The two most prolific outside spending groups in state elections have found a new method for influencing elections and ballot initiatives — nonprofit groups.

As reported by the Center for Public Integrity on Thursday, the Washington, D.C.-based Republican Governors Association and Democratic Governors Association together have poured tens of millions of dollars of secret money into nonprofits to wage state-level battles over union rights, tax policy, gay marriage and, of course, gubernatorial seats.

The two nonprofit groups — the RGA’s Republican Governors Association Public Policy Committee and the DGA’s America Works USA — are not required to make their donors public, giving these contributors a secret avenue for funding RGA and DGA efforts.

The Internal Revenue Service, however, incorrectly released donor information for the RGA nonprofit, which the Center obtained.

The disclosure reveals several high-profile corporate executives and two healthcare giants supporting the RGA nonprofit’s efforts in 2011.

“Social welfare” nonprofits are not supposed to have a primary purpose of engaging in politics, according to IRS rules. But this has not stopped political operatives from using the groups to influence elections at all levels, and the RGA and DGA are no exception.

During 2011 and the first half of 2012, the DGA nonprofit America Works USA spent 70 percent of its budget on ads in gubernatorial races in West Virginia and Missouri, according to IRS records.

A trade group for air shows — stung in recently weeks by sequestration's grounding of military aircraft demonstrations — is launching a government affairs offensive.

Lobbying firm Van Scoyoc Associates is now representing the International Council of Air Shows, Inc., lobbying on "air shows regarding sequestration related issues," according to a U.S. Senate document filed today. It marks the first time the International Council of Air Shows has ever hired federal lobbyists.

Jennifer Cave, a former legislative aide to ex-Sen. John Warner, R-Va., is one of two lobbyists handing the account, the filing indicates. Cave also has worked as a special assistant to the National Security Council and Senate Armed Services Committee.

Michael W. Schupp will also lobby on the International Council of Air Shows's behalf.

The move to hire lobbyists is necessary because the freeze on military aircraft demonstrations, such as those conducted by the Air Force's Thunderbirds and Navy's Blue Angels, "represents a threat to our existence as an industry," said John Cudahy, the council's president.

"Dozens, maybe hundreds, of air shows across the country will go out of business if this continues," Cudahy told the Center for Public Integrity. "Some areas have had 10, 15 or 20 percent cuts they've had to deal with. We've seen a 100 percent cut in the support the U.S. military can provide air shows."

The Center for Public Integrity is investing in the coverage of finance and money-in- politics issues with four new hires.

Alison Fitzgerald, a 2009 Polk Award winner, author and longtime Bloomberg economics and enterprise reporter, will oversee the Center’s financial coverage as well as much of its state money-in-politics work. She is joined by Dan Wagner, who comes to the Center from the Associated Press’ Washington bureau, where he specialized in financial regulation.

Both Alison and Dan will start, appropriately enough, on tax day, April 15.

The money-in-politics beat received a major boost this week when Ben Wieder, a computer-assisted reporting specialist, began work Monday. Ben will be joined by Alan Suderman, who has broken numerous stories on Washington D.C.’s government as a staff writer with the Washington City Paper. Alan and Ben will focus mostly on state-level political money coverage. Alan starts April 29.

Alison’s career highlights include writing the 2011 book “In Too Deep: BP and the Drilling Race that Took it Down.” Her reporting has appeared in the New York Times and International Herald Tribune, among other publications. Prior to joining Bloomberg in 2000, Alison worked as a reporter, and then international editor, for the Associated Press. She also has worked as a reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer and Palm Beach Post in Florida.

Alison is a graduate of Georgetown University and earned a master’s degree from Northwestern University. Given her fluency in French and Italian, it’s perhaps appropriate that the long list of reporting awards she’s won includes a 2008 Overseas Press Club honor. Her coverage of secretive political donors won her a 2011 National Press Foundation Everett Dirksen Award for distinguished reporting of Congress.

New York millionaire real estate developer Howard Rich, renowned for his support of conservative causes, has given a last-minute boost to the congressional campaign of former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.

Rich and his wife, Andrea, each donated the legal maximum of $2,600 to Sanford on March 28, according to federal records. They rank among the handful of elite donors to provide such support to Sanford since he headed into today's South Carolina 1st Congressional District primary runoff with fellow Republican Curtis Bostic, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of Federal Election Commission filings.

Rich is a notable political player, who for decades has supported conservative causes, including term limits for politicians, limited government, property rights and school choice.

In 1992, he founded the nonprofit U.S. Term Limits, which advocates for term limits at all levels of government. In 1996, he founded another nonprofit called Americans for Limited Government. That nonprofit spent $1.4 million on independent expenditures to influence elections in 2010, according to documents it filed with the FEC.

A recent analysis by The State newspaper in South Carolina found that Rich contributed $153,000 to state legislative candidates during the 2012 election cycle. Rich used a network of limited liability companies to legally get around the state's $3,500 per person per candidate contribution limit.

People, parties and outside political players spent more money on Election 2012 than during any other — by a significant amount.

"Consider the Source," a new interactive e-book written by the Center for Public Integrity's political reporting team, provides the narrative behind how the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision affected the first presidential election in which it was a factor. 

During the 2012 cycle, groups aided or enabled by the Supreme Court's ruling spent nearly $1 billion and voters experienced an unprecedented barrage of political advertisements.

As the nation prepares for major state-level elections in 2013 and critical midterms in 2014, the "Consider the Source" e-book also explains how professional politicking is influencing this flood of new spending.

View and download the "Consider the Source" e-book by clicking here.

The e-book is compatible with most tablet e-reader software. Click the following links for downloading directions for iBooks (iPad and iPhone) and Kindle.

Even clowns have lobbyists, as do acrobats and animal tamers.

Feld Entertainment, the parent company of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, last year spent a record $335,000 on federal lobbying, according to federal records.

That's up from $280,000 in 2011 — and up from just $120,000 in 2007, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The entertainment company hired 10 lobbyists in 2012, including three in-house lobbyists. Lobbyists from the Alpine Group, the Livingston Group and Birch Horton Bittner and Cherot also performed work on Feld Entertainment's behalf.

Issues regarding animal welfare were the company's top concern, records show. The hot-button topic has been the focus of activity both on and off Capitol Hill.

With the backing of animal rights groups, Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., has pushed legislation that would prohibit Asian elephants in traveling shows.

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has also sued Feld Entertainment, alleging animal rights violations. A settlement was reached between ASPCA and the company in two federal lawsuits last December.

The Ringling Bros. and Barney & Bailey Circus is currently performing in Baltimore. It performed last month in Washington, D.C.

The Easter Bunny — that cotton-tailed purveyor of egg-shaped confections — will deliver his annual baskets of goodies this Sunday.

But not without some help from K Street lobbyists.

Organizations linked to the Easter holiday and its furry mascot have ramped up their efforts to influence lawmakers, according to federal lobbying data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Consider the National Confectioners Association, the trade group for all things cream-filled and candy-coated, which spent a record $420,000 on federal lobbying in 2012.

The association hired 20 lobbyists last year to push Congress for sweet deals on bills such as the Free Market Sugar Act and the Free Sugar Act of 2011. Nine of those lobbyists have previously worked for the federal government in some capacity.  Among them is William J. Morley, of the D.C.-based Altrius Group, who also lobbied on behalf of the Central American Sugar Association and the American Chamber of Commerce in Columbia.

No traditional Easter table scape would be complete without an array of pastel-dyed eggs. 

United Egg Producers, an agricultural cooperative, made $90,000 in federal lobbying expenditures in 2012, reflecting a $40,000 increase from the previous year.

A less fragile, but equally protein-rich element of an Easter buffet is the ham — a pork product with vocal advocates in Washington.

The tone of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's latest fundraising pitch is decidedly doomsdayist.

"There are only 48 hours left — so I'll be blunt: If we get blown out on this first quarterly fundraising deadline, President Obama's agenda is toast," DCCC Finance Director Missy Kurek wrote in an email Friday.

While Republican and Democratic committees both love larding such cash come-ons with hyperbole, puffery and overstatement, the DCCC's latest missive is notably rife, containing a demonstrable error or unsubstantiated assertion in almost every sentence. 

The email's first sentence, for example, writes urgently of a "first quarterly fundraising deadline."

The problem? National party committees such as the DCCC and its counterpart, the National Republican Congressional Committee, have no legal quarterly fundraising deadlines. While many candidates and PACs file quarterly reports with the Federal Election Commission, the DCCC and its brethren disclose their books to the FEC monthly.

Meanwhile, Obama himself might be surprised to learn that the DCCC considers the fate of his policy agenda to hinge on it keeping fundraising pace with Republicans ahead of a quarterly deadline that doesn't exist. The money the group raises also predominantly fuels campaign efforts for midterm congressional elections that will take place 20 months from now.

Since the middle of March, the presidential committee of former Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., has filed 32 amended campaign finance reports with the Federal Election Commission, including 25 which were filed on Thursday.

Why the flurry of activity for the failed 2008 presidential contender?

When he ran for president, Dodd — who left the U.S. Senate in 2011 and became the head of the lobbying powerhouse Motion Picture Association of America — accepted taxpayer funds, meaning the FEC automatically audited the campaign.

The audit found that Dodd's campaign, and its treasurer, Kathryn Damato, misreported its finances by hundreds of thousands of dollars, including failing to report the receipt of $514,173 in July 2008 of money from the FEC's presidential public financing program.

Earlier this year, the FEC fined the Dodd campaign $42,000 for the violations. Dodd personally was not accused of any wrongdoing.

Bryan DeAngelis, Dodd's former communications director, told the Center for Public Integrity that the barrage of new FEC filings stemmed from the enforcement action.

"The campaign agreed to amend its reports to conform them to the auditors' recommendations," he said.

"It was impossible to amend just the May 2008 Monthly Report, for example, without also amending June, July, August, and so forth, up to the present day," DeAngelis continued. "The matter has been resolved, and this final chapter of the campaign has now come to an end."