Priorities Usa Action

George Soros, the liberal billionaire investor who has largely laid low during the 2012 elections, announced $1.5 million in pledged donations Thursday to a trio of super PACs backing President Obama and congressional Democrats, PAC officials said. Soros, who became nationally prominent in 2004 when he spent more than $20 million on independent groups supporting Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), will give $1 million to Priorities USA Action — which is supporting Obama — and $500,000 to Majority PAC and House Majority PAC,...

WHEN IT COMES to the corrosive influence of money in politics, the 2012 campaign has presented a trifecta of troubling developments. They are, in ascending order of worry: the complete collapse of the presidential public financing system set up in the wake of Watergate; the explosion of the super PAC political committees, which are allowed to take unlimited checks to finance independent expenditures for or against particular candidates; and the proliferation...

WHEN IT COMES to the corrosive influence of money in politics, the 2012 campaign has presented a trifecta of troubling developments. They are, in ascending order of worry: the complete collapse of the presidential public financing system set up in the wake of Watergate; the explosion of the super PAC political committees, which are allowed to take unlimited checks to finance independent expenditures for or against particular candidates; and the proliferation...

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney outraised President Obama by $21 million in the first half of October, taking advantage of a strong first debate and tightening polls to overtake the incumbent in the money race, officials said Thursday. The influx of $111.8 million from Oct. 1 to Oct. 17 left Romney and the Republican National Committee with nearly $170 million in cash on hand, aides said. Obama and the Democratic National Committee said they raised $90.5 million during the same...

Have conservative groups bungled their chance to help defeat Barack Obama? Fueled with tens of millions of dollars in unlimited contributions, a network of GOP super PACs and nonprofit groups began the year with heady talk of bringing down President Obama with a ceaseless barrage of attack ads. But judging from the latest polls, the effort hasn't gone very well. Obama is holding a narrow lead over Republican nominee Mitt Romney nationally and appears to be widening his advantage in key swing...

RICHMOND — The race for president in Virginia is neck and neck, but a crucial contest for political cash is a blowout. Virginians have given nearly $4 million to conservative super PACs in the 2012 election cycle but just $76,000 to liberal versions of these political action committees, according to an analysis by the Virginia Public Access Project, a nonpartisan tracker of money in politics. Donations to super PACs skew conservative nationally, partly for reasons of ideology, partly because Republicans had...

CHARLOTTE — Democratic Party leaders are working feverishly behind the scenes of their national convention here to cajole wealthy donors into giving more money, a sign of growing concern that a widening Republican financial advantage could doom President Obama and other Democratic candidates. The anxieties, expressed in back corridors and late-night bar-stool conversations, spilled into public view Wednesday with the announcement that Obama's former White House chief of staff, Chicago Mayor...

A group of prominent Mitt Romney backers has quietly started a " super PAC " to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money in support of his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, according to organizers and others involved in the effort. Restore Our Future PAC , spearheaded by several former Romney aides, is the latest in an expanding list of groups that have formed to take advantage of court rulings that allow corporations, unions and tycoons to...

Renaissance Technologies, a specialized hedge fund company based in East Seatauket, N.Y., is home to two of the biggest political donors in the 2012 elections — and they are on opposite sides. James H. Simons, a theoretical mathematician who founded the $15 billion firm, has given at least $7.5 million to a variety of groups backing President Obama and other Democrats. Renaissance co-chief executive Robert L. Mercer, meanwhile, has given more than $3.5 million to super PACs...

President Obama on Monday denounced Rep. Todd Akin's remarks about "legitimate rape," calling the views "offensive," while also suggesting that the Missouri Republican had revealed a broader division on women's health issues between the parties. "Rape is rape," Obama said during an impromptu news conference in the White House briefing room. "The idea that we should be parsing and qualifying and slicing what types of rape we're talking about doesn't make sense to the American people and...

Renaissance Technologies, a specialized hedge fund company based in East Seatauket, N.Y., is home to two of the biggest political donors in the 2012 elections — and they are on opposite sides. James H. Simons, a theoretical mathematician who founded the $15 billion firm, has given at least $7.5 million to a variety of groups backing President Obama and other Democrats. Renaissance co-chief executive Robert L. Mercer, meanwhile, has given more than $3.5 million to super PACs supporting Republicans and also...

Republican nominee Mitt Romney and his allies are banking heavily on a high-risk, high-reward media strategy in the final weeks of the campaign, hoping that burying President Obama in ads will give them a crucial edge on Election Day. Ad purchases in the presidential race doubled or in some cases tripled last week in swing states such as Colorado, Florida, Iowa and Virginia, tracking data show. The surge is being driven by Romney and well-funded allies, who decided against running more ads earlier in the campaign in favor of a...

Have conservative groups bungled their chance to help defeat Barack Obama? Fueled with tens of millions of dollars in unlimited contributions, a network of GOP super PACs and nonprofit groups began the year with heady talk of bringing down President Obama with a ceaseless barrage of attack ads. But judging from the latest polls, the effort hasn't gone very well. Obama is holding a narrow lead over Republican nominee Mitt Romney nationally and appears to be...

George Soros, the liberal billionaire investor who has largely laid low during the 2012 elections, announced $1.5 million in pledged donations Thursday to a trio of super PACs backing President Obama and congressional Democrats, PAC officials said. Soros, who became nationally prominent in 2004 when he spent more than $20 million on independent groups supporting Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), will give $1 million to Priorities USA Action — which is supporting Obama — and $500,000 to Majority PAC and House...

The financial tide has turned against Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his key allies, who spent more than they brought in and were outraised by President Obama during the month of August, according to disclosures filed Thursday. Romney's presidential campaign committee raised nearly $67 million last month — a strong figure — but spent about the same amount building its campaign organization and responding to a barrage of attack ads from Obama and his allies.

CHARLOTTE — Democratic Party leaders are working feverishly behind the scenes of their national convention here to cajole wealthy donors into giving more money, a sign of growing concern that a widening Republican financial advantage could doom President Obama and other Democratic candidates. The anxieties, expressed in back corridors and late-night bar-stool conversations, spilled into public view Wednesday with the announcement that Obama's former White House chief of staff, Chicago Mayor Rahm...

The 2012 ad wars have officially begun. In what appears to be the first major media buy of the 2012 presidential campaign, an independent group supporting President Obama launched television ads in South Carolina on Friday attacking potential GOP candidate Mitt Romney over health care. Priorities USA Action , a so-called "super PAC" co-founded by former White House aides Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney, is running the ad to coincide with a Romney visit to the crucial GOP primary state.

It's no secret that some very rich people support the super PACs and other groups that have inundated the 2012 campaign with unlimited sums of cash. But a study to be released Thursday details the extent to which this kind of donating is the sport of the One Percent. Just 47 people account for more than half (57.1 percent) of the $230 million raised by super PACs from individual donors, according to the study by U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG) and...

President Obama on Monday denounced Rep. Todd Akin's remarks about "legitimate rape," calling the views "offensive," while also suggesting that the Missouri Republican had revealed a broader division on women's health issues between the parties. "Rape is rape," Obama said during an impromptu news conference in the White House briefing room. "The idea that we should be parsing and qualifying and slicing what types of rape we're talking about doesn't make sense to the American people and certainly doesn't...

RICHMOND — The race for president in Virginia is neck and neck, but a crucial contest for political cash is a blowout. Virginians have given nearly $4 million to conservative super PACs in the 2012 election cycle but just $76,000 to liberal versions of these political action committees, according to an analysis by the Virginia Public Access Project, a nonpartisan tracker of money in politics. Donations to super PACs skew conservative nationally, partly for reasons of ideology, partly because Republicans...