PRESS RELEASE from Democracy
21, the Campaign Legal Center and the Center for Responsive Politics
October 4, 2011
Erin Kesler, Democracy 21
David Vance, Campaign Legal Center
Michael Beckel, Center for Responsive Politics
Elite Donors Do Double Duty: Presidential
Super PACs Attract Wealthy Donors Who Have Maxed Out to Candidates
During the second quarter of 2011, more than 50 individuals donated the
legal maximum to Republican presidential candidate
Mitt
Romney and also dug deeper into their pockets and made additional
contributions to
Restore
Our
Future, a candidate-specific Super PAC formed to promote
Romney's campaign for president.
A new analysis by
Democracy
21, the
Campaign Legal Center
and the
Center for Responsive
Politics
shows that 55 of the 75 individuals that donated to Restore Our Future
also contributed to Romney's presidential campaign committee. These
double-dipping donors represent almost three-quarters (73 percent) of
all of Restore Our Future's individual donors.
Their
contributions to Restore Our Future ranged in size from as little as
$3,500 to as much as $100,000, $500,000 and even $1 million. These
contributions are far in excess of the $2,500 limit per individual, per
election, that applies to contributions made to Romney or any other
federal candidate.
Overall, these 55 donors to Romney’s
presidential campaign contributed a combined total of $6.4 million to
the Super PAC supporting Romney -- a majority (52 percent) of all the
money Restore Our Future raised as of June 30, the joint analysis
shows.
Super PACs report semi-annually in an off election
year, so there is no information available, for example, on the
principal candidate Super PAC supporting Texas Gov. Rick Perry, which
was formed after the June 2011 reporting deadline.
In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's
Citizens
United
v. Federal Election Commission ruling
last year, Super PACs are allowed to raise unlimited amounts of money
from donors -- individuals, corporations and unions -- which they can
use to fund political advertisements for or against federal candidates
and to otherwise support or oppose candidates. They cannot donate the
money they raise directly to candidates, nor are they allowed to
coordinate with candidates' campaigns, although FEC coordination rules
are weak and ineffective.
"The information in the study being
released today provides further evidence to confirm that presidential
campaigns and presidential candidate Super PACs are deeply intertwined
and are, in reality, one entity to which the contribution limits
applicable to a single federal candidate should be applied,” said Fred
Wertheimer, president of
Democracy 21,
a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that promotes campaign finance
reform. "The presidential candidate Super PAC exists for one reason: to
serve as an arm of the presidential campaign for big-money donors to
launder unlimited contributions to support the presidential candidate
and thereby evade and eviscerate the contribution limits for a
presidential candidate enacted to prevent corruption."
“This
analysis offers yet more proof that these candidate-specific Super PACs
are nothing more than an end-around existing contribution limits,” said
Paul S. Ryan, FEC Program Director at the
Campaign Legal Center.
“The revolving door of staff between candidates and the Super PACs
supporting them makes clear the close relationships between the two.
The Super PACs are simply shadow candidate committees. Million-dollar
contributions to the Super PACs pose just as big a threat of corruption
as would million-dollar contributions directly to candidates.”
"The data set reported so far is still small," added Sheila Krumholz,
executive director of the
Center
for Responsive Politics,
"but it demonstrates the largely uniform donor base shared by these
ostensibly 'independent' Super PACs and the candidates they support. We
will have a much better sense of this relationship after we can review
the year-end reports that Super PACs must file on January 31, 2012."
This
is the first presidential election in which Super PACs have existed --
and the first where candidate-specific Super PACs are being used by
donors to contribute far more money than the candidate contribution
limits allow to directly support the candidate.
And Romney's supporters are not the only ones to be milking the new
campaign finance landscape for all it’s worth.
According to the new analysis,
during the second quarter of 2011, nine individuals donated to
President
Barack
Obama's re-election campaign as well as the Super PAC designed to
help keep him in the White House, which is named
Priorities
USA
Action.
As of June 30, 24 individuals had donated to Priorities USA Action,
meaning the double givers account for 37 percent of all individual
donors to the group.
This handful of donors, though, is responsible for the vast majority of
the money Priorities USA Action has raised. Collectively, these nine
individuals donated $2.6 million to Priorities USA Action -- or 82
percent of the total money the group raised.
One man alone is responsible for $2 million of that sum: Jeffrey
Katzenberg, the chief executive officer of DreamWorks, who has not only
"maxed out" to the Obama campaign but also
bundled
more than $500,000 for the Obama campaign and the
Democratic
National
Committee so far this year.
And one other
Obama
bundler is among the donors to Priorities USA Action: Chicago media
mogul Fred Eychaner, who donated $500,000 to Priorities USA Action and
also bundled between $50,000 and $100,000 for the Obama campaign and
the DNC during the second quarter.
As the presidential race heats up, expect even more money to flow into
Super PACs and even more donors to be double dipping. As of June 30,
Restore Our Future reported raising $12.2 million and Priorities USA
Action reported raising $3.2 million -- but these groups have said they
plan to raise tens of millions of dollars more.
Moreover, Restore Our Future and Priorities USA Action have been
recently joined by Super PACs supporting the other presidential
campaigns. Every major presidential candidate now has at least one-- if
not more than one -- Super PAC aiding their own campaign efforts. And
the first candidate-specific Super PAC already has been formed for a
congressional candidate, Sen.
Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), to support his Senate re-election campaign in
2012.
You can download a detailed spreadsheet of these double-dipping
donors here: DoubleDippingDonors100411.xls
Please don't hesitate to use this information, but please credit
Democracy 21, the Campaign Legal Center and the Center for Responsive
Politics if you do.