, when, in fact, the attorney’s fees came via the settlement, paid by the tobacco companies, according to Forum, a North-Dakota based media company.

Forum’s fact-check found that many of the claims in the ad are not completely true.

The closely watched Virginia Senate race attracted an advertising deluge by some of the 2012 election’s biggest outside spending groups Wednesday — five ads in 24 hours.

The election pits former U.S. Sen. George Allen, a Republican, against former Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine to decide who will replace U.S. Sen. Jim Webb, a Democrat, who is not running for re-election.

The race, which has already seen $4.7 million in outside spending, drew five new ads paid for by super-heavyweights the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Crossroads GPS, Majority PAC and the League of Conservation Voters.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a nonprofit business trade association, spent $276,000 on an anti-Kaine ad Wednesday that suggests he favors “union bosses” over Virginia jobs. (The Chamber released a similar ad the same day attacking Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., on the same front).

Among seven new ads released by Crossroads GPS Wednesday, the conservative nonprofit focused two on criticizing Kaine. “Cost” hits Kaine for “not putting Virginia first” by voting to cut back spending on defense, an industry that employs many Virginians. “Pledged” criticizes Kaine for “higher taxes, reckless spending (and) skyrocketing tuition.”

After an onslaught of overtly negative attack ads, conservative independent spending groups have taken a new tone in their criticism of President Barack Obama — disappointment.

The Republican National Committee and the nonprofit Americans for Prosperity released ads Tuesday that highlight voters who did not get the “hope and change” from Obama they wanted.

The 60-second spot from Americans for Prosperity features a handful of voters — all 2008 Obama supporters — explaining why the president has not earned their vote in 2012.

“I think he’s a great person,” a woman named Maria says. “I don’t feel like he is the right leader for our country, though.”

“I still believe in hope and change. I just don’t think Obama’s the way to go for that,” Robin says.

AFP President Tim Phillips told reporters on a conference call Tuesday that the spot — the second in the group’s $25 million express advocacy campaign — cost about $7 million. Starting today, the ad will air in 11 swing states for one week.

The RNC’s new ad, “Hope and Change,” opens with a clip of Obama standing before a massive crowd shouting his name at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

“What if it had been your name they were chanting?” the narrator asks. “What if America had given you the power? Their hope?”

“Would you have spent trillions overhauling health care while millions were without work?”

While the narrator presents various what-if situations, apparently disappointed Americans stare into the camera.

Workers’ Voice, the super PAC of the AFL-CIO, is going on the offensive this week with a series of direct mail and online advertisements attacking presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and his running mate Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

The new ads, which focus on Medicare, coal and worker safety, mark the union-backed super PAC’s entry into the presidential race.

The mailer, published online by Politico, targets coal miners in Ohio. It highlights the growing risk of black lung disease and Republican efforts to block regulations that would increase worker protections.

The ad will be distributed to 100,000 mailboxes and is intended to counter Romney’s campaign appearance at a coal facility in Ohio later in the week.

In addition to Romney and Ryan, the online ad, to be displayed on the website of the Las Vegas Sun, strikes at Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., who was appointed to replace John Ensign and is in a contested race to keep his job. It claims the “Romney-Ryan-Heller plan” will “double seniors’ costs, raise the retirement age and throw seniors into an Rx donut hole.”

CNN reported the online ads cost around $50,000. Romney has yet to endorse Ryan’s sweeping plan to overhaul Medicare.

No response from the Republicans yet.

Workers’ Voice receives its primary financial support, not surprisingly, from unions, both directly from union treasuries as well as from union political action committees.

Republicans wasted no time in pumping up Mitt Romney’s choice as vice presidential running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., touting the GOP’s new dynamic duo as “America’s Comeback Team.”

The “comeback” is not a reference to Romney’s recent slip in the polls, but to the assertion that the pair will return the nation to prosperity following the long recession, which they blame on President Barack Obama.

The Republican National Committee released a short video “Big Solutions” today that exudes positivity, featuring a sunrise, uplifting music and inspiring quotes from Romney and Ryan during Saturday’s surprise announcement in Virginia.

Romney made a gaffe by introducing Ryan as “the next president of the United States.” The ad fixes that, adding a voice-over correction with Romney introducing him as “the next vice president of the United States.”

A conservative nonprofit group, American Future Fund, also got in on the action, releasing “Comeback Team” which unflatteringly splices together remarks from Vice President Joe Biden, for example: “... uh to be able to know what the American people think, and I don’t …” Ad production and placement cost $23,000, according to a Federal Election Commission report.

While the nonprofit group is not required to release its donors, an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity revealed that the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, also known as PhRMA, gave $300,000 to the organization in 2010.

The Republican National Committee and pro-Republican super PAC American Crossroads are attacking President Barack Obama over an ad released by super PAC Priorities USA Action that all but calls presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney responsible for a woman’s death from cancer.

The response comes in the form of... more ads.

“What Else?” from the RNC accuses the Obama campaign of lying about the extent of its connection to the Priorities ad. Coordination between candidates’ campaigns and super PACs is prohibited, but rules against it are difficult to enforce, as the Center for Public Integrity has reported.

In the Priorities ad, steelworker Joe Soptic says Romney’s former firm, Bain Capital, shut down the company he worked for and he lost his health insurance. His wife developed cancer but avoided going to the doctor because she had no coverage. 

“I don’t know the facts of when Joe Soptic’s wife got sick, or when she died,” Stephanie Cutter, Obama’s deputy campaign manager, says during a TV news interview featured in the Republican ad.

The ad then cuts to a recording of a conference call where Cutter thanks Soptic, the steel worker, for “sharing your experiences.”

The ad never says what experiences Soptic was sharing.