The Center for Public Integrity

Ranking: 12

Total contributions to super PACs: $8.2 million*

• $3.9 million to Workers’ Voice (pro-Democratic), formerly known as AFL-CIO Workers’ Voices PAC
• $1 million to Majority PAC (pro-Democratic)
• $660,000 to America Votes Action Fund (pro-Democratic)
• $575,000 to American Bridge 21st Century (pro-Democratic)
• $565,000 to House Majority PAC (pro-Democratic)
• $530,000 to Moving Ohio Forward Action Fund (pro-Democratic)
• $250,000 to Priorities USA Action (pro-Barack Obama)
• $125,000 to Iowans for Intergrity in Leadership (pro-Democratic)
• $100,000 to Fair Share Action (pro-Democratic)
• $100,000 to Patriot Majority PAC (pro-Democratic)
• $100,000 Committee to Elect an Effective Valley Congressman (pro-Howard Berman)
• $54,900 to Working for Us PAC (pro-Democratic)
• $50,000 to The American Worker (pro-Democratic)
• $50,000 to Sierra Club Independent Action (pro-environment)
• $50,000 to Ohio Families United (pro-Democratic)
• $42,500 to Defend Our Homes (pro-Democratic)
• $10,000 to Protecting America's Retirees (union-aligned)
• $8,650 to Connecticut's Future PAC (pro-Democratic)
• $5,000 to Young Democrats of America (pro-Democratic)

Notable federal hard money and 527 contributions:

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is running radio and Web ads that target 21 vulnerable Republican House members for “holding the middle class hostage” during the fiscal cliff negotiations.

The campaign is a bit unusual — most parties prefer to run ads a bit nearer to an actual election.

“It’s not really common to see much Democratic or Republican congressional spending this soon after an election,” said Michael Franz of the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks and analyzes campaign advertising. “The permanent campaign is really here.”

As part of its “GOP Hostage Takers” campaign, the DCCC is targeting U.S. representatives with radio and web ads called the “Holiday Cliff,” which look and sound like mock movie trailers, complete with a car hurtling off a winding mountain road.

“This holiday season, if you make only one phone call, if you send only one email, tell Congressman Chris Gibson — don’t drive us off the cliff,” the narrator says.

In addition to Gibson, R-N.Y., the DCCC has targeted five other Republican representatives with video ads — Gary Miller of California, Dan Webster of Florida, Tom Latham of Iowa, John Kline of Minnesota and Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington.

All six are considered vulnerable in 2014 according to Larry Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. Eleven of the 15 members targeted in the radio ads are also beatable, according to the Center.

“The ads are about the here and now, not just about 2014,” Sabato told the Center in an email. “But no doubt they are also intended to send a message about the next election, that what the members do now will not be forgotten in two years.”

“It’s more of a warning to a member of Congress that, ‘Hey you’re in our sights. You better think carefully about this vote,’” said Travis Ridout, also of the Wesleyan Media Project.

Hope that negotiations over the so-called “fiscal cliff” will avoid partisan politics were dashed this week as a round of ads targeting four precariously positioned Senate Democrats hit the airwaves.

Crossroads GPS, the politically active nonprofit that spent millions in the 2012 election, launched a $240,000 radio ad campaign urging Sens. Mark Begich of Alaska, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Kay Hagan of North Carolina and Tim Johnson of South Dakota to “stop the spending.”

All four senators’ seats are considered up-for-grabs in 2014.

Congress and the White House are scrambling to come to a deal on spending cuts and tax increases set to go into effect in the New Year.

Crossroads, co-founded by Karl Rove, a former aid to Republican President George W. Bush, is one of the heavy-hitting advocacy organizations speaking out.

Labor unions, big business and other groups with a vested interest in what happens in Washington are also peppering the public with messages urging citizens to tell Congress to cut spending, extend tax breaks and protect the social safety net — all in the name of avoiding the tax increases and spending cuts set to go into effect after the first of the year.

Return of Rove

Exactly one month after the most expensive election in history — one in which Crossroads GPS spent more than $70 million — the organization launched a $500,000 television campaign on cable networks attacking President Barack Obama’s plan to avoid the fiscal cliff.

“President Obama promised a balanced plan,” the ad says. “But so far, a huge tax increase is his solution.”

Amid protests by labor unions, and objections from the state’s congressional delegation and even the president, Michigan’s Republican Gov. Rick Snyder signed a “right-to-work” bill into law Tuesday, drawn word-for-word from a 32-year-old “model bill” pushed by a corporate-funded, conservative think tank.

The legislation deals a severe blow to organized labor in a state that has the fifth-highest union density in the country, and it marks the revival of an effort long promoted by the influential American Legislative Exchange Council, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that has seen its share of controversy recently.

Since 1973, ALEC has hosted corporate-sponsored meetings where state legislators and lobbyists meet behind closed doors to write and vote on model legislation. In a 1992 annual report, the free-market think tank boasted that it “provides the private sector an unparalleled opportunity” to influence state legislation.

One of its first priorities was passage of “right-to-work” laws, which now exist in 24 states. The 16 states with the lowest union density in the country have right-to-work laws, mostly in the American South and West, while the 13 states with the highest union density do not, until this week.

‘Forced unionism’

In a publication celebrating its 25th year, ALEC said it “began striking out against forced unionism and for the right to work in 1979.” ALEC members endorsed the law as model legislation and began introducing it in states in 1980.

Federal law prohibits workplaces from requiring employees to belong to a union and pay dues. However, employees, be they union members or not, may still enjoy the benefits of a union-negotiated contract.

Despite outraising its Democratic counterpart by a 2-to-1 margin, the Republican Governors Association won only four of 11 races in the 2012 election, a far cry from the success it enjoyed two years ago.

The Washington D.C.-based political organization raised almost $100 million, according to recently released Internal Revenue Service data. The group targeted six states it considered winnable, losing five of them. Overall, Democrats won seven of this year's 11 contests, but the GOP still managed to pick up one seat in North Carolina, long held by Democrats.

The top donors to the so-called “527” organization, which can accept unlimited contributions from billionaires, corporations and unions, are familiar Republican Party patrons — No. 1 is Bob Perry, a Texas homebuilder and perennial RGA supporter, who gave $3.25 million. That’s a little more than half of what he gave in 2010.

Billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson is No. 2, with $3 million in donations between him and his wife. According to the latest Federal Election Commission reports, Adelson is the top donor to super PACs in 2012, doling out more than $93 million along with his family.

Conservative billionaire David Koch — who has not made any contributions to super PACs — was the organization’s third-highest donor, writing two checks totaling $2 million. Koch is co-owner of the second-largest privately held company in America, Koch Industries, an energy conglomerate.

Seven of the RGA’s top 10 donors are corporate executives who gave at least $1 million. Two of them, Paul Singer and Kenneth Griffin, are hedge fund managers.

Billionaire casino owner Sheldon Adelson gave $1 million to a super PAC active in Michigan’s U.S. Senate race during the campaign’s final days, a fact unknown to voters until long after polls closed.

Adelson supplied the bulk of funding for the “Hardworking Americans Committee” with the Oct. 19 donation, Federal Election Commission records show.

The super PAC spent more than $1 million on ads in a futile, last-minute attempt to boost former Republican Rep. Pete Hoekstra in his bid to oust incumbent Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat.

The deadline for reporting donations made since Oct. 17 was Thursday.

Last-minute contributions are not unusual in politics, but thanks to the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision and a lower court ruling, the amount a donor can give to outside groups’ electoral efforts is unlimited. Furthermore, donations to political action committees during the final three weeks of the election need not be reported until December.

The reporting gap should be closed, say watchdogs.

“Congress should amend our disclosure laws to give voters the information they need to make informed decisions on Election Day,” said Paul S. Ryan, an attorney at the Campaign Legal Center. “With current technology, disclosure is easier than ever for super PACs and other political players.”

Adelson, the top donor to super PACs in the 2012 election by a large margin, along with wife Miriam, also provided all $2 million of Republican Jewish Coalition Victory Fund’s war chest. The super PAC, which did not report any receipts before Election Day, pumped more than $1.7 million into advertising opposing President Barack Obama.

The secretive nonprofit known for its efforts to dismantle Montana’s campaign finance laws has had a rough go of it lately.

In November, American Tradition Partnership failed to sink Democrat Steve Bullock’s bid for governor despite plastering the state with issues of a fake newspaper, one of which displayed the Democrat’s photo alongside pictures of sex offenders.

Bullock beat Republican Rick Hill in a race punctuated by debates over the future of Montana’s stringent campaign finance laws. Bullock ran on his record of defending the state’s spending limits as attorney general, when he faced off with ATP in court.

Bullock’s victory was not the only setback for the organization.

Though the nonprofit and its lawyer, Jim Bopp, won a high-profile U.S. Supreme Court decision in June that knocked down Montana’s century-old ban on corporate and union spending on elections, ATP’s other court challenges to Montana’s disclosure rules and contribution limits have stalled.

ATP’s high-profile lawsuits have also exposed it to a wave of scrutiny regarding its funding and tactics.

In court proceedings, the state’s lawyers obtained the group’s bank records and early donors.

Meanwhile, media reports have laid out evidence of possible illegal coordination with candidate campaigns alongside indications that ATP may have misled the Internal Revenue Service.

The group, founded in 2008 to lob mailers into Montana and Colorado legislative races attacking environmentalists and moderate Republicans, has also come to represent the questionable tactics used by nonprofit groups to cover the tracks of donors and funnel unlimited money into elections, say reform advocates.

A nonprofit group in Montana that supported a conservative state Supreme Court candidate was not the recipient of a $500,000 donation from the nation’s top drug lobby as suggested earlier this week and probably wouldn’t accept the money even if it were offered.

“I’ve never raised a dime from a pharmaceutical company,” said Republican state Sen. Jason Priest, a board member and former executive director of the Montana Growth Network, which produced radio advertisements and mailings during the election.

“Guys like PhRMA, they want more government,” he said. “They want all this ‘Obamacare’ stuff, all these health care exchanges, the expansion of Medicaid and things that I don’t like.”

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) gave $500,000 to a nonprofit group called “Montana Growth,” as the Center for Public Integrity reported this week.

Records appeared to indicate the funding went to the only “Montana Growth” that reported any spending to Montana’s Commissioner of Political Practices this year — Priest’s “Montana Growth Network.”

The Montana Growth Network actually resides in the state while “Montana Growth,” the true recipient of the drug lobby’s donation, lists its address as a mailbox in a UPS store in Washington, D.C.

The Center was able to track down the recipient of the funds by tracing a federal identification number that showed that “Montana Growth” was formerly known as “Economy Forward.” Records indicate its directors are Jessica Bradley and Carrie Schuyler of the Democratic-aligned public relations firm Hilltop Public Solutions, which has offices in D.C., New York and Billings, Mont.

Little is known about the group, but Internal Revenue Service documents indicate that the drug lobby’s contribution supplied the bulk of its funding.

When six-term GOP incumbent Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah faced the prospect of a mutiny from conservative activists, his allies within the pharmaceutical industry stepped in to help defend him.

New documents obtained by the Center for Public Integrity show that the drug lobby’s main trade group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), gave $750,000 in 2011 to Freedom Path, a nonprofit group that spent big to help Hatch win another term.

Despite his solid conservative credentials, Hatch drew a primary challenge from former state Sen. Dan Liljenquist in the 2012 election. Hatch out-fundraised the challenger by an 11-1 margin, but Liljenquist was helped by super PAC FreedomWorks for America, which reported spending nearly $1 million on anti-Hatch ads.

The nation’s enforcer of election laws was largely paralyzed during the 2012 election, despite a Supreme Court ruling that left several key money-in-politics issues open to interpretation.

With five of six Federal Election Commission members working on expired terms (one since 2007), President Barack Obama had an opportunity to remake the agency with members more inclined to enforce campaign finance rules, say reformers.

But that hasn’t happened.

The situation hasn’t done much for the agency’s reputation.

“The Federal Election Commission is itself a campaign-finance scandal,” said longtime FEC critic and campaign finance reformer Fred Wertheimer, founder and president of Democracy 21.

“None of the players in the political arena had any reason to believe that the campaign finance laws would be enforced,” Wertheimer said. “The White House needs to address it or else must bear responsibility for this campaign-finance scandal continuing.”

As both Obama and GOP rival Mitt Romney raised hundreds of millions of dollars for their campaigns, long-time allies of each man launched supposedly independent super PACs that served as attack dogs during the long slog of the election.

Former White House aides Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney created the pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action, while former Romney campaign advisers Carl Forti, Charles Spies and Larry McCarthy created the Restore Our Future super PAC to boost the former Massachusetts governor’s candidacy.