The Center for Public Integrity

Online brokerage billionaire Joe Ricketts became a top 10 super donor thanks to a major September spending spree. Ricketts dumped more than $12 million into Ending Spending Action Fund — the super PAC he created to back fiscally conservative candidates.

Ranking: 7

Total contributions to super PACs: $11.8 million*

• $11.4 million to UAW Education Fund (pro-Democratic)
• $200,000 to Priorities USA Action (pro-Barack Obama)
• $108,000 to Working for Us PAC (pro-Democratic)
• $100,000 to Majority PAC (pro-Democratic)
• $15,000 to American Votes Action Fund (pro-Democratic)

Federal hard money and 527 contributions:

• Has donated more than $1.4 million to federal candidates through its political action committee so far this cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. All but $4,000 has gone to Democrats.

Total spent on federal lobbying (2007-2012): $11.4 million

Lobbying issues: Medicare and Medicaid, banking, appropriations, automotive industry, defense, defense, retirement savings, taxes, trade, unemployment and numerous other legislative issues.

Background:

The United Auto Workers has become a major backer of President Barack Obama and the $81.3 billion federal bailout, which was credited with saving Chrysler and General Motors.

The bailout was a key 2012 campaign issue for Obama and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, especially in the Midwest, where hundreds of thousands of auto workers live.

President Barack Obama has the dictator vote, at least according to a super PAC run by evangelical leader Gary Bauer.

Hours before Obama and GOP nominee Mitt Romney began a debate on foreign policy, Bauer’s super PAC released an ad with quotes from Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, expressing their admiration for the president.

“Obama secured the dictator vote,” the narrator says. “Does he have yours?”

Bauer’s Campaign for American Values PAC has spent more than a half-million dollars on ads supporting Romney and opposing Obama.

An August ad said Obama is “forcing gay marriage on the country.” Another accused the president of “bowing to Islam.” And a third asked, “Why was God booed by Obama’s delegates” at the Democratic National Convention?

Bauer, a former adviser to the Reagan administration, is also president of American Values, a nonprofit, and president of Campaign for Working Families, a political action committee. All oppose abortion and gay marriage.

The Campaign for American Values PAC has received $892,000 in contributions this election cycle. A full $600,000 has come from an obscure corporation called Corporate Land Management.

Restore Our Future, a super PAC supporting Mitt Romney’s candidacy, doubled its fundraising total in September taking in $14.8 million, but was still outraised by the pro-President Barack Obama Priorities USA Action, which raised $15.3 million for the month.

The totals show a reversal of a trend — Republicans to date have fared better at raising money for outside groups, though Romney still has American Crossroads, a well-funded super PAC, and Crossroads GPS, a nonprofit, in his corner.

Restore Our Future brought in $7 million in August.

Most of the major super PACs had until Saturday at midnight to file monthly reports with the Federal Election Commission on September’s fundraising activities.

Meanwhile, J. Joe Ricketts, whose conservative Ending Spending Action Fund super PAC said it would launch a $12 million ad campaign this fall, gave a whopping $11.5 million to the group. Ricketts, the founder of TD Ameritrade, was the only donor to the PAC, which finished the month with $5.9 million in the bank.

Anti-Obama "Ending Spending" ads have just recently begun airing. Of the $12 million, $10 million will be directed toward helping Romney, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal last month.

Jacob "Jake" Jabs is not quite a national figure, but he is a celebrity in Colorado — so much so that he was featured in the animated comedy series “South Park,” which is set in the state.

A cartoon version of Jabs made a cameo appearance in 2007, according to Furniture Today. Kyle, one of the main characters, is at a party for high-rollers when he spots a man in a yellow suit with a white tiger in his lap.

“Look over there, it’s that Jake Jabs guy from American Furniture Warehouse commercials!”

Jabs, 81, owns Colorado’s largest furniture chain and is probably best known for his commercials featuring the big cats.

While his commercials are amusing, he is serious about his politics. A document from the Internal Revenue Service shows Jabs pledged $300,000 in seed money to American Tradition Partnership. ATP is a secretive pro-energy nonprofit that’s taken the state of Montana to court three times challenging the state's campaign finance laws.

Jabs, through a spokesman, on Monday said he did not make a donation and has "never heard of" ATP or the group's previous incarnation.

"He did not commit to the funds indicated by Athena Dalton in the filing so clearly he did not give them funds," wrote Charlie Shaulis, director of communications for American Furniture Warehouse, Jabs' company, in an email to I-News Network in Colorado.

Dalton wrote a letter to the IRS asking the agency to speed up the process for awarding it nonprofit status. The letter states that the approval was needed quickly, otherwise Jabs would not make a contribution. The agency gave it the thumbs up four days later.

Voters haven’t had a clue who is behind American Tradition Partnership — the Colorado-based group pushing to rewrite Montana’s campaign finance laws — and that’s just the way the secretive nonprofit wants it.

A 2010 fundraising pitch to its donors promised that “no politician, no bureaucrat, and no radical environmentalist will ever know you helped,” and “the only thing we plan on reporting is our success to contributors like you.”

“Montana has very strict limits on contributions to candidates,” reads the document, obtained by The Center for Public Integrity. “but there is no limit to how much you give to this program.”

As for the state’s ban on corporate money in elections?

“Corporate contributions are completely legal,” the pitch assures potential funders. “This is one of the rare programs you will find where that’s the case.”

“You can get some traction with that pitch,” says Dennis Unsworth, who led the state’s investigation of the group in 2010 that unearthed the document. “If you can offer to influence the elections outside the law, that’s a great calling card.”

For three election cycles, ATP has plastered the state with mailers attacking "radical environmental groups" and moderate Republicans.

While ATP’s funders are still mostly a mystery, the Center for Public Integrity has identified what records indicate is the secretive organization’s founding donor — an anti-union owner of Colorado’s largest furniture chain — and discovered a long list of affiliations with national tea party groups funded by the conservative billionaire Koch brothers.

This election, ATP has vowed to keep Attorney General Steve Bullock out of the governor’s mansion. In October, voters received a brazen multi-page newspaper-style flier placing the Democratic candidate in a photo lineup with three registered sex offenders.

President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign added 120 new fundraising “bundlers” during the third quarter who have brought in at least $17.5 million, including a former secretary of state and a platinum blonde pop star who has sold more than 40 million albums.

According to a newly released list from the Obama campaign, a total of 758 bundlers have raised at least $180 million for the president’s re-election efforts, including scores of well-connected individuals from California, New York and Obama’s home state of Illinois.

Notable additions to the list include Madeleine Albright, who served as secretary of state under former President Bill Clinton and has raised at least $200,000; pop singer Gwen Stefani, who raised at least $500,000; fashion designer Tom Ford, who has raised at least $500,000; and Warner Brothers CEO and Chairman Barry Meyer and his wife Wendy, who raised at least $500,000.

Other new bundlers include former U.S. Rep. Steve Kagen of Wisconsin, who raised at least $200,000; Connecticut Gov. Daniel Malloy, who raised at least $200,000; and former Republican Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida, who raised at least $100,000 and spoke at the Democratic National Convention last month.

These funds have benefited not only the Obama campaign but also the “Obama Victory Fund” — a joint fundraising organization that funnels cash to his campaign, the Democratic National Committee and party entities in several battleground states.

Individuals may donate up to $75,800 to the Obama Victory Fund. The first $5,000 is directed to the Obama campaign while the next $30,800 goes to the DNC. The remaining funds are split between other participating party committees.

Because the Obama campaign voluntarily only discloses broad ranges of how much money its bundlers have collected, it’s impossible to precisely determine how much these elite fundraisers have gathered.

Less than three weeks before Election Day, a new mystery group dropped nearly $1 million on an anti-Obama expenditure, according to records.

Citizen Awareness Project appears to be a nonprofit organization. It reported the independent expenditure opposing President Barack Obama Thursday, according to a filing with the Federal Election Commission.

The entire sum — $994,000 — was paid to Stephen Clouse & Associates Inc., a Virginia firm that specializes in raising money for its clients via direct mail, according to its website.

The firm has produced marketing materials for the conservative Heritage Foundation and the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, both of which count billionaire businessman and financier of conservative causes Charles Koch as a board member.

Citizen Awareness Project has no website that the Center could find and no Internal Revenue Service documents appear to have been posted online. Thursday’s filing was the first reported political expenditure made by the group.

The group is likely a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” nonprofit. Such organizations can function like super PACs but are not required to register with the FEC or disclose their donors. They are required to file reports with the IRS.

The group’s address is the same as Zakhem Law LLC in Denver, Colo., where its treasurer, Charlie Smith, is a law clerk specializing in election law.

Smith is former chairman of the College Republican National Committee and the founder of a lesser-known pro-Newt Gingrich super PAC, Solutions 2012, which raised $67,000. All of its contributions came from small donors.

If there was a silver lining for open-government advocates in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling that unleashed corporate and union spending on elections, it was that the identity of those who pay for all those annoying ads would be made public on a regular basis.

It hasn’t quite worked out that way.

Since Labor Day, spending by outside groups taking advantage of the high court’s Citizens United decision totaled a little more than $229 million, including unions. Forty-four percent of the total — $100 million — has come from non-disclosing, nonprofit corporations.

The clearest example comes from the top two spenders, two organizations that share the same post office box in Washington, D.C.

American Crossroads, the so-called super PAC co-founded by Republican strategist Karl Rove, has spent $33.1 million since Labor Day, according to Federal Election Commission records. Its top donor is Texas billionaire and businessman Harold Simmons, who along with his company, Contran Corp., has given $13 million to the group so far this election, according to a Center for Public Integrity review of Federal Election Commission records.

Second is Crossroads GPS, the nonprofit sister organization of American Crossroads, also co-founded by Karl Rove, which has spent $30.3 million. Its top donor is — unknown. Crossroads GPS was organized as a nonprofit, “social welfare” organization. The Internal Revenue Service does not require it to disclose its donors to the public, nor does the FEC.

By now most folks know that the U.S. Supreme Court did something that changed how money can be spent in elections and by whom, but what happened and why should you care?

The Citizens United ruling, released in January 2010, tossed out the corporate and union ban on making independent expenditures and financing electioneering communications. It gave corporations and unions the green light to spend unlimited sums on ads and other political tools, calling for the election or defeat of individual candidates.

In a nutshell, the high court’s 5-4 decision said that it is OK for corporations and labor unions to spend as much as they want to convince people to vote for or against a candidate.

The decision did not affect contributions. It is still illegal for companies and labor unions to give money directly to candidates for federal office. The court said that because these funds were not being spent in coordination with a campaign, they “do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.”

So if the decision was about spending, why has so much been written about contributions? Like seven and eight-figure donations from people like casino magnate and billionaire Sheldon Adelson who, with his family, has given about $40 million to so-called “super PACs,” formed in the wake of the decision?

For that, we need to look at another court case — SpeechNow.org v. FEC. The lower-court case used the Citizens United case as precedent when it said that limits on contributions to groups that make independent expenditures are unconstitutional.

And that’s what led to the creation of the super PACs, which act as shadow political parties. They accept unlimited donations from billionaires, corporations and unions and use it to buy advertising, most of it negative.