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Obama supporters like this woman who showed up to cheer at a campaign event in Melbourne, Fla., on Sept. 9, may not realize how much personal data the organization collected, or what it's doing with it now.

President Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has turned over its most valuable asset — a massive computer database containing personal data on millions of American voters — to a new advocacy group created to advance the White House agenda on issues ranging from gun control to immigration reform. 

Organizing For Action (OFA), the advocacy group set up in recent weeks by the president’s top political aides, has already acquired access to the database under a leasing agreement with the Obama campaign, Katie Hogan, a former Obama campaign aide who is now serving as spokeswoman for the lobbying group, told NBC News. The information will be used to unleash an “army of the door knockers” to back the president’s legislative agenda as well as raise money for “issue ads” – particularly in crucial congressional districts, she said.  

As an opening salvo, the group on Friday urged the president’s supporters to call members of Congress in support of Obama’s gun control proposals, even offering a sample script of what they should say.

The creation of OFA, which is being chaired by former Obama campaign manager Jim Messina, is stirring controversy – both among public interest groups over the group’s plans to accept unlimited corporate donations, and among privacy advocates over the transfer of the database.

“It’s extremely worrisome,” said Lillie Coney, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, noting that Obama campaign supporters likely have no idea that personal data they voluntarily shared with the campaign has now been transferred and is being used for purposes beyond the election.

Dubbed the “nuclear codes” by campaign aides, the Obama campaign database is widely described as one of the most powerful tools ever developed in American politics. According to published reports, it contains the names of at least 4 million Obama donors – as well as millions of others (the campaign has consistently refused to say how many) compiled from voter registration rolls and other public databases. In addition, the campaign used sophisticated computer programs — with code names like “Narwhal” — to collect information through social media: Anybody who contacted the campaign through Facebook had their friends and “likes” downloaded. If they contacted  the campaign website through mobile apps, cellphone numbers and address books were downloaded. Computer “cookies” captured Web browsing and online spending habits.

“I can’t think of anything that rivals this data,” said Coney, noting that much of the data was voluntarily supplied by voters, something that consumers are often reluctant to do when dealing with commercial companies. “The private sector would love to be able to do what the (Obama) campaign was able to do.”  

OFA spokeswoman Hogan said that Obama supporters have the option in emails they receive of opting out — or unsubscribing — from the list, as required by federal law. But critics say that is not necessarily an option for information collected about voters through other means (such as public databases) and note that many on the list likely don’t notice the “unsubscribe” fine print on the emails.

At the same time, OFA’s plans for corporate-backed lobbying of Congress have spurred sharp criticism from campaign reformers — a cause the president once championed. Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a leading reform group, called OFA “dangerous and unprecedented,” noting that it has been set up under the same section of the tax code used by controversial GOP advocacy groups, such as Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS (as a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” nonprofit organization). This will allow the group to accept unlimited donations from wealthy individuals and corporations.

“With his decision to allow corporations to fund the new organizations that will operate as an arm of his presidency, President Obama has ‘given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money,’” said Wertheimer in a statement that quoted Obama’s own words two years ago to denounce the Citizens United Supreme Court decision striking down  many campaign finance limits. “This would take President Obama about as far away as he could possibly get from the goal he set in 2008 to change the way business is done in Washington.” 

Related: Nonprofit spends big on politics despite IRS limitation

In response to a request for comment, a White House spokesman emailed recent comments by top Obama political adviser David Plouffe to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos: “Yes, we will voluntarily disclose all of our donors,” Plouffe said. “And we're very excited. The people who actually made the president's campaign in both '08 and '12, our great grassroots volunteers, were pretty clear after the election they wanted to stay with it and they want to be out there organizing, driving message, holding people accountable on issues like immigration, you know, the deficit and jobs, gun safety.”

But how much the group will disclose about the source of its money is still unclear. There is no legal requirement for a 501(c)(4) group like OFA to do so. Hogan, the OFA spokeswoman, declined to say how often the group will make disclosures or whether it will report amounts that donors give or simply provide a list of contributors. (Such a list -- without amounts detailed -- was recently released by the Presidential Inaugural Committee.) “That’s still being worked out,” she said.

As if to underscore the role of major corporations in helping to underwrite OFA, the unveiling of the group came at a special invitation-only event on inaugural weekend at the Newseum, sponsored by Business Forward, a corporate-backed trade group close to the White House, according to a Politico account. Business Forward -- whose charter members include Citi, Dow Chemical, Duke Energy, Ford, Google and Comcast, majority-owner of NBCUniversal, parent company of NBC News -- had lobbied for the White House-backed fiscal cliff deal, specifically touting its tax breaks for businesses, such as write-offs for new capital investment and research and development credits, according to a statement on the group’s website.

“We need you. This president needs you,” Messina said at the launch event, according to the Politico account, adding that the national advisory board of OFA will be “filled with people in this room.”  

One corporate executive who attended the event told NBC News the roll out -- which featured a spirited talk by former President Bill Clinton on gun control -- drew numerous major Obama campaign bundlers and fundraisers, such as Obama campaign finance chairman Mathew Barzun (now reportedly a front-runner to be tapped for ambassador to the Court of St. James) and finance director Rufus Gifford.

“My takeaway from this was that they set this up to take advantage of the Citizens United decision and operate this outside the Democratic National Committee so they won’t have to file (election) reports,” said the executive, who asked not to be identified.

Hogan, the OFA spokeswoman, said that OFA will not run campaign ads — only “issue” ads that do not fall under the election laws.

But the underlying political purpose of the group is not disputed. “The way it’s organized, we legally can’t participate in elections,” Stephanie Cutter, a top Obama campaign official who now serves on the board of OFA, said at a recent Politico-sponsored inaugural event. “But that doesn’t mean the issues we’re organizing around won’t mobilize the American people to vote for things — to vote for that economy we’ve been working for, to vote for immigration reform, to vote for common sense gun reforms. I think we can affect elections, we just can’t legally be involved in them — for this particular organization.”

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Philip Andrews / Roll Call Photos/Newscom

Bruce Rastetter, CEO of Hawkeye Renewables, reportedly provided some of the seed money for the American Future Fund.

Last fall, a cadre of wealthy business executives and conservative groups tried to sell California voters on new campaign finance reforms.

Couched in lofty rhetoric about the importance of cutting off money from special interests to politicians and other regulations favored by reformers, their proposal sought to ban the practice of using payroll deductions for political expenditures — a popular method of union fundraising.

Once alerted to the true nature of Proposition 32, the unions and political left rose up against it.

An innocuously named nonprofit, the Iowa-based American Future Fund, proved to be one of the biggest backers of the initiative, sinking more than $4 million into the ballot measure that voters ultimately rejected.

As a “social welfare” organization, the American Future Fund is not required to publicly disclose its donors. But to maintain its tax-exempt status under Sec. 501(c)(4) of the U.S. tax code, influencing elections cannot be its primary purpose.

The American Future Fund’s investment in California was part of a nationwide, political advertising spree in 2012 that exceeded $29 million, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of state and federal records.

That amount included more than $19 million on efforts designed to oust President Barack Obama, as well as millions more to oppose Democratic candidates for Congress and even two state attorneys general. Now the group is funding ads opposing Obama’s nomination of former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska for defense secretary.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s controversial Citizens United decision in 2010, nonprofits such as the American Future Fund have played a more prominent role in electoral contests — all while giving their supporters the ability to keep their identities hidden. During the 2010 midterm elections, politically active nonprofits outspent super PACs, which exist to fund political advertisements, by a 3-to-2 margin.

The American Future Fund ranked third among “social welfare” nonprofits in spending in the 2012 federal election, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, trailing only the Karl Rove-affiliated Crossroads GPS and Americans for Prosperity, which is backed by conservative billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch.

There are also Democratic-aligned nonprofits, but their spending was well below that of their conservative counterparts. The top left-leaning nonprofit was the League of Conservation Voters, which reported spending about $11 million in the 2012 election opposing or supporting candidates.

The American Future Fund’s spending “raises some serious questions” and “evades any form of meaningful disclosure,” said Adam Rappaport, senior counsel with watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

Numerous officials with the American Future Fund did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Advocating for ‘free-market ideas’
The American Future Fund’s mission is to “educate and advocate for conservative and free-market ideas,” according to its annual filing with the Internal Revenue Service.

Despite asserting that it isn’t primarily focused on elections, the nonprofit’s DNA is decidedly political.

Conservative political operative Nick Ryan, a longtime adviser to former GOP Rep. Jim Nussle of Iowa, founded it in 2007. Over the years, the group has paid Ryan’s firm, Concordia Enterprises, hundreds of thousands of dollars annually for consulting services.

In 2010, the New York Times reported that Iowa businessman Bruce Rastetter provided an unspecified amount of “seed money” for the organization. Ryan once represented four of Rastetter’s companies as a lobbyist, including Hawkeye Energy Holdings, one of the country’s largest ethanol producers.

The nonprofit’s first president was Nicole Schlinger, the former finance director of Iowa’s Republican Party. Its current president is veteran Republican state Sen. Sandra Greiner, who served for 14 years as the Iowa chairwoman of the pro-business American Legislative Exchange Council.

Ryan and Greiner did not respond to requests for comment.

In 2008, when the American Future Fund was seeking — and ultimately garnered — tax-exempt status from the IRS, it pledged to abstain from electoral politics, saying it would spend 70 percent of its time doing work to “educate the public on policy issues” and 30 percent engaging in efforts to “influence legislation through grassroots advocacy.”

When asked on its application if the group had any plans to spend money to “influence the selection, nomination, election or appointment” of anyone seeking public office, it answered “no.” It also vowed to stay out of the presidential race.

When the IRS subsequently inquired why the group’s advertisements “appear to be more partisan than nonpartisan,” the group’s attorney, Karen Blackistone, wrote that the efforts were “strictly issued-based and nonpartisan.”

The group takes a position on issues and encourages the public to contact their representative, she wrote in a 2008 response to the IRS.

“AFF’s advertisements have never commented on a candidate’s character, qualifications or fitness for office,” she stated.

Big money tied to post office box
The American Future Fund has raised more than $60 million, with spikes in contributions coming in election years.

Much of that money has come from another conservative “social welfare” nonprofit that doesn’t disclose its donors by name — the Arizona-based Center to Protect Patient Rights.

The nonprofit has no website and lists its address as a post office box in Phoenix. It was launched in 2009 by Republican operative Sean Noble, who has extensive ties to the vast political network underwritten by the Koch brothers.

Noble, a former chief of staff for former Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz., did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

For three years running, Noble’s organization has reported making substantial grants to the American Future Fund for “general support,” according to IRS filings. The nonprofit contributed more than $14 million to the American Future Fund between 2009 and 2011, or 51 percent of funds the group raised over the three-year period.

The Center to Protect Patient Rights has also given millions of dollars to a network of conservative groups, including the Koch-backed nonprofit Americans for Prosperity, as was first reported by the Center for Responsive Politics.

In addition to Noble, there is another Koch connection.

In 2008, Trent Sebits, the former manager of public and government affairs for the Kochs’ Wichita-based refining giant, Koch Industries, registered with the state of Kansas to lobby on behalf of the American Future Fund and Americans for Prosperity. Sebits did not respond to a request for comment.

The American Justice Partnership, another “social welfare” nonprofit, gave $50,000 to the American Future Fund in 2011 and $2.4 million in 2010, according to IRS filings. The group supports free enterprise and is often at odds with trial lawyers.

Dan Pero, its president, said in an emailed statement that the organization supported the American Future Fund to help “promote free enterprise and improve the fairness and predictability of the legal environment.”

Like super PACs, “social welfare” nonprofits are allowed to accept unlimited donations from individuals, corporations, unions and other organizations. The only funders whose names they are required to publicly disclose are those that make contributions earmarked for political purposes.

That’s as it should be, according to attorney Dan Backer, who is not affiliated the American Future Fund but does work with other conservative groups.

“A nonprofit makes its decisions by a board or other management structure, which is distinct from its donors,” Backer said.

Increasingly political
In 2010, the American Future Fund became far more politically active, reporting $8.6 million in political expenditures as well as millions more for “media services,” “telecommunications” and “mail service/production.” It told the Federal Election Commission that it spent $9.1 million on political advertisements.

Marcus Owens, former chief of the IRS’s nonprofits division, said it is “difficult to conjure up a situation where a particular expenditure would be reportable to the FEC but would not constitute political campaign intervention under tax law.”

Nevertheless, Owens said the organization could make a “straight-faced argument” that its orientation had simply changed over time to become more overtly political.

Of the $25 million that the American Future Fund reported spending to the FEC last year, more than 90 percent fueled ads that urged voters to support or reject candidates.

The group also sought the FEC’s advice on whether mentioning the White House or “the administration” in negative ads ahead of Election Day would be seen as referring to a “clearly identified candidate for federal office.”

Such a designation would have required the group to disclose information about its donors. (The commission deadlocked, 3-3, in a vote along party lines.)

In addition to the presidential race, the American Future Fund spent money in 20 congressional elections in 2012, including California’s 26th Congressional District, where it spent $500,000 attacking Democrat Julia Brownley, who, as a state legislator, had authored legislation to bolster disclosure for political advertisements.

She won anyway, but told the Center for Public Integrity that she is “deeply concerned” about the activities of non-disclosing groups in the wake of Citizens United and hopes to “take immediate action” to strengthen federal disclosure laws.

The American Future Fund also spent more than $542,000 to aid West Virginia Republican Patrick Morrisey in his successful quest to win the race for attorney general, records indicate, and more than $620,000 in a failed effort to sink Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster, a Democrat.

Complaints about the American Future Fund’s political activities have followed it since its creation.

In 2008, the Democratic Party in Minnesota contended that the group needed to register as a political committee after paying for ads that praised then-U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn. The FEC disagreed.

Two years later, in October 2010, consumer group Public Citizen and two other organizations alleged that the American Future Fund’s “huge expenditures” to aid candidates in the midterm election should have triggered requirements that the group register as a political committee and disclose its donors. That complaint is still being considered by the FEC, which often takes years to fully resolve such matters.

CREW, the watchdog organization, filed a complaint against the American Future Fund with the IRS in February 2011 that challenged whether its primary purpose was something other than influencing elections. The group has dismissed the complaint as “baseless” and contends that CREW “only targets government officials and organizations who have a differing or conservative point of view.”

Proposition 32

California’s campaign finance rules require major donors to groups that pay for political advertisements to be named in actual ads.

Thus, when a political committee called the California Future Fund for Free Markets aired ads praising Proposition 32, each advertisement included the disclaimer “with major funding by the American Future Fund.”

One ad criticized lawmakers for making “deals cut in shadows and back rooms” as dramatic music played in the background. Yet the donors to the American Future Fund itself largely remain in the shadows.

The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit independent investigative news outlet.  To read more of its stories on this topic go to  http://www.publicintegrity.org/politics/consider-source 

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Shawn Thew / EPA

Occupy D.C. protesters link arms on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 20, 2012, during protest on the two-year anniversary of the high court's Citizens United ruling.

The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision unleashed nearly $1 billion in new political spending in the 2012 election, with media outlets and a small number of political consulting firms raking in the bulk of the proceeds.

Spending records released by the Federal Election Commission show that throughout the 2012 election, corporations, unions and individuals that could take advantage of the high court’s ruling were responsible for about $933 million of the estimated $6 billion spent during the contest.

Nearly two-thirds of the new money — about $611 million — went to 10 political consulting firms, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis. All but one of the top 10 recipients bought advertising in various media markets on behalf of super PACs and nonprofits. Eighty-nine percent of the expenditures made to the top 10 went to spots attacking candidates, the data show.

“For some in the industry, it has been a definite boon,” said Dale Emmons, president of the American Association of Political Consultants. “This election appears to have set a new benchmark on the amount of money that could be spent, because there were no limits on what could be spent.”

The 2010 Citizens United decision and a lower-court ruling allowed unlimited donations to super PACs and nonprofits, independent groups that used the funds primarily to fund ad campaigns.

Media buyers keep only a fraction of the total spending — usually 15 percent, according to Federal Communications Commission records, with the rest going to media outlets.

The winners
The top recipient of independent spending among media buyers was Mentzer Media Services, the Towson, Md.-based media placement firm run by longtime GOP consultant Bruce Mentzer.

Mentzer attracted nearly $204 million from conservative super PACs and other outside groups. In a tough year for Republicans, only 26 percent of the candidates who were supposed to benefit from the ads won their races, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis.

The firm was the preferred vendor for the pro-Mitt Romney super PAC Restore Our Future, which paid Mentzer nearly $132 million to purchase air time in presidential battleground states.

A Mentzer employee who answered the phone declined to comment on the firm’s involvement in the 2012 election.

Second was Crossroads Media, which was paid about $163 million to buy media time for conservative super PACs and nonprofits in 2012. The firm is run by Michael Dubke, the former president of Americans for Job Security — a pro-Republican nonprofit and one of Crossroads’ top clients.

Waterfront Strategies, which worked for Democratic groups, ranked third, at $81 million.

Democratic-aligned Mundy Katowitz Media, fourth on the list, was the preferred vendor for the pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action, placing more than $57 million in television ads for the group.

American Media & Advocacy Group, a favorite of conservative groups, ranked No. 5 at $27 million.

Target Enterprises — a Los Angeles-based media buyer for conservative super PACs — was paid $17 million, ranking it No. 6. The firm had a dismal success rate, coming in dead last among firms catering to super PACs and nonprofits. Seven percent of its preferred candidates won on Nov. 6.

A woman who answered the phone at Target Enterprises Tuesday said both principals of the company were “mid-flight” and unavailable for comment.

The Center analyzed FEC data compiled by the Sunlight Foundation and the Center for Responsive Politics. The $933 million in spending came from super PACs, nonprofits and, to a lesser extent, “527” organizations that were the favorite independent spending vehicle in past elections.

FEC coordination law a ‘joke’
The Citizens United decision opened a huge new potential market for consultants, but there was a catch. Consultants who work for candidates — but also work for “independent” groups that support those same candidates — have to be careful.

The high court’s decision did not affect the ban on donations to candidates from corporations and unions, nor did it affect contribution limits from individuals. Instead, it focused on spending by independent groups, unaffiliated with candidates.

As long as super PACs act independently of the candidate, there is no danger of corruption, the high court reasoned.

But sometimes the separation between the campaign and the like-minded super PAC or nonprofit can be hard to discern.

Waterfront Strategies, for example, in its FEC filings lists the same address as GMMB — a well-known Democratic media consulting firm and the preferred vendor for President Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns.

Waterfront was the beneficiary of $81 million paid by some of the biggest Democratic outside spending groups — including Majority PAC, a super PAC backing Democrats running for Senate, and the League of Conservation Voters.

The Huffington Post reported that Waterfront is an internal branch of GMMB. It was incorporated in Delaware, and its president is listed as Raelynn Olson, GMMB's managing partner.

Both Waterfront and its parent company, GMMB, worked to elect Democrat Richard Carmona in his unsuccessful bid for Arizona’s open U.S. Senate seat. Majority PAC hired Waterfront to purchase airtime for ads supporting Carmona and attacking his Republican opponent, then-Rep. and now Sen. Jeff Flake. Carmona’s campaign hired GMMB for its ad buys in the same race.

One Majority PAC ad used the same childhood photo of Carmona that was featured in an official Carmona campaign ad.

GMMB did not reply to requests for comment.

Setting up spinoffs is more about “optics” than skirting coordination rules, said Paul S. Ryan, senior counsel for the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center.

Under current law, as long as a firm assigns each client separate consultants — and those two don’t coordinate their activities — that constitutes a satisfactory firewall, according to Ryan.

“That’s a pretty ridiculous and modest constraint on campaign coordination,” Ryan said.

Texas two-step
American Media & Advocacy, which also has no website, received nearly $27 million to buy media for super PACs and other outside groups.

The organization worked for the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC that paid for ads attacking Pete Gallego, a Democrat who defeated Republican Francisco Canseco in the race for U.S. House of Representatives in Texas’ 23rd District. The firm also worked for Canseco’s campaign.

Records show that at least one of American Media’s buyers purchased media in the San Antonio market for both the Congressional Leadership Fund and the Canseco campaign.

Records show that American Media shares an Alexandria address with the high-profile, bipartisan consulting group Purple Strategies. Purple Strategies failed to respond to the Center’s repeated inquiries about any affiliation that it might have with American Media & Advocacy Group.

American Media and Advocacy is “well aware of the FEC coordination rules, including the common vendor rules,” said Jim Kahl, the group’s attorney, “and they have procedures in place to comply with them.”

In Ohio, American Media & Advocacy Group was paid by the Congressional Leadership Fund to purchase ads slamming Democrat Betty Sutton in the House race for District 16. American Media was also working for Sutton’s Republican opponent, Rep. Jim Renacci.

The same person was listed in records as buying media in the Cleveland market — at the same TV station in at least one case — for both the Renacci campaign and the Congressional Leadership Fund.

Candidates and super PACs can avoid charges of coordination altogether by sending up smoke signals in cyberspace.

For example, one of Target Enterprise’s top clients was Freedom PAC, a super PAC that paid the firm nearly $3.4 million for ad buys supporting Rep. Connie Mack, the unsuccessful Republican candidate in the Florida Senate race.

Freedom PAC released an ad containing some of the same footage that was on the Mack campaign’s YouTube channel.

Under FEC coordination rules, campaign committees and the outside groups that boost their candidates may share material as long as it is publicly available.

The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit independent investigative news outlet. To read more of its stories on this topic go to publicintegrity.org

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Updated 5:20 p.m. ET -- The biggest corporate contributor in the 2012 election so far doesn’t appear to make anything — other than very large contributions to a conservative super PAC.

Specialty Group Inc., of Knoxville, Tenn., donated nearly $5.3 million between Oct. 1 and Oct. 11 to FreedomWorks for America, which is affiliated with former GOP House Majority Leader Dick Armey.

FreedomWorks’ super PAC has spent more than $19 million on political advertising, including $1.7 million on Oct. 29 opposing Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat running for Congress in Illinois against Tea Party favorite Joe Walsh, a first-term incumbent.

The buy was more than four times greater than the group’s previous largest single expenditure.

Specialty was formed only a month ago. Its “principal office” is a private home in Knoxville. It has no website. And the only name associated with it is that of its registered agent, William S. Rose Jr., a lawyer whose phone number, listed in a legal directory, is disconnected.

Rose released a press release Monday saying the company was created to "buy, sell, develop and invest in a variety of real estate ventures and investments." 

In the six-page statement, Rose said he was a "disappointed, yet staunchly patriotic, baby boomer" with concerns about the administration's handling of the terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, as well as the Department of Justice's botched "Operation Fast and Furious" gun-walking program. 

Specialty is the biggest and most mysterious corporate donor to super PACs, but it is not unique.

A new analysis by the Center for Public Integrity and the Center for Responsive Politics shows that companies have contributed roughly $75 million to super PACs in the 2012 election cycle.

Super PACs, which were created in the wake of the controversial U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010, can accept donations of unlimited size from corporations, unions and individuals. They spend the funds mostly on negative advertising.

The centers’ analysis found that 85 percent of money from companies flowed to GOP-aligned groups, 11 percent went to Democratic groups and the remainder went to organizations not aligned with either party.

First Read: Full coverage on the campaign trail

Prior to Citizens United, corporate spending on candidate advertising was not allowed. The decision raised fears that massive donations from corporate treasuries would flood the election in 2012.

In fact, the largest amounts have come from wealthy businessmen. However, about 11 percent of the $660 million raised by all super PACs through mid-October has come from company treasuries — mostly privately held businesses, sometimes organized as limited partnerships or limited liability companies.

High-profile donors
Yet a few high-profile companies haven’t been afraid to jump into the partisan fray.

In mid-October, oil and gas giant Chevron donated $2.5 million to a super PAC close to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, called the Congressional Leadership Fund, which has aired a bevy of ads attacking Democratic House candidates.

Oxbow Carbon, the energy company owned by billionaire William Koch, the lesser-known brother of conservative industrialists David and Charles Koch, and Contran Corp., the business of Republican super donor Harold Simmons of Texas, have both steered significant sums to the coffers of super PACs.

Oxbow Carbon has donated $4.25 million to GOP super PACs, making it the No. 2 corporate donor to super PACs, while Contran, No. 3, has donated more than $3 million to Republican-aligned groups.

Another top corporate donor is a retirement community in central Florida known as The Villages — a Republican stronghold where Paul Ryan held his first campaign rally the day after GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney named him as his running mate.

Developer H. Gary Morse created The Villages more than 50 years ago, and this election cycle, more than a dozen companies connected to Morse and The Villages have collectively steered $1.6 million to GOP super PACs. That’s in addition to the $450,000 that Morse and his wife, Renee, have donated from their personal funds.

Notably, Morse is also the Florida co-chairman of the Romney campaign, and during the Republican National Convention, Morse’s Cayman Island-flagged yacht, named “Cracker Bay,” was the site of a soiree for some of Romney’s top donors and fundraisers.

Other high-profile corporate donors include:

• The Apollo Group, a for-profit education company, which gave $75,000 to the pro-Romney Restore Our Future and another $5,000 to JAN PAC, the super PAC of Arizona’s Republican Gov. Jan Brewer;
• Convenience store giant 7-Eleven, which donated $25,000 to Hoosiers for Jobs, a super PAC that supported Sen. Dick Lugar, R-Ind., during his failed primary campaign;
• Hamburger chain White Castle, which gave $25,000 to the Congressional Leadership Fund;
• Defense contractor B/E Aerospace, which gave $50,000 to Restore Our Future;
• Payday lender QC Holdings, which gave $25,000 to Restore Our Future; and
• Weaver Holdings, the parent company of the Indiana-popcorn company known for its brands “Pop Weaver” and “Trail’s End,” sold by Boy Scouts across the country, which has donated $2.4 million to American Crossroads, the super PAC founded by GOP strategists Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie.

Only a few other Fortune 500 companies have joined Chevron, which ranks third on the elite list behind only Exxon Mobil and Walmart, in making contributions to super PACs, and none has given as much as the energy giant.

Caesar’s Entertainment Corp., for instance, ranked by Fortune at No. 288, has given $150,000 to Majority PAC, a group that is spending to help Democrats retain the majority in the U.S. Senate.

“Fortune 500 companies are the least likely to be the ones who will be out in front giving publicly,” said Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California-Irvine. “They want to have influence over elections and elected officials, but they don't want to alienate customers.”

By category, companies in the finance, insurance and real estate sector donated more than $15 million, “general business sector” firms gave about $14 million and energy sector companies contributed more than $11 million, according to the analysis.

Unions, by contrast, have donated about $60 million to super PACs, from their treasuries or political action committees.

The top union donors include the National Education Association ($9 million), the United Auto Workers ($8.6 million) and the AFL-CIO ($6.4 million). All of these groups have spent heavily on Democratic candidates.

Money 'hiding in plain sight'
Additional corporate money may be flowing through politically active nonprofits that don’t disclose their funders.

“I strongly suspect that most of the corporate money is hiding in plain sight in trade associations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,” said Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a professor at the Stetson University College of Law.

For its part, the Chamber — which collects dues from companies such as Aetna, Chevron, Dow Chemical and Microsoft — has reported spending more than $35 million on political ads, which have overwhelmingly favored Republican politicians.

Facts about Specialty Group Inc. are scant.

Records filed with the Tennessee Secretary of State’s office show it registered on Sept. 26, listing 61-year-old attorney William S. Rose, Jr., as its agent. Rose’s $634,000 home — about a 30-minute drive from downtown Knoxville — is listed as its “principal office.”

Yet the company’s money has made a huge impact.

After the cash infusion from Specialty, FreedomWorks produced numerous advertisements, including one that blasts Duckworth as a crony of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was impeached and sentenced to 14 years in federal prison following a corruption scandal.

Duckworth is a double amputee and Iraq War veteran. She headed Illinois’ Department of Veteran Affairs and later served in President Barack Obama’s U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

FreedomWorks’ new ad features grainy footage of Duckworth and audio of her saying, “Gov. Blagojevich has charged me with the mission of taking care of my buddies, and that is what I’m doing.” But it leaves out the fact that when she said “buddies,” she was referring to other veterans and members of the military.

FreedomWorks for America treasurer and legal counsel Ryan Hecker says the organization only supports candidates who are “ethically right.”

Anton Becker, Duckworth's campaign press secretary, says it’s conservative outside groups who are peddling "lies."

When asked for details about Specialty Group and the source of its contributions, Hecker expressed ignorance, and doubted that voters care about where the money came from.

“We are in compliance with the law, and we are doing what we can to report to the Federal Election Commission,” he said. “If there’s an issue with Specialty, it’s their issue. It’s not our issue.”

Andrea Fuller of the Center for Public Integrity contributed to this report.

This story is a collaboration between the Center for Public Integrity and the Center for Responsive Politics. For up-to-date news on outside spending in the 2012 election, follow our Source2012 Tumblr and the hashtag #Source2012 on Twitter.

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Super PACs and nonprofits unleashed by the Citizens United Supreme Court decision have spent more than $840 million on the 2012 election, with the overwhelming majority favoring Republicans, particularly GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

An estimated $577 million, or roughly 69 percent, was spent by conservative groups, compared with $237 million spent by liberal groups, or about 28 percent, with the remainder expended by other organizations.

Of all outside spending in the 2012 election, more than $450 million was dedicated to the presidential election with more than $350 million spent helping Romney and about $100 million spent to help President Barack Obama.

The spending helped close the gap on Obama’s considerable fundraising advantage over Romney. As Election Day approaches, Romney and Obama are neck-and-neck in national polls.

The totals are from a joint analysis of Federal Election Commission data by the Center for Responsive Politics and the Center for Public Integrity. The analysis covers the period from Jan. 1, 2011, through Oct. 28, 2012, and does not include independent spending by the political party committees.

The final tally will be higher as spending continues to accelerate before Election Day.

Obama's campaign raised more than $632 million in the 2012 election, 62 percent more than Romney's $389 million. Even when including money raised by the Democratic and Republican National Committees, Obama still has an edge of more than $166 million: $924 million for the president’s re-election team vs. $758 million for Romney and the GOP.

The president’s campaign committee was bankrolled to a great degree by money from grassroots supporters, while Romney relied more heavily on larger donors. Individuals who gave $200 or less accounted for 34 percent of Obama’s war chest. Meanwhile, such small-dollar donors were responsible for only 18 percent of the Romney campaign’s haul.

The deluge of outside spending was made possible by the 2010 Citizens United decision and a lower court ruling that allowed individuals, labor unions and corporations to give money to outside spending groups — mostly nonprofits and super PACs — to buy advertising attacking or supporting candidates.

Super PACs were generally backed by super donors. Billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his family, for example, gave $54 million to Republican super PACs as of mid-October, far more than any other donor this election cycle.

Nonprofit “social welfare” groups and trade associations can raise just as much money, but are not required to report their donors. The lack of transparency sparked legislation to require disclosure, but it was defeated.

Nonprofits were responsible for more than $245 million, or about 30 percent, of the $840 million in total outside spending. That’s about $100 million more than they spent in 2010.

Spending surge helps Romney
During the week of Sept. 30, about $16.5 million was spent by outside groups benefiting Romney, mostly on ads attacking Obama. Three weeks later, the seven-day total jumped to more than $55 million, according to FEC filings.

Outside spending benefiting Obama over the same period never exceeded $14 million, records show.

The GOP candidate, facing the Obama fundraising juggernaut, needed the help of outside groups to keep pace.

The Obama campaign aired nearly three times as many ads as the Romney campaign between late April and late October, according to a recent study by the Wesleyan Media Project.

Wesleyan found that the 460,500 ads aired by the Obama campaign in the presidential election was more than the Romney campaign, the RNC and seven other Republican-aligned outside spending groups combined — including the top GOP super PACs Restore Our Future and American Crossroads and conservative nonprofits Crossroads GPS and Americans for Prosperity.

Super PACs in the 2012 election raised about $660 million.

Restore Our Future alone accounted for about $1 out of every $5 of all super PAC donations received. The pro-Romney group raised more than $130 million, much of which was spent decimating Romney’s rivals during the GOP primaries.

The Obama-backing Priorities USA Action, by contrast, raised $64 million.

In 2010, during their first year of existence, all super PACs combined raised just $85 million.

The top 149 individual super PAC donors — each of whom has contributed at least $500,000 — are responsible for $290 million of funds raised.

And 858 individuals who contributed at least $50,000 to super PACs accounted for nearly 60 percent of all money the groups collected in the 2012 election. The median household income in 2011, by way of comparison, was $50,054, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Donations from large, publicly traded corporations have been relatively rare, but in the waning weeks of the campaign, oil and gas giant Chevron wrote a $2.5 million check to the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC backing Republican candidates that is closely associated with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

The emergence of super PACs has been heralded by some, such as Republican lawyer Brad Smith, the former chairman of the Federal Election Commission who co-founded the conservative Center for Competitive Politics.

“(Super PACs) have helped to level the playing field between Romney and Obama, whereas otherwise Obama’s spending advantage would have been substantial,” said Smith. “And in some cases they have raised issues that concern voters that the candidates have chosen to avoid.”

Others disagree.

“When elected officials rely on the most-wealthy of wealthy Americans, it means the voices of everyday people lose out,” said Nick Nyhart, president of the advocacy group Public Campaign, which favors publicly financed elections.

Unlike traditional political action committees, super PACs have no contribution limits and the funds they raise can't be directly donated to candidates. Instead, the money they raise has primarily been used to fund attack ads.

Prior to Citizens United, groups that wanted to expressly advocate for or against a candidate were limited to receiving no more than $5,000 per donor per calendar year.

Donations shrouded in secrecy
As important as super PACs were in the 2012 election, the loosening of political spending rules for non-disclosing, nonprofit organizations was also a key development following the Citizens United decision.

GOP-aligned nonprofits have outspent their Democratic counterparts by a ratio of more than 8 to 1.

Notably, this figure represents a conservative tally of nonprofits’ political spending.

Federal law requires spending to be reported only if a group's advertisements encourage viewers to vote for or against a candidate, or if they mention a candidate shortly before a political convention or election.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, the author of the Court's Citizens United 5-4 opinion, made a point of saying that disclosure was a key part of the court’s rationale. Disclosure would allow citizens to monitor the new political activity.

"This transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages," he wrote.

But the tax-exempt groups — some of which clearly exist for no other reason than to elect favored candidates — are spared by Internal Revenue Service and FEC rules from having to publicly reveal their donors.

Crossroads GPS, co-founded by GOP strategist Karl Rove, claims in press releases to have spent more than $120 million since January 2011, of which only $57 million has been reported to the FEC. At least $12 million has been spent attacking Obama, according to FEC records.

Voters watching its ads have no idea where the money is coming from. Nor do they know who is funding the work of liberal organizations doing the same thing, albeit with a lot less money.

Patriot Majority has reported spending $6.5 million on ads, more than half of which has opposed Rep. Dean Heller, the Republican who is running for U.S. Senate in Nevada.

Not all secret money is coming from nonprofits. Throughout the election season, mystery corporations have popped up, spending huge sums.

Specialty Group Inc. of Knoxville, Tenn., wrote seven checks totaling $5.2 million to pro-Tea Party super PAC FreedomWorks for America in early October. The corporation was created on Sept. 26. The name and address listed on incorporation records are those of a Knoxville, Tenn., area attorney. His published phone line has been disconnected.

The source of the funds, as of this writing, is unknown.

Meanwhile, more than $10 million in funds given to super PACs, which disclose donors regularly, have come from nonprofits, showing that even the groups required to be transparent about their funding sources can still shield the names of donors.

Going negative

The explosion in outside spending has coarsened the political debate, flooding the airwaves in Ohio, Florida, Virginia and other battleground states with negative, often inaccurate ads.

Roughly 80 percent of all spending by both conservative groups and liberal groups has been negative, FEC records indicate.

Fully 100 percent of the nearly $57 million Priorities USA Action reported spending has been on negative ads.

The group, which coined the slogan “If Mitt Romney wins, the middle class loses,” linked Romney to the death of a woman who lost her battle with cancer.

Another of the super PAC’s most memorable ads featured a worker describing how building the stage on which officials announced the plant’s closure, after it was bought by Bain Capital, was like building his “own coffin” and made him “sick.”

Eighty-eight percent of Restore Our Future's spending went toward negative ads, as did 95 percent of American Crossroads' expenditures.

Many of these ads have criticized Obama’s handling of the economy, arguing that the country “can’t afford” four more years of Obama’s policies. One spot features a small-business owner saying, “We can’t create more jobs until Obama loses his.”

Others ads have featured disillusioned Obama supporters from 2008 expressing disappointment with the president.

The winners in the post-Citizens United campaign finance regime won’t be known for certain until after Election Day. But Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, an assistant professor of law at Stetson University's law school who previously worked as an attorney with the Brennan Center for Justice, said it won’t be the voters.

“I fear that we have lost elections on a human scale with post-Citizens United spending by super PACs” and non-disclosing groups, she said. “The losers here are voters who get carpet bombed with political ads full of half-truths and distortions.”

Researchers Robert Maguire of the Center for Responsive Politics and Alexandra Duszak of the Center for Public Integrity contributed to this report. 

This story is a collaboration between the Center for Public Integrity and the Center for Responsive Politics. For up-to-date news on outside spending in the 2012 election, follow our Source2012 Tumblr and the hashtag #Source2012 on Twitter.

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