Romney endorsed by Citizens United adviser Bopp
The morning after President Barack Obama’s campaign said it would start supporting Priorities USA, a Super PAC fundraising group designed to keep him in office, Republican Mitt Romney’s campaign announced it had been endorsed by James Bopp, a lawyer who advised Citizens United in the Supreme Court case responsible for the creation of the outside fundraising groups.
“Mitt Romney is a true conservative,” Bopp wrote in an “open letter” explaining the endorsement. “One does not have to guess what Mitt Romney would do in office. He served for four years as Governor of Massachusetts and has a record that conservatives should be proud of.”
Obama opposed the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in a case that erased limits on corporate and union money in federal elections. His campaign said he had made the switch because Republicans had raised and spent so much Super PAC money.
“With so much at stake, we can’t allow for two sets of rules,” campaign manager Jim Messina said in an email to Obama supporters.
Restore Our Future, a Super PAC supporting former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, the front-runner in the race for the Republican nomination to oppose Obama’s re-election bid, raised $30.2 million in 2011 and had cash on hand of $23.6 million at the end of the year. Priorities USA, by contrast, had raised $4.2 million by the end of 2011 and had $1.5 million in cash on hand.
Bopp’s endorsement also reinforces Romney’s anti-abortion credentials, which have been questioned because of Romney’s public support for abortion rights when he was running for office in Massachusetts, a Democratic-leaning state. Bopp is general counsel to the National Right to Life Committee anti-abortion group.
Inside the Obama fundraising machine: leadership circles
By Eric Johnson
CHICAGO, Jan 14 (Reuters) – President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign and its key supporters are looking to grow on a national scale a fundraising concept that was successful in its Democratic stronghold of Chicago, sources familiar with the program said on Saturday.
Eager to widen its donor base, the Obama campaign is using its team of top fundraisers and donors to distribute marketing materials to thousands of potential top-dollar donors across the nation. Those among them who donate $5,000 — the maximum legal contribution to a presidential candidate in the 2012 cycle — will gain a stream of perks large and small, sources said.
The benefits could include free entry to campaign fundraisers featuring the president, access to strategy sessions at headquarters, and pizza parties at the homes of supporters to watch upcoming voting contests to pick the Republican candidate challenging Obama for the White House in 2012.
The campaign hopes to draw thousands to this category of donor, which so far includes roughly 80 people in Chicago, the Democratic bastion where Obama has supporters with deep pockets.
Members of the pilot group, called the “Chicago Leadership Circle,” paid $5,000 either in a lump sum or over five months to get “unparalleled networking opportunities” to meet with campaign officials and key political operatives coming to Chicago for events and strategy meetings, according to sources and the program’s marketing materials.
Obama should have been impeached a long time ago!
“The Wall Street puppet” collecting more and more money for himself and his campaign. In this corrupt system the puppeteers ( Financial lobby, Bankers, Bildenberg group, -pick your own) determine the outcome of the election. It does not matter who wins. They got you by the balls.
What if all these weatlhy billionaires and businemen poured this money into education, R&D or healthcare for their employees instead of engaging in this power struggle to control the strings on our political system?