Once mired in blood and disrepute, professional mixed martial arts now ranks among the world’s fastest growing sports. And its advocates are likewise ramping up their activity in another combative arena: Capitol Hill.

Ultimate Fighting Championship, MMA’s leading promotion company, last year spent $620,000 lobbying on a variety of issues affecting its business, making it the No. 3 spender among sports leagues and recreational entities and eclipsing the government affairs  efforts of other well-established and conventional industry contemporaries, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

UFC outspent former heavy-hitters such as Major League Baseball ($310,000) and the National Basketball Association ($125,000) last year. The National Football League remains the top lobbying spender in the live entertainment industry, but the league’s total spending fell from $1.6 million in 2012 to $1.4 million in the previous year, according to federal disclosures.

UFC is continuing its aggressive advocacy this year, spending $80,000 on federal lobbying in the first quarter of 2013, records filed with the U.S. Senate indicate.Video piracy is among UFC’s chief concerns.

Rep. Mel Watt has plenty of friends in the financial services industry: The North Carolina Democrat whom President Barack Obama has appointed to oversee mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has received more campaign money from financial interests than any other industry or special interest.

Since he entered Congress in 1992, Watt has received $1.33 million in campaign contributions from the finance, real estate and insurance industries, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit research group that tracks money in politics. 

That’s almost a quarter of the total $5.47 million in total contributions he’s received through his career.

Watt’s biggest donors were commercial banks, with the finance and securities industries following at number five, according to CRP. During the last election cycle, the political action committees of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Wells Fargo each gave Watt’s campaign $10,000. Bank of America and Goldman each gave an additional $5,000 to Watt’s leadership PAC.

Watt sits on the House Financial Services Committee and he represents the Charlotte, N.C., area, which is home to Bank of America and was home to Wachovia, until it failed and was purchased by Wells Fargo.

If he’s confirmed to replace Ed DeMarco at the top of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Watt will be tasked with determining the future of the two mortgage giants that were taken into federal receivership in 2008 after catastrophic losses brought them to near collapse.

Environmentalists invested heavily in Rep. Ed Markey — a champion of climate change issues and their preferred candidate in Massachusetts’ Democratic U.S. Senate special primary — who bested rival Rep. Stephen Lynch on Tuesday by 15 percentage points, according to the Associated Press.

The League of Conservation Voters led the way on messaging that expressly advocated either for or against one of the two Democratic candidates, spending more than $830,000 on pro-Markey independent expenditures, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of Federal Election Commission filings. The spending came via LCV’s political action committee, as well as its affiliated super PAC and 501(c)(4) nonprofit arm.

Overall, groups reported spending roughly $2 million to advocate for or against the candidates, according to the Center's analysis. Nearly 90 percent of the expenditures supported Markey or opposed Lynch.

The spending came despite a “people’s pledge” between Markey and Lynch designed to limit the amount of involvement by deep-pocketed independent groups that have proliferated in the wake of the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling.

“Ed Markey has never stopped fighting for us, and we’re going to keep fighting for him,” League of Conservation Voters Chairman Scott Nathan said in a press release after the race was called.

Environmentalists are spoofing AT&T's "It's not complicated" advertising campaign in a new series of big-dollar messages thanking Democratic senators for their votes in March against budget amendments that they believed would have weakened the Clean Air Act.

"What's better: More industrial carbon pollution that leads to more asthma attacks or less industrial carbon pollution that leads to less asthma attacks?" a man in a blue suit asks to four children sitting around a small table in a new ad unveiled today by the Environmental Defense Fund.

Predictably, the children say "less," as they detail their own asthma ailments.

Telecommunications giant AT&T has repeatedly shown a businessman quizzing children about the benefits of being bigger and faster in recent ads.

The five new ads released by the Environmental Defense Fund specifically single out Sens. Kay Hagan, D-N.C.; Tim Kaine, D-Va.; Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.; Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H.; and Mark Warner, D-Va. as worthy of thanks.

Environmental Defense Fund spokeswoman Sharyn Stein told the Center for Public Integrity that the media buy would be "six figures."

The Environmental Defense Fund is organized as a charitable nonprofit under section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. tax code. Campaign finance attorney Joe Birkenstock of the Washington, D.C.-based firm Caplin & Drysdale says that such nonprofits face "no restrictions for running pure issue advocacy."

Federal lobbyists have this year collected nearly $1 million on behalf of national party organizations tasked with helping Democrats retain control of the U.S. Senate and regain control of the U.S. House of Representatives, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of campaign finance disclosures.

A dozen lobbyists bundled $882,000 for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee during the first quarter, records show, while one organization bundled $18,500 for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Top lobbyist bundlers for the DSCC this year include Democratic super lobbyist Tony Podesta of the Podesta Group ($145,000), as well as the political action committees of the firms Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck ($228,750); Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld ($174,450) and Holland & Knight ($97,000).

The National Association of Realtors PAC was the sole lobbyist-bundler for the DCCC during the three-month period. 

Bundlers raise campaign cash from friends and associates and deliver the checks in a “bundle.” They are often receive special access or other perks for their fundraising acumen.

The amount lobbyist-bundlers raised for their GOP counterparts is unknown. That's because earlier this month, both the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee opted to change the frequency of their filing disclosures with the Federal Election Commission.

It's tough to be a Republican in the District of Columbia, even when armed with a sizable campaign war chest and auxiliary support from super PACs during a low-turnout special election.

Despite his own fundraising prowess and support from two independent political action committees, Republican Patrick Mara failed to oust incumbent Democrat Anita Bonds in today's at-large D.C. Council race.

With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Mara ranked third in the race behind Bonds and Democratic challenger Elissa Silverman. Bonds carried 32.2 percent of the vote, while Silverman won 27.6 percent and Mara earned 22.8 percent.

Mara — a former lobbyist whom the Washington Post, D.C. Chamber of Commerce and Sierra Club's D.C. chapter all endorsed — was the election season's sole beneficiary of super PAC cash, indicating that these committees best known for raising and spending massive amounts of cash at the federal level aren't above local races.

D.C. Office of Campaign Finance spokesman Wesley Williams told the Center for Public Integrity that there are just two independent expenditure-only committees registered with the city government. Both were active on Mara's behalf.

The National Association of Realtors' super PAC spent $20,200 touting Mara, city records indicate. And a super PAC called the D.C. Action Fund spent more than $13,500.

The D.C. Action Fund is headed by Nicholas Jeffress, a former executive director of the District of Columbia Republican Committee. Brett McMahon, the president of the construction firm Miller & Long D.C., Inc., ranked as the group's top donor — giving $10,000 of the $35,000 it reported raising through mid-April. 

Eight retiring U.S. senators are collectively sitting on $10.5 million in campaign funds, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of campaign finance records filed last week.

And while federal law prohibits lawmakers from using campaign funds for personal use, they have a variety of options for leftover campaign cash.

The man with the most money still in the bank is Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., who the Washington Post today reported will retire at the end of his sixth term in January 2015. The chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee still has nearly $5 million in his campaign account.

At the other end of the financial spectrum are Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., who each had less than $200,000 in cash on hand through March, records indicate.

To date, six Democrats and two Republicans have announced plans to retire at the end of the 113th Congress.

With the exception of Baucus, most posted tepid fundraising numbers during the first quarter of 2013. Baucus raised nearly $1.6 million during the first three months of the year, records indicate.

The senators may give their surplus money away to other candidates, subject to the normal contribution limits, or transferred to a state or national party committee, which have no limits.

Corporations, unions and special interest groups fueled President Barack Obama's second inauguration ceremonies with more than $18 million — money the commander in chief generally rejected during his first inaugural.

The total represents more than 40 percent of the nearly $44.6 million the Presidential Inaugural Committee 2013 collected, according to a disclosure document filed Saturday night with the Federal Election Commission.

Many of the companies and unions that donated to the president's 2013 inauguration rank among the most powerful government lobbying forces in the nation, collectively spending hundreds of millions of dollars attempting to influence federal policy since Obama first took office.

The Presidential Inaugural Committee 2013's seven-figure donors include some of the nation's most notable corporate names, the FEC filing reveals.

Among them are telecommunications giant AT&T ($4.6 million), software maker Microsoft ($2.1 million), aviation and defense firm Boeing ($1 million) and oil company Chevron ($1 million).

Those that gave $250,000 to $750,000 include:

As gun control debates raged in Congress early this year, the National Rifle Association increased its federal government lobbying expenditures to record levels, new filings with the U.S. Senate indicate.

The NRA and affiliated National Rifle Association of America Institute for Legislative Action together spent at least $800,000 lobbying the federal government during the first quarter — more than any year covering the same period, according to federal records.

Such aggressive advocacy preceded a major legislative victory Wednesday for gun advocates, as the U.S. Senate defeated a proposal to expand background checks on guy buyers.

And it came as gun control advocates  — from President Barack Obama and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the families of children killed last year in Newtown, Conn. — pressured lawmakers to pass laws limiting purchases of firearms.

The NRA groups' first-quarter lobbying expenditures have been steadily increasing in recent years, but never cracked the $700,000 mark.

During the first three months of 2012, they spent $695,000. That follows $675,000 in 2011 and $615,000 in 2010.

This year, the NRA's lobbying efforts were exclusively directed at the House and Senate, according to federal disclosures. The group lobbied on numerous U.S. House and Senate bills proposed by federal legislators.

Among them: