Skip to footer

Election 2012: top seven super PACs

Decoder profiles the seven top super PACs, the organizations that have spent the most trying to influence the elections – and still have the most money in the bank.

7. House Majority PAC

Ed Andrieski/AP
Republican congressional candidate Joe Coors reacts after making a basket during a one-on-one game in Lakewood, Colo., July 18. Mr. Coors, who is challenging Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D) in a key swing district, has been the No. 1 target of the House Majority PAC, which has spent $490,790 to oppose his campaign.

House Majority PAC is a liberal organization that aims to help Democrats compete with conservative super PACs to take back the majority in the House of Representatives. Its founder and executive director, Alixandria Lapp, is a former official of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), the campaign arm of House Democrats. 

House Majority PAC has spent $10.1 million in the 2012 campaign cycle, as of Oct. 4.  Nearly all of its spending, $9.4 million, has been directed to attack Republicans. Only $740,845 been spent in support of Democratic candidates.

None of its donations have been more than $1 million, and about 43 percent has came from labor organizations. It is staffed mainly by veterans of the DCCC or former campaign staff of Democratic House members.

The group has spent small amounts of money, usually between $5,000 and $400,000, mainly targeting 36 Republican House candidates. The super PAC has also backed two Democratic congressional candidates, Julia Brownley, who is competing for a key open seat in California, and Christie Vilsack, who is running to defeat Rep. Stephen King (R) of Iowa, a favorite of the tea party movement.

The two candidates they have spent the most money opposing are Republicans Joe Coors, who is running against three-term Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D) of Colorado and Jesse Kelly, who lost a special election in June to replace Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (R) of Arizona.

Sourcing this Report:

Several sources were used to compile this report. 

The figures for total expenditures, total money raised, and totals spent in support or opposition of specific candidates were taken from Open Secrets. Open Secrets is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that tracks money in US politics and its effect on elections and public policy. The website, which was launched in 1996, is project of The Center for Responsive Politics, which was founded in 1983 by US Sens. Frank Church (D-Idaho) and Hugh Scott (R-Pa.), in order to track money in politics, public policy, and elections. 

All figures were taken from the 2012 election cycle, and were based on data released by the FEC, and last updated Oct. 4. For Open Secrets' full report on spending by all 900 super PACs click here.

Advertising figures and specific markets targeted were taken from the Washington Post's Mad Money feature, which tracks the cumulative and weekly spending on television advertising by candidate and by the groups supporting them. The Post also calculated the percentage of ads that have been negative vs. positive. Their data was last updated Oct. 3.

The Center for Public Integrity, and the New York Times were used for background research on top donors and organizers of each super PAC. 

Other sites used include the official webpages for each super PAC, the Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group, NBC News, as well as some local news sources like the Dallas Morning News and the Denver Post.

7 of 7
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.