2012 Presidential Election, Campaign Funds | featured news

Super PACs have poured nearly $4 million into advertising in Ohio ahead of Super Tuesday, accounting for most of the spending in what has become an overwhelmingly negative contest.

At a time when it’s become a cliché to say that Occupy Wall Street has changed the nation’s political conversation -- drawing long overdue attention to the struggles of the 99% -- electoral politics and the 2012 presidential election have become almost exclusively defined by the 1%. Or, to be more precise, the .0000063%. Those are the 196 individual donors who have provided nearly 80% of the money raised by super PACs in 2011 by giving $100,000 or more each.

President Obama's re-election campaign raised $29.1 million in January in conjunction with the campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the campaign announced Friday.

Super PACs, outside groups that can raise and spend unlimited corporate money to help elect or defeat candidates, have spent heavily to influence the presidential race. This chart shows the amounts raised in 2011 by some of the most active candidate-aligned super PACs and the cash they had remaining in the bank at the end of the year.

The super PAC supporting Jon Huntsman’s aborted presidential bid raised $2.7 million – $1.9 million of which came from his father. The group, Our Destiny PAC, was seen as an example of how a single donor could use the new breed of political group to float a cash-strapped candidacy.

Abraham Foxman, the amiably chatty director of the Jewish civil rights group, the Anti-Defamation League, has a story to tell about his friend, the 78-year-old multi-billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson. Adelson, who is America's eighth richest man and has given millions of dollars in support of Newt Gingrich's presidential bid, was having dinner with Foxman in Las Vegas several years ago. Foxman let slip that he was having to miss an invitation to the White House from the then president, George W. Bush. Foxman explained it was impossible to get a commercial flight. Adelson replied: "If the president of the United States asks you to go, you go." Then he gave Foxman the use of his private plane.

Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich attack each other ahead of a debate in Florida on Monday, just days after Mr Gingrich's upset in the South Carolina primary. Mr Gingrich's campaign said it received $1m (£643,000) in 24 hours following his primary win in South Carolina.

"Super PACs" have spent about $27.5 million to influence the presidential election, a good chunk coming from an independent group supporting GOP front-runner Mitt Romney.

Presidential candidate Rick Perry's criticism of Mitt Romney's business past had a boomerang effect Thursday, costing him the support of a prominent Republican in South Carolina. Investment fund executive and top GOP donor Barry Wynn told The Associated Press he was leaving the Perry fold to endorse Romney, the former Massachusetts governor. Wynn said Perry's attacks on Romney's time at the helm of the private equity firm Bain Capital had crossed the line in a political party that values free-market capitalism.