The Center for Public Integrity

If President Barack Obama wants to better fund education, he might start by making good on the $13,515 his campaign owes Virginia State University, or pay the campaign's $5,575 bill to the public school system of Springfield, Ohio.

Homeland security? The St. Cloud State University Public Safety Department could probably use $785 due to it from Obama for America.

And an investment in domestic energy could certainly come in the form of Obama erasing $512 worth of red ink with Nebraska's Omaha Public Power District.

These are just a few of the more curious liabilities the Obama campaign carried with it into 2013, according to documents filed last week with Federal Election Commission. In all, the Obama campaign has nearly $5.9 million in debt yet to clear.

To be sure, it's hardly uncommon for presidential candidates of yore to owe vendors money.

Some, like Democrat Hillary Clinton, spent years paying off campaign debt before closing shop. Others, from Republican Rudy Giuliani to Democrat John Edwards, simply let it ride, offering no indication that they'll ever clear their accounts. 

They typically owe money to big-time, if pedestrian political players: lawyers, consultants, advertising firms, travel providers and such. Most of Obama's creditors also fit these categories. 

But that doesn't mean little guys are immune from wondering when would-be leaders of the free world intend to settle up.

Consider Republican Newt Gingrich's committee.

Americans for Prosperity, the conservative nonprofit founded with support from billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, is out with a new ad accusing President Barack Obama of "hypocrisy."

The reason? Obama's campaign committee is transforming itself into a nonprofit, which, like Americans for Prosperity, is organized under Section 501(c)(4) of the U.S. tax code. The designation allows groups to lobby and advocate for both issues and candidates without revealing the names of their funders, so long as influencing elections is not their primary purpose.

But what the new Americans for Prosperity ad doesn't say is that Obama's new nonprofit, called Organizing for Action, plans on disclosing its donors, while Americans for Prosperity does not.

Politico has reported that the nascent pro-Obama nonprofit has reached out to companies such as Lockheed Martin, Citi and Duke Energy for financial support. Bob Bauer, the lawyer for Organizing for Action, has said the group will voluntarily report its funders and be "completely devoted" to issue advocacy, not electoral politics.

The exact nature and degree of this disclosure is not yet clear. When the Obama campaign voluntarily disclosed the names of its bundlers, for example, it simply provided a list of names and broad ranges, with a top range of "more than $500,000," even though many bundlers raised millions of dollars, according to documents obtained by the New York Times.

As calls mount for Hillary Clinton to consider a presidential bid in 2016, the newly retired secretary of state tonight quietly disbanded her 2008 campaign organization, Hillary Clinton for President, new documents filed with the Federal Election Commission indicate.

The committee termination filing follows Clinton recently paying off her final 2008 presidential campaign debts — in part with some help from President Barack Obama, the renting of supporters' personal information and a bit of gimmickry.

Clinton's campaign debt at one point exceeded $20 million, but by December, she had cleared her final obligations and actually ran a small surplus going into 2013, according to Hillary Clinton for President's year-end campaign finance report, while it released late last month.

Even into January, the committee continued earning income from renting the personal information of its supporters to a political consulting firm, New York-based Lake Group Media, according to its termination filing.

Hillary Clinton for President on Jan. 31 transferred much of its surplus — $102,797 — to Friends of Hillary, the still-technically-active campaign committee Clinton used while she served in the U.S. Senate, documents show.

A weekend revamp of the U.S. Senate Lobbying Disclose Act database has caused previosly active hyperlinks to hundreds of thousands of lobbying disclosure documents to stop functioning.

Users attempting to access old versions of federal lobbying documents, such as client registrations and quarterly disclosures, receive an error message that reads, "We're sorry, that filing cannot be displayed."

Most notably affected are third-party watchdog websites such as OpenSecrets.org that compile and analyze lobbying data and, at the moment, still link to old versions of primary source lobbying documents.  

Most lobbying documents appear to be displaying correctly when searching directly through the U.S. Senate database. 

A Senate Office of Public Records office wasn't immediately available for comment, although a staffer not authorized to speak on the record confirmed that the office has switched from using PDF documents to documents formatted in HTML. The goal is to make the display of lobbying disclosure information more complete and consistent — sometimes a problem with previous documents, the staffer said.

The Senate's IT staff is looking into how to best address the linking issue and is in contact with organizations that still link to the old versions of Senate lobbying documents, the staffer said. They hope to resolve the issue quickly.

In the meantime, the staffer added that anyone wanting to view lobbying documents should for now search through the Senate's website.

Mayors Against Illegal Guns paid a hefty price Sunday to air an advertisement during the Super Bowl that specifically targeted a Washington, D.C., audience.

The nonprofit, headed by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Boston Mayor Tom Menino, paid $100,000 to run the spot on CBS affiliate WUSA-TV, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of documents filed by the station to comply with Federal Communications Commission requirements.

Mark Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, told the Center for Public Integrity that his organization targeted Washington's media market because "that's where the people who make decisions are."

The new ad featured a montage of children set to the song "America, the Beautiful," along with 1999 congressional testimony by Wayne LaPierre, the National Rifle Association's current executive vice president and CEO.

"The NRA once supported background checks," the child narrating the ad says, before a clip plays of LaPierre saying that "mandatory, instant criminal background checks for every sale at every gun show" are "reasonable." The NRA has since reversed its stance on that proposal.

While drug manufacturing giant Pfizer's animal health spinoff was making headlines Friday for a blockbuster initial public stock offering, it was quietly entering the political arena, too.

Zoetis Inc., which specializes in health products for pets and livestock, has created a political action committee it's calling the Zoetis Good Government Fund, according to organizational documents filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Meredith K. Lesher, an attorney at the Williams & Jensen law firm whose election experience includes working for Secretary of State John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign, is serving as the PAC's treasurer, its filing indicates.

Zoetis Good Government Fund's federal filing states it's affiliated with the Pfizer PAC, which ranks among the most active PACs in the nation.

On Sunday, Stephen Bisciotti, John York and Denise DeBartolo York will be cheering for different teams to win Super Bowl XLVII. But they have a common interest in the world of money in politics.

Since 2008, Bisciotti, the owner of the Baltimore Ravens, has donated $20,000 to Gridiron-PAC, the official political action committee of the National Football League, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of Federal Election Commission records.

Meanwhile, the Yorks, the main co-owners of the San Francisco 49ers, have contributed a combined $50,000 to Gridiron-PAC since 2008, records indicate.

During the 2012 election cycle alone, Gridiron-PAC raised more than $900,000 — it's most prolific cycle on record, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. It's also part of an overall escalation in the NFL's political involvement, which now includes a powerful lobbying team.

In the two-year period, Gridiron-PAC doled out $804,000 to a variety of Republican and Democratic candidates, party groups and other political committees, federal records show.

The largest beneficiaries — at $30,000 a piece — were the four major party committees: the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

The PAC also reported making a $10,000 donation to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and a $2,500 charitable contribtion to the Brain Injury Association of Vermont.

Fresh off the first presidential election since the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, super PACs aren't expected to stay idle for long.

According to a new Center for Public Integrity analysis, only seven super PACs started 2013 with more than $1 million in the bank. But they won't have that problem for long.

Super PACs have shown an ability to raise millions of dollars in a moment’s notice, then spend it just as quickly. This makes them uniquely nimble — and powerful — political forces during any point in an election cycle.

Which groups have the most cash in reserve? The answer might surprise you.

Seven of the top 10 super PACs with the most money in the bank are aligned with Democrats, and the super PAC with the most cash reserves at the start of January belonged to the United Auto Workers, which rolled over nearly $9 million.

Check out the full list here.

Why is 2013 an important year for campaign finance? Dave Levinthal and Michael Beckel will answer that, and many other questions about the money-in-politics world in a live chat on Monday, Feb. 4, at 1 p.m. ET.

The dust has barely settled on the 2012 election but the corporation-fueled fundraising engines of the Republican and Democratic governors associations continue to churn.

Between late November and the end of December, the Republican Governors Association pulled in nearly $2.7 million, while the Democratic Governors Association collected $910,000, documents filed Thursday with the Internal Revenue Service indicate.

Aiding the Republicans with their significant post-election haul were several large pharmaceutical companies.

Drug maker Pfizer donated $250,000 to the RGA in December, while Eli Lilly contributed $150,000 and Astrazeneca gave $100,000, records show. Pfizer also gave the same amount to the DGA.

Among the other notable donors?

Range Resources Corporation, a large natural gas company that has been involved with fracking the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania, gave $250,000 to the RGA, as did health insurance company Aetna.

Meanwhile, the Florida Power and Light and Comcast each donated $125,000 to the RGA, while Publix Super Markets and the BNSF Railway Company each gave $100,000.

In addition to Pfizer, only three other companies have made six-figure contributions to the DGA since late November: Aetna-subsidiary Schaller Anderson, which gave $250,000; computer technology company Oracle, which donated $100,000; and Virginia-based Maximus, a government contractor that provides services to health and human services agencies, which also donated $100,000.

Sixty-nine lobbyists collectively raised more than $17.3 million for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's campaign during the 2012 election cycle, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of Federal Election Commission records, including new reports filed tonight.

Six federally registered lobbyists bundled more than $1 million for Romney's election efforts, the Center's analysis found, with Bill Graves of the American Trucking Association raising the most at nearly $1.8 million.

Other top bundlers included David Beightol of Dutko Grayling ($1.6 million), Dirk Van Dongen of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors ($1.4 million), Bill Simmons of Dutko Grayling ($1.3 million), Patrick J. Durkin of Barclays ($1.1 million) and Robert T. Grand of Barnes & Thornburg LLP ($1 million).

The money the nearly six-dozen lobbyist-bundlers raised not only benefited the official campaign committee of the former Massachusetts governor but also the Romney Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee that split its receipts between Romney, the Republican National Committee and several other GOP groups.

Tonight's newly filed documents reveal the names of five individuals who have not previously been reported to the FEC as bundlers.

They are: