Super PACs got game and it pays to have one your side. While candidates and their staff focus on campaigning, Super PACs that support them are raking in the dollars to keep the race flowing.
For two of the GOP front-runners, their supportive super PACs raised more money and have more cash left in the bank than the candidates' own campaigns. Helping their efforts are major financial gifts from wealthy business executives, whose contributions can be essential to the groups' continued operations.
Mitt Romney-leaning Restore Our Future and Newt Gingrich-supportive Winning Our Future raised a combined $17 million last month and spent nearly $24 million during that same period. That financial strength allowed the groups to splash the airwaves in key primary states with millions of dollars in TV ads.
The proliferation of new super PACs continues to underscore how the groups, which can raise and spend unlimited sums, are influencing the race. The groups' fundraising last month offers a periodic behind-the-scenes glimpse into the identities of the rich supporters who will help elect the next president, along with details on how the millions of dollars they donated have been spent.
Romney seems to be benefitting the most from PAC money while Gingrich needs the money to keep his campaign above water:
Restore Our Future has been a boon for Romney, who has benefited greatly from the group's TV ads attacking Gingrich in particular. Such ads were purchased thanks to the financial help of repeat donors, including Marriott International Chairman J.W. Marriott Jr., who has given the super PAC $750,000 to date.
The super PAC also reported new donors, including Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman. Romney mentored Whitman, recently an unsuccessful candidate for California governor, during the 1980s at Boston-based Bain & Co., the private equity firm Romney headed. Whitman's $100,000 check to Restore Our Future came days after she joined Romney at a celebration of his victory in the New Hampshire primary.
Restore Our Future counted on continued support from at least 30 repeat donors who, along with new contributors, gave a combined $6.6 million in January, according to a review of the reports by The Associated Press.Meanwhile, Winning Our Future's $11 million in contributions during the same period came almost exclusively from Adelson, a friend of Gingrich's and a staunch supporter of Israel. Adelson and his wife, Miriam, each gave $5 million to the super PAC in January _ a move that helped keep Gingrich's struggling campaign alive.
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