More guns of October: FSA PAC drops $600,000 in final days of election
By Keenan Steiner Nov 01 2012 2:54 p.m.Another newly formed super PAC, FSA PAC, or Fair Share Action, is dropping late money, this time on the Democrats’ side. The group reported spending $497,000 to buy an ad supporting Obama on the last day of October and more than $119,000 to support Montana Senator Jon Tester.
According to FSA PAC's FEC filing, the pro-Obama ad is airing in Colorado.
FSA is connected to a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit social welfare organization, the Fair Share Alliance, which is not required to disclose its donors. The latter group's executive director is Brad Martin, a former Democratic National Committee official and Montana Democratic Party official. The Alliance uses door-to-door community outreach and “grassroots lobbying” to help “elect leaders who will work for a fair economy” and defeat those who “put corporate profits ahead of ordinary people,” according to its website.
The alliance formed its super PAC in September, and had been spending almost all of its money on voter contacts to support Democrats running for Congress until it dropped the big ad buys Wednesday.
The group has spent a total of $1.7 million this election but only about $1.2 million of its contributors have been reported.
Of the reported contributors, almost 50 percent comes from a Boston-based social welfare organization called Environment America, a group that raised $3.7 million in 2011, according to its tax filing, but does not have to publicly disclose its donors. Representatives of Environment America and the Fair Share Alliance could not be reached at the time of posting.
Most of the rest of FSA PAC’s funding (40 percent) has come from Colorado Democratic activist Tim Gill and his gay rights advocacy group, as the Denver Post reported.
As other groups on the left have done recently -- Environment America itself formed a super PAC this month to reach voters at their doors. Almost all of the super PAC’s money has come from the 501c4 arm; it has spent $800,000 behalf of Democrats in close congressional races the president. In addition, the nonprofit arm of Environment America has also spent resources itself -- on voter outreach to promote New Mexico Rep. Martin Heinrich, who is running for Senate.
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