Kentuckians for Strong Leadership may indeed be for strong leadership, but it doesn’t appear to involve many Kentuckians.
The super PAC has launched a series of ads attacking Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Grimes, the Democratic challenger to GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in 2014. And the latest fundraising disclosures show that Kentuckians for Strong Leadership’s attacks are being paid for almost entirely by people other than Kentuckians.
The only contact for the group, which we first wrote about last month, is a Republican political operative named Caleb Crosby, who is also the treasurer of Karl Rove’s American Crossroads super PAC. On Wednesday, the group disclosed for the first time its list of donors — 18 individuals and one super PAC, who gave a combined $1.1 million to the organization. Only two of the donors are actually from Kentucky and they gave just a sliver of the group’s money: Don and Mira Ball, at $10,000 apiece.
Other donors on the list have been supportive of Rove’s various fundraising efforts over time, as well as of mainstream Republicans. For example, Bob Perry, the GOP mega-donor who gave $8.5 million to American Crossroads and $10 million to Restore our Future, the super PAC that backed Mitt Romney, gave the Kentucky group $100,000. Perry, who died on April 13 of this year, was originally listed as having made the donation on June 3, but the group quickly amended the report to list the contribution as having been made on April 12.
A total of seven donors, including Perry, are from Rove’s home state of Texas.
Hedge fund manager John W. Childs, who gave $1.7 million to American Crossroads, gave $250,000. Philip Geier, who gave $1 million to American Crossroads in 2012, gave $100,000 to Kentuckians for Strong Leadership. Occasional presidential candidate, real estate developer and reality TV star Donald Trump chipped in $50,000.
Super PAC for America, run by conservative political pundit Dick Morris, also contributed $100,000.
To be fair, none of the money raised by Senate Majority PAC, one of two liberal groups that have been attacking McConnell, appears to have come from Kentucky either. According to its latest filings, the super PAC, formerly known as simply Majority PAC, has raised about $3 million this year. More than half of that money, roughly $1.6 million, came from labor unions, and the remainder from several large liberal outside spending groups and prominent individual donors, including Jeffrey Katzenberg, who gave $100,000. Katzenberg was a bundler for Obama, raising at least $500,000 for his 2012 re-election bid.
The other liberal outside spending group that’s been active in Kentucky, Patriot Majority USA, is a politically active nonprofit and so does not disclose any donors. However, as we have reported before, the group has extremely close ties to Senate Majority PAC and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). And Patriot Majority USA contributed roughly $58,000 in salary and insurance for Senate Majority PAC employees, while Senate Majority paid Patriot Majority’s founder Craig Varoga more than $6,000 for consulting services, according to the FEC filings.
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