Democrats Far Behind GOP In Raising Money For ’16 Super PACs

For any number of reasons, these donors are willing to give so generously.

The overall sum raised by Priorities since the beginning of the year puts Clinton somewhat behind in the outside money race.

Unlike super PACs, candidates are permitted to accept donations only from individuals, not from corporations.

This means he can raise and spend unlimited amounts of his own money, and also retains control of all of his money, much of which is being directed into his bank accounts, unlike his competitors, who are forbidden from coordinating activities with their own super PACs.

The Republican presidential contender, a first-term senator from Texas, has an unusual network of super PACs in place to boost his White House prospects.

A duo of super-PACs supporting former Texas Gov. Rick Perry raised $12.8 million, and the group behind Sen. John Kasich’s New Day for America had four different $1 million givers, three of whom are from Ohio. He had given $1 million in February.

Jeb Bush is pitching himself as a clean-government reformer who rejects transactional politics.

Printing and mailing campaign literature totaled about $809,000.

Kristy Campbell, a Bush campaign spokesman, denied any conflict of interest in Bush’s relationship with NextEra. He said he sometimes offered Bush advice during his time as Florida’s governor but doesn’t expect to influence a Jeb Bush administration. “As president, he would do the same”. Super PACs must disclose their donors – as they did Friday with hundreds of pages of filings with the Federal Election Commission.

“In the donor world, it is primarily a love of economic freedom”, said Chart Westcott, a Dallas private-equity investor who has contributed $200,000 to Unintimidated PAC, a group backing Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin. “That’s the biggest drive for most donors – more prosperity for the country as a whole, as well as for themselves”. Ted Cruz’s campaign for the GOP presidential nomination raised million from just six donors. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) had a $16 million haul.

Hedge fund government Robert Mercer, for instance, gave $11 million to help Cruz.

Steve Cohen, among the wealthiest men in the U.S., and a constant supporter of Chris Christie, has given his PAC $ 2 million as per a filing that was obtained by CNN.

The nation’s most elite conservative donors are just as split as Republican voters are about whom to support for president – and it’s keeping numerous leading moneymen on the sidelines of the campaign as it barrels through the summer of 2015.

The main pro-Clinton group, Priorities USA Action, raised $15.6 million in the first half of this year.

It also received $1 million checks from director Steven Spielberg, George Soros and Jeffrey Katzenberg.

“I think anybody who knows Dan and Farris Wilks will tell you that these guys came from humble beginnings, and they’re humble still”, said Luke Macias, a Republican strategist who has worked with the brothers.

While the super PACs maintain that they complied with all fundraising laws, watchdog groups denounced the spending detailed in the reports as evidence that numerous candidates were improperly circumventing limits on fundraising in the run-up to the beginning of their official campaigns.

The list, according to a person familiar with the numbers, includes more than a dozen billionaires as well as many donors the group believes could afford to spend much more should the governor’s campaign take off in the coming months. Rand Paul’s presidential bid. The Supreme Court has said that such coordination could be illegal. That included $750,000 from the Progressive Women Silicon Valley PAC, a full $1 million from the union representing plumbers, fitters and welders, and another $1 million came from the group Fair Share Action. The concentration of donors is greatest on the Republican side, according to the Times’ analysis, where consultants and lawyers have pushed more aggressively to exploit the looser fundraising rules that have fueled the rise of super PACs.

One important impact of super PAC activity in the 2012 presidential race could be looming again itself again in the earliest stages of the 2016 contest.