Pay No Attention to the Superrich Donors Behind the Curtain

Flickr/<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jded/3517427116/">JD_WMWM</a> (<a href="http://www.creativecommons.org">Creative Commons</a>).

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A small handful of superrich businessmen and corporations are behind Karl Rove’s American Crossroads, the most prominent Republican “Super PAC,” which brought in an eyebrow-raising $15 million from September 1 to mid-October. Of that amount, more than $7 million came from a single contributor, Texas homebuilder Bob Perry—a longtime Republican donor who rose to infamy for backing the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth’s attacks on John Kerry in 2004. Other major donors include Robert Rowling, an oil and hotel billionaire from Texas who threw in $1.5 million, and the Alliance Resource Group, a financial services firm with investments in the coal industry, which gave $2 million. Together with B. Wayne Hughes of a Kentucky-based company called Public Storage, these four donors made up two-thirds of the most recent donations to the group.

The third-quarter haul brings Americans Crossroads’ total fundraising to $23 million. That doesn’t even include the millions of undisclosed donations that are being funneled through the group’s sister organization, American Crossroads GPS, which as a 501(c)4 isn’t required to reveal its donors. And it’s starting to become apparent how this torrent of cash could end up altering the political landscape. Crossroads recently launched a “House surge strategy” to pour cash into competitive districts where Democrats didn’t think they would have to defend themselves. As a result, Dave Weigel reports, typically safe Democrats who’d otherwise give their funds to more endangered members have had to spend their own cash—most notably Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who loaned his own campaign $200,000 after an unexpectedly tough challenge in his home district.

Early in the summer, many observers wrote off Rove’s group for only raising $200 in May, when it had just $1.25 million in the bank. The tea party, in all its raucous, pageview-generating glory held the spotlight, while establishment Republican operatives faded into the background. So no one paid much attention as Rove and his collaborators worked under the radar to court big donors and build up their shadow Republican Party. And all it took was a small handful of megadonors to change the calculus of the election.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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