American Crossroads

WASHINGTON -- The 2012 campaign air battle grew more intense Wednesday with the news that Crossroads GPS, the cash-flush conservative advocacy group, is pouring another $25 million into television ads castigating President Obama for “broken” promises. The massive ad buy matches the $25 million that Obama's reelection campaign announced last week it would be spending on a month of TV airtime. The first new spot from Crossroads GPS begins airing Thursday in 10 presidential battleground states.

Here's a short list of Democrats who secretly hope Mitt Romney gets his presidential campaign turned around fast and gives President Obama a run for his money: Heidi Heitkamp, the Democratic Senate candidate in North Dakota; Jon Tester, the Democratic senator from Montana; and Rep. Shelley Berkley, the Democratic Senate candidate in Nevada. Why? Because they're all in close Senate races - and they're all worried about a potential flood of Republican money into their states if Romney's campaign begins to look like a losing proposition.

President Obama has attended twice the number of fundraisers as his predecessor and has made over a dozen more trips to key battleground states this year. Obama visited battleground states 46 times and attended 58 fundraisers for his reelection campaign since January, according to data compiled by the Los Angeles Times/Tribune Washington Bureau and Brendan Doherty, an assistant professor of political science at the U.S. Naval Academy. By comparison, President George W. Bush visited battleground states just 30 times and attended 29 fundraisers for his reelection campaign in the first 10 months of 2003.

Virginia's heavyweight Senate match between two former governors could be one of the clearest tests of a Republican campaign strategy of tying Democratic candidates to President Obama this fall. In the race for Virginia's open Democratic Senate seat, Tim Kaine, a close Obama ally and the president's first Democratic national chairman, is facing Republican George Allen, who lost the seat in 2006 after a campaign gaffe that captured the rise of YouTube as a political weapon. Allen secured the Republican nomination this week against light primary opposition.

WASHINGTON -- Crossroads GPS, a conservative nonprofit group that is one of the most prominent critics of President Obama, raised nearly $77 million in its first 19 months from a small cadre of secret donors, including two dozen who wrote checks of $1 million and more. The organization, founded in part by GOP strategist Karl Rove, received two single donations worth $10 million each between June 1, 2010 and the end of 2011, according to newly filed tax documents the group released Tuesday.

It all started when Sen. Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat facing a potentially tough reelection fight next year, appeared in TV and radio ads discussing issues such as Social Security and the national debt. The ads, it turned out, cost the Nebraska Democratic Party more than $600,000 -- well above the limit of what a political party committee can spend on a “coordinated” expenditure. The Nebraska Republican Party called foul in a complaint to the Federal Election Commission, arguing that Nelson and Democratic officials exceeded the limits for “coordinated” spending and failed to properly disclose how the ads were paid for. Democrats have contended that the Nelson ads don't fall within the narrow definition of a “coordinated” expenditure, and instead termed them “issue” ads, which are not subject to the spending limits.  That assertion was mocked last month by television satirist Stephen Colbert, who has made a personal crusade of pointing out the absurd complexity of campaign finance rules.

A "super PAC" supporting Mitt Romney has won the backing of another corner of the financial sector: payday lenders. Seven payday loan companies donated a total of $162,500 to Restore Our Future in February, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission on Tuesday. All the donations were recorded in the first week of the month, in increments ranging from $2,500 to $35,000. Restore Our Future declined to comment on the donations and their timing. A spokesman for the largest payday lender also declined to comment.

Democrats and their allies, moving to counter millions of dollars flowing to Republican campaigns from groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have accused the international business organization of using foreign money to influence American elections. The effort to paint conservative political groups as fronts for multinational corporations and foreign billionaires gathered steam this week after an affiliate of the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress charged that the chamber was using funds from foreign corporations to finance its political operations in Washington.

With no contribution limits standing in their way, Hollywood bigwigs and finance executives shelled out top dollar to outside political groups that are looking to make a big impact in the coming election cycle. In the first half of the year, 91 “super PACs” - committees that can raise unlimited money from individuals, corporations and labor unions, but must work independently from candidates and political parties - raised $26 million, the Sunlight Foundation notes . But the vast majority of that total was raised by a just a handful of groups, whose filings reveal some noteworthy names.

TAMPA, Fla. - A little more than a year ago, Frank VanderSloot contributed $1million to a "super PAC" supporting Mitt Romney. Now, the Idaho-based health products executive is a sought-after donor at the Republican National Convention as he makes the rounds of independent groups backing the GOP ticket. On Monday, VanderSloot and his wife met privately for an hour and a half with Karl Rove, the former top advisor to President George W. Bush and the strategist for the GOP heavyweight group American Crossroads.