The Center for Public Integrity

If Karl Rove was an NFL coach and not a political strategist, he would probably be looking for a new job about now.

Organizations co-founded by the GOP’s most effective fundraiser spent more than $175 million only to see President Barack Obama win a second term and Democrats actually gain seats in the U.S. Senate.

According to a Center for Public Integrity review of spending records, Rove’s super PAC, American Crossroads, went 3-10 during the 2012 election cycle, while Crossroads GPS, its nonprofit counterpart, went 7-17. The two groups, which were both active in a handful of contests, had a combined 9-21 record.

When asked by Fox News host Chris Wallace on Election Night if his groups’ spending was “worth it,” Rove was unapologetic: "Look, if groups like Crossroads were not active, this race would have been over a long time ago.”

Meanwhile, Jonathan Collegio, the spokesman for the two Crossroads organizations, has maintained that “sub-optimal candidate quality” contributed to Republican losses in the Senate and that his groups will be a “permanent entity on the center-right.”

“By leveling the financial playing field, conservative super PACs kept this race close and winnable all the way until the end,” Collegio told the Center for Public Integrity. “Our contributors are of course disappointed with the results, but satisfied with the impact we had.”

Marijuana legalization, gay marriage and a state version of the DREAM Act are this year’s ballot initiative winners. But those who gave the largest sums to state referenda poured tens of millions of dollars into their cause — and lost.

Molly Munger was the largest individual donor to a state ballot initiative, giving about $44 million to support a proposal to raise revenue for schools and early childhood education in California, according to the California Secretary of State.

Seventy-two percent of California voters rejected Proposal 38, which was backed by the Pasadena civil rights attorney.

Munger’s father is Charlie Munger, the billionaire vice chairman of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway investment firm. She co-founded the Advancement Project with her husband Steven English (who chipped in $3.3 million for Prop 38). In 2000, the group won a billion-dollar lawsuit over inequitable school-construction practices in California.

Munger’s millions equal 5 percent of all federal Head Start money California received in 2009 for its early childhood education programs. A $44 million gift to Los Angeles’ Head Start agency would equal a fifth of the federal grant the city received last year.

Munger outspent her brother, Stanford physicist Charles Munger Jr., a Republican activist who shelled out $23 million on ballot proposals. Munger Jr. opposed Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown’s initiative that sought to raise revenue for schools by upping the sales tax and levies on the state’s wealthy residents.

The measure passed with 53 percent of the vote.

The explosion of outside spending unleashed at the federal level by the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court ruling also rocked state races.

Contests for the top executive and judicial spots, in states whose bans on corporate outside spending were invalidated by the ruling, were newly shaped by unlimited cash from out-of-state corporate and union treasuries.

The D.C.-based governors’ associations led the way, nearly keeping pace with candidate spending in several close races. Governors’ races in Montana, Washington and New Hampshire were neck-and-neck as voters were besieged by ads financed by outside spending groups through Election Day.

Montana governor's race

Republican Rick Hill held a slim lead in his race against Democrat Steve Bullock for governor of Montana in a race that had not been determined at this writing. The Republican Governors Association used a super PAC, created in the wake of Citizens United, to support Hill.

RGA Right Direction PAC ran ads in Montana attacking Bullock, and also used its super PAC to funnel millions directly to candidates and parties on the state level.

Super PACs and other outside groups — most made possible by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision — spent more than $1 billion on advertising in federal races through Election Day, with 10 organizations accounting for more than half the total.

Conservative groups accounted for roughly 70 percent of spending, including more than $440 million on the presidential race alone, a sum that helped keep Republican Mitt Romney competitive in his bid to unseat President Barack Obama.

The spending wasn’t enough to put the former Massachusetts governor in the White House — nor was it enough for Republicans to wrest control of the Senate away from the Democrats, despite the proliferation of Senate and House candidate-specific super PACs.

The Center for Public Integrity analyzed spending data from the Center for Responsive Politics, gathered from the Federal Election Commission.

David Keating, the president of the Center for Competitive Politics, which favors campaign finance deregulation, says this gusher of spending by outside groups was a boon for democracy.

"There were a lot of competitive races, and super PACs were one of the key reasons why," said Keating, who added that the nascent groups "helped keep Romney competitive," especially between April, when GOP rival Rick Santorum dropped out of the presidential primary race, and the Republican National Convention in August.

Editor's Note: Today marks the final installment of the Daily Disclosure. To keep up with post-election, money-in-politics news, please visit Consider the Source.

Money can't buy happiness, nor can it buy an election, apparently.

The top donors to super PACs in 2012 did not fare well — casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, the No. 1 super PAC contributor with more than $53 million in giving, backed eight losers at this writing.

Adelson was top backer of the pro-Mitt Romney Restore Our Future super PAC, with $20 million in donations. Romney lost to President Barack Obama. In addition, Adelson's contributions to super PACs backing U.S. Senate candidates in Florida, Virginia and New Jersey were also for naught.

He was not the only conservative billionaire who had a bad night.

Contran Corp. CEO Harold Simmons, (No. 2), homebuilder Bob Perry (No. 3) and TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts, (No.4), also bet on Romney. Collectively, the trio gave $13.4 million to Restore Our Future, and Ricketts’ super PAC, Ending Spending Action Fund, spent an additional $9.9 million helping Romney’s failed bid.

Outside groups spent more than $190 million on the presidential election in the final three weeks of the campaign, with about $155 million aiding Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

The total is more than 40 percent of spending by super PACs, nonprofits and other organizations in the presidential contest since the general election began and is more than any other three-week period in the race.

Since Oct. 29 alone, GOP-aligned outside spending groups outspent their Democratic counterparts in the presidential race $84 million to $20 million, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of Federal Election Commission records collected by the Sunlight Foundation.

“Memories are short,” said attorney Dan Backer, whose clients include several conservative outside spenders. “The more you can define the message in the final days, the more likely you are to motivate your base, sway undecided [voters] and turn off supporters of your opponents.”

The outside spending no doubt helped Romney in his fight with his better-funded opponent, President Barack Obama — the Romney campaign reported about $53 million in the bank through Oct. 17 compared with the Obama campaign’s nearly $94 million.

The top spenders during the home stretch were super PACs Restore Our Future, which spent more than $45 million on ads in the presidential contest since Oct. 17 and American Crossroads, which spent $35 million.

Restore Our Future was created by several former Romney aides. American Crossroads was co-founded by GOP strategist Karl Rove.

The Center for Public Integrity's John Dunbar joins PBS NewsHour's streaming coverage at 12:30 p.m. ET to discuss the impact of super PACS on the 2012 election.

In the day before the election, more than $3.5 million was spent supporting GOP nominee Mitt Romney or opposing President Barack Obama while $34,000 was spent in support of the president, according to Federal Election Commission reports.

While Romney has enjoyed greater support with outside groups, the president’s campaign has raised more money, which has kept the two candidates about even in total ad spending.

Reports filed Monday show that in addition to the spending on the presidential race, groups also spent $800,000 to influence votes for U.S. Senate and House races.

Americans for Responsible Leadership, a conservative nonprofit, spent more than any other outside group yesterday with $2.7 million, most of it supporting Romney. The Arizona-based group did not become active in the election until mid-October.

Because it is a nonprofit, it is not required to disclose its donors; however, a court battle in California — the group has also been spending big on state-level ballot measures —culminated yesterday with the group disclosing its donors, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The disclosure wasn’t particularly illuminating — the nonprofit group’s donors were other nonprofits, which also keep their donors secret.

Americans for Job Security, for example, passed money to the Center to Protect Patients’ Rights, another nonprofit, which gave money to Americans for Responsible Leadership, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The original donors to Americans for Job Security are unknown.

Watchdog groups are accusing a House committee that investigates wasteful government spending of apparently using taxpayer funds to produce a campaign video attacking President Barack Obama.

The video was produced by House Committee on Oversight and Reform, chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif. The one-minute video criticizes Obama for the cost of state dinners and was posted to the committee’s YouTube channel on Friday. It has made its way through Twitter and conservative blogs over the weekend.

“Spend like he says, not like he does,” the narrator says of the president, as a photo of Obama in a tuxedo holding champagne shares a split screen with dollar bills raining down.

“It is so far beyond the pale. I think it is clearly an ethics violation,” said Melanie Sloan, the executive director of the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “It is one of the most outrageous abuses of official resources I’ve ever seen.”

CREW plans to file a complaint, Sloan said.

When asked if taxpayer funds were used to create the video, committee spokesman Seamus Kraft said in an email that “the committee’s video presentation is fully consistent with House rules and did not incur any additional taxpayer expenditures for its production.”

According to Paul Ryan, an election law and ethics attorney at the Campaign Legal Center, the video amounts to an “electioneering” campaign ad — it supports or opposes a candidate even though it doesn’t explicitly say vote for or against that candidate.

It falls short only in that it wasn’t broadcast on television.

Thanks to a flood of outside spending, state supreme court races nationwide are awash in tens of millions of dollars’ worth of ads. Just how much is being spent isn’t clear, as many states allow certain types of ads to go unreported.

In North Carolina, one outside group has single-handedly outspent two candidates for a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court. The North Carolina Judicial Coalition has unleashed a torrent of ads on behalf of conservative Paul Newby, blanketing the state with a $1.3 million ad buy. Tobacco giant RJ Reynolds and the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce gave a combined $264,000 to the ad campaign.

Both Newby and his opponent, liberal Sam Ervin IV, accepted $240,000 from the state as part of North Carolina’s public financing program — established in 2004 to limit spending and rein in the excesses of special interest money in judicial races. 

Unlimited spending by unaffiliated groups has threatened the effectiveness of the program — one of 16 in the nation, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The flood of spending was made possible thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling in 2010. Unlike candidates, outside spending groups can raise and spend unlimited sums from people, corporations and unions.

“Outside entities can spend as much as they want,” said Kim Strach, of North Carolina’s election board. “Candidates certified in our [public financing] program don’t have that ability.”

Michigan

The Michigan Supreme Court election is the nation’s most expensive judicial race this year. The state has seen millions of dollars in “off-the-books” outside spending before an election that could flip the 4-3 conservative edge on the state’s highest court.