The Center for Public Integrity

A mysterious corporate donor to an outside spending group supporting Mitt Romney’s campaign for president isn’t a corporation at all, but a former executive of Romney’s old employer, Bain & Co., and his wife, according to records.

Super PAC “Restore Our Future” reported a $250,000 donation from a firm called Glenbrook LLC on its disclosure report released Jan. 31. On Tuesday, the group amended its filing, dropping Glenbrook and replacing it with the names Jesse and Melinda Rogers.

Both are listed as having made $125,000 contributions. Jesse Rogers works in "investment management" at Altamont Capital Management. Melinda Rogers’ occupation is listed as "homemaker."

Rogers is a former executive of Bain & Co., the management consulting firm that Romney helmed during the early 1990s. Rogers worked for 16 years at Bain where he founded and led the firm’s private equity group until 2000.

Between 2004 and 2011, Rogers and his wife donated $88,000 to Romney's presidential campaigns and state and federal level political action committees, according to records. During the past year, Rogers also gave $28,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and $2,500 to failed GOP presidential candidate former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Rogers also contributed the legal maximum of $2,500 to Romney's presidential campaign last year, as did Melinda and their daughter Jennifer.

Neither Rogers nor a representative of Restore Our Future could immediately be reached for comment.

If this story has a familiar ring to it, that's because it's happened before.

Of all the investments made by the super-wealthy partners at Bain Capital, perhaps none have a greater potential return than the one they have made in Mitt Romney.

Current and former Bain executives and their relatives have given about $4.7 million to organizations dedicated to making Romney the next president of the United States, according to a Center for Public Integrity investigation.

And they haven’t just come around lately.

Some Bain associates have been filling Romney’s campaign coffers since 2004 when the former Massachusetts governor had early aspirations to become president, and long before he officially embarked on a run.

Since then, they have given to political committees in early primary states — some without contribution limits — to both of Romney’s presidential campaigns and to federal “leadership PACs” controlled by the candidate.

Most dramatically, they gave at least $3.1 million in 2011 to “Restore Our Future,” a “super PAC” not controlled by Romney, which has used the contributions to launch ads attacking candidates Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum.

The state-level contributions have at times gone to local officials, like South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who received $62,500 from Romney-connected state and federal PACs, and who endorsed him in the South Carolina primary.

But a greater percentage of funds raised at the state level went to promoting Romney’s presidential runs, something that has prompted legal challenges by Democratic groups.

The Center examined contribution data from the Center for Responsive Politics, CQMoneyline, the Federal Election Commission and state campaign finance regulators. (Contributions made from 2004 to 2007 to the South Carolina PAC were not available.)

Conservative complaints about a liberal bias in the media do not hold up, at least not when it comes to the free-spending groups known as “super PACs.”

News companies and their executives donated more than $350,000 to conservative super PACs in 2011, according to financial disclosure forms filed Tuesday with the Federal Election Commission.

The donations included $100,000 from St. Paul-based Hubbard Broadcasting to the American Crossroads super PAC, which was created by Bush White House strategist Karl Rove. Hubbard is a family-owned media company with a dozen local TV stations, 21 radio stations — including D.C.’s leading news channel WTOP — and a national cable channel.

The broadcaster did not respond to inquiries about the donation.

This appears to be the first time Executive Chairman Stanley S. Hubbard has made a political donation directly from corporate coffers. But the 77-year-old businessman and his wife Karen have already donated $210,759 to Republican candidates, parties and political action committees this election cycle, according to a Center for Responsive Politics analysis of FEC filings.

Outside groups that funded numerous attack ads in the GOP primaries collected $49.2 million in donations in 2011, with huge contributions coming from billionaires, corporations and labor unions, something that would have been illegal were it not for pivotal court decisions in early 2010.

The top recipient among these so-called “super PACS” was Restore Our Future, which raised $30.2 million to assist the candidacy of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney — that’s more than what was raised by the official campaign committees of any of Romney’s GOP opponents.

The Center for Public Integrity reviewed Federal Election Commission documents filed by super PACs that spent money to support or defeat a presidential candidate in one of the primaries. When considering all super PACs in 2011, total contributions were almost $100 million.

Restore Our Future, which has close ties to the Romney camp, has spent at least $17.5 million so far this campaign, nearly $11 million in Florida, where Romney won handily Tuesday night.

The $49 million total does not include the $10 million in donations that casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife gave to a pro-Newt Gingrich super PAC, Winning Our Future, which were made in January and will be disclosed in a few weeks.

Winning Our Future, the super PAC associated with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and credited with keeping his campaign alive, raised $2.1 million in 2011, according to a report filed Tuesday night with the Federal Election Commission.

The group is best known for its top patron, casino owner and billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who, together with his wife, have given it $10 million. But the most recent FEC report is through the end of 2011 and those contributions have yet to be reported.

The group ended the year with a healthy $1.2 million in the bank. It spent heavily in January, to little effect, apparently. Gingrich was soundly defeated in the crucial Florida primary Tuesday.

Even without Adelson, the super PAC drew support from a handful of wealthy donors. Harold Simmons, whose Contran Corp. also donated $1 million to the pro-Perry “Make Us Great Again” super PAC, gave $500,000 to the pro-Gingrich group, as did W.S. Probst of Huntsville, Ala.

While Sheldon and wife didn't make any donations, it appears members of their family did.

Sivan Ochshorn, Adelson’s step-daughter, gave $500,000. Yasmin Lukatz, Adelson’s niece, who is now head of marketing at tech startup Evo and a former “Special Assistant to the Chairman and CEO of Las Vegas Sands” kicked in $250,000 as did husband Oren Lukatz, a photographer.

The two are frequent Republican donors.

A handful of Democratic super PACs and nonprofits reported raising together just over $19 million last year, a paltry sum compared to the leading GOP groups.

The groups formed last year to help President Barack Obama win a second term and improve Democrats’ congressional fortunes.

The total is based on a joint press release the groups issued Tuesday evening. It includes more than $6.7 million for Priorities USA and Priorities USA Action, started in early 2011 by two former White House aides, Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney — a slow start toward their goal of roping in $100 million to spend this election year. 

In the first half of last year, the two groups backing Obama raised over $5 million, which underscores their lackluster results in the second half.

Federal Election Commission filings show Priorites raised $1.2 million in the fourth quarter, which included $500,000 from the Service Employees International Union and $100,000 from movie director Steven Spielberg.

Two other groups, American Bridge 21st Century and American Bridge 21st Century Foundation, which are providing opposition research to help Obama and congressional candidates, reported that they had raised $6.5 million last year.

Founded by David Brock, the former conservative activist turned liberal firebrand, these two groups are shooting to raise between $15 million and $20 million this election season.

Of their $6.5 million, more than half or $3.7 million, was donated to the super PAC American Bridge 21st Century according to fundraising sources familiar with the results. And $2.7 million went to the foundation, a non-profit arm that doesn’t have to disclose donors’ names.

The patriotically named Red White and Blue Fund, a super PAC created to support former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum's bid for the White House, only managed to raise about $730,000, according to a Federal Election Commission filing.

Of the total, $331,000 came from Foster Friess, an investor from Jackson, Wyoming.

Thus far, all the group's spending has been in support of Santorum, with one big exception. The day before the South Carolina primary, the group spent $1.1 million on an anti-Gingrich telephone campaign, according to FEC records.

Friess told iWatch News Tuesday that he donated at least another $250,000 in January to match what the fund raised from a recent mailing soliciting support from a group of 5,000 "sportsmen."

“We just sent a second mailing to the same list,” Friess said, noting that he’ll match the funds that this mailing brings in as well.

Mitt Romney cemented his position as the favorite to win the GOP nomination with a first-place finish in Florida Tuesday thanks in no small part to an outside spending group that raised $30 million last year, more than the campaigns of any one of his rivals.

"Restore Our Future" raised nearly $18 million in the second half of 2011 to go with the $12.2 million the group brought in for the first half of the year. The group has spent $17.5 million so far in the primary races, just about double that of pro-Gingrich group "Winning Our Future." The super PAC has poured millions of dollars into advertising criticizing the former House Speaker.

The investment industry was far and away the most generous donor to the pro-Romney campaign. Donors included included several buddies from his old employer, Bain Capital, who gave a combined $750,000.

The top donors were Julian Robertson of Tiger Management LLC and Paul Singer of Elliott Management Corp. Both gave $1 million. Robertson is a hedge fund pioneer and wealthy investor. Singer is known for buying other nations' bad debt and collecting on it for a profit. Rooney Holdings Inc., a Tulsa, Oklahoma, construction company, also gave $1 million.

Chris Shumway of Shumway Capital Management gave $750,000. Bob Perry, a homebuilder whose capacity for giving to GOP causes seems endless, gave the group $500,000.

Restore Our Future was co-founded by Carl Forti, Romney’s 2008 political director. It also employs Charles Spies as treasurer, Romney’s chief financial officer and counsel in 2008.

The organization was created thanks to a Supreme Court ruling that allowed political organizations to collect unlimited amounts from wealthy donors, corporations and labor unions and use those funds to either support or defeat a candidate. These so-called 'super PACs' appear poised to play a major role in elections this year.

Midnight Jan. 31 was the deadline for super PACs and presidential campaigns to file their end-of-the-year financial disclosure statements with the Federal Election Commission. To get a look at some of last night's action, iWatch News pulled together the most revealing takeaways from campaign spending during the year 2011.