2012 Presidential Election, Super Pac | featured news

A Democratic super PAC that used footage from the 2002 Olympics to slam Mitt Romney has taken down a Web video at the request of the U.S. Olympic Committee and will not run a related TV ad.

The Conservative Majority Fund PAC's spot looks like a cheaply produced infomercial, except instead of selling gadgets, it's pushing the notion that Obama is hiding something dark about his past. It includes all of the boilerplate fringe theories: Questions about Bill Ayers, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, characters in the president's book, his college records, his social security number, and of course, his birth certificate, all make an appearance.

Morgan Freeman donated $1 million last month to Priorities USA Action, the main super PAC supporting President Obama.

Citing a poll conducted by Global Strategy Group and Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group in the battleground states of Colorado, Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Florida, Priorities USA claimed that more voters say Romney’s experience at Bain makes them less likely to vote for him, 37% to 27%. Claiming that its own anti-Bain ads are working, Priorities USA pointed out that in the 11 markets they’ve advertised in within those five states, Obama leads Romney by eight points (49% to 41%) compared with a three-point lead in those without the ads (46% to 43%).

The Obama campaign on Tuesday shrugged off reports showing that Republican challenger Mitt Romney outpaced the president by $35 million in contributions last month, even after firing off a dire message to donors warning of defeat in November if fundraising doesn’t improve... Obama representatives also blasted the Republican super PACs. “You’ve got a few very wealthy people running around trying to purchase the White House for Mr. Romney,” White House senior adviser David Plouffe told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Tuesday.

...And that will all come on top of the barrage of negative ads from Republican groups. Despite the conventional wisdom that Obama would attack Romney to distract from the poor state of the economy, the Post finds that 100 percent of the ad spending from GOP-aligned groups Americans for Prosperity, the American Energy Alliance, American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS have been negative. 58 percent of Romney’s spending has been on negative ads, compared to only 44 percent of Obama’s. If anyone can win this election on the strength of a barrage of misleading negative ads, it won’t be Obama, it will be his opponent.

A super PAC backing President Obama is out with a new TV ad today criticizing Mitt Romney for making money on business deals in which companies went bankrupt... "For every company he drove into the ground, Romney averaged a $92 million dollar profit," the narrator says. "Now he says his business experience would make him a good president? If Romney wins, the middle class loses."

Democrats are stepping up the pressure on politically active nonprofit groups to divulge their largest donors, part of a broader partisan debate over disclosure rules that has spilled into the race between President Obama and Mitt Romney.

Despite the uptick in money going to the super PAC, Obama campaign officials said Wednesday the other side will still have the advantage in outside money. They are prepared for the president to be the first incumbent who will be outspent by a challenger — bracing for Romney and his allies to pump more than $1 billion into TV ads alone.

Democratic President Barack Obama's top campaign lawyer filed a complaint with the federal election regulator on Tuesday, demanding that the well-heeded and high-spending Republican advocacy group Crossroads GPS disclose its donors... "There has never been any doubt about its true purpose: to elect candidates of its choice to the presidency and Congress," Obama campaign lawyer Robert Bauer wrote in his complaint to the FEC, posted online by the New York Times on Tuesday alongside the letter to Crossroads GPS that accompanied it.