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Billionaire investor and longtime Donald Trump supporter Carl Icahn announced he is launching a $150 million super PAC to revise corporate tax law. Trump has indicated Icahn may be his choice for Treasury secretary should he win his bid for president. Icahn, in a letter to House and Senate leaders, said he wants Congress to pass legislation that will stop U.S. companies from moving profits overseas for lower tax rates, formally known as corporate tax inversions. He said lawmakers must be "accountable for the current gridlock in Congress that prevents important legislation from being passed." "In the last few years...

A top supporter of Gov. Jeb Bush is saying the GOP’s 2016 frontrunner, Donald Trump, is “dead politically” and won’t be president of the United States, despite being at the top of the polls. Trump is “a false zombie front-runner. He’s dead politically, he’ll never be president of the United States, ever,” Mike Murphy said in an interview with Bloomberg Politics. “By definition I don’t think you can be a front-runner if you’re totally un-electable. I think there’s there an a-priori logic problem in that,” said Murphy, who is the chief strategist at Bush’s “Right To Rise” Super-PAC that has...

None of this strikes me as true. How has Trump’s entry changed the race?It created a false zombie front-runner. He’s dead politically, he’ll never be president of the United States, ever. By definition I don’t think you can be a front-runner if you’re totally un-electable. I think there’s there an a-priori logic problem in that.Has he been dead since he got in?I think so, yeah. So there’s no meaningful outcome to it. But the question is what kind of catalyst is it? It’s a huge amount of noise and so we’re trying to find the signal in all this. You’ve...

Former President George W. Bush reportedly ripped into Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at a weekend gathering of donors to his brother's presidential campaign, according to a published report Monday. Politico reported that Bush said of Cruz, "I just don't like the guy," at the event, which was held Sunday night in Denver. According to the report, which cited at least six donors who were at the event, Bush said he did not like Cruz's de facto alliance with Republican front-runner Donald Trump, who has notably spared Cruz from the criticism he has ladled onto other members of the 15-candidate Republican...

As he brags that he is turning down millions of dollars for his presidential campaign, Donald Trump has leveled a steady line of attack against his rivals: that they are too cozy with big-money super PACs and may be breaking the law by coordinating with them. “You know the nice part about me?” he told reporters in Iowa in August. “I don’t need anybody’s money.” What Trump doesn’t say is that he and his top campaign aide have connections to a super PAC collecting large checks to support his candidacy — a group viewed by people familiar with his campaign...

GOP 2016 contenders Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Carly Fiorina, and former Sen. Rick Santorum will headline a special event that will focus on federalism and federal overreach on Saturday, October 3 at Southern New Hampshire University. “Practical Federalism,” hosted by the conservative American Principles Project (APP), will illuminate the Framers’ view that elected state officials – governors and state legislatures – have the duty to push back against federal overreach and intrusion on the states. “During this forum, we will raise the consciousness of the state’s legislators, activists, and Republican base, so that they demand that the potential 2016 presidential...

WASHINGTON–Keep the Promise I, a super PAC supporting Sen. Ted Cruz’ presidential run, announced today a $1 million radio ad campaign on a slew of Christian and conservative radio shows and networks.The ad is a 60-second summary of Cruz’s presidential pitch: The son of a Cuban refugee who’s fought for conservative principles in the Supreme Court and U.S. Senate is the one person we can trust in the White House.“His father was jailed fighting for the freedom of his fellow countrymen and fled Cuba to live the American Dream. Like his father, Ted Cruz fights for what matters: liberty, freedom,...

Ted Cruz' creative presidential campaign is being matched by an equally creative super PAC, as revealed by the advertising strategy being executed by one of four outside independent groups supporting the Texas senator's presidential bid. On Friday, Keep the Promise I announced a $1 million national radio advertising buy to run through the end of the year. The group's news was hardly the first among super PACs backing a Republican for president in 2016. But where the other third party groups have spent money on traditional broadcast and cable television advertising, Keep the Promise I is focusing on radio —...

Despite his prior pledge to self-fund his campaign, the billionaire businessman now appears to be embracing big donors. ...even as Trump publicly scorned other candidates’ use of super PACs, he tacitly gave approval to the Make America Great Again PAC by attending a fundraiser the group held [in July]. Trump spoke for between 10 and 15 minutes at the mid-July fundraiser, where about 200 people packed into a private residence in Manhattan. “There are so many people wanting to contribute and I am so grateful for their support. I appreciate the moral investment in my vision to Make America Great...

(CNN)—The super PAC supporting former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's bid for president will spend $10 million on its first major TV ad campaign starting next month. A spokesman for Right to Rise PAC confirmed that the group will start running ads in the crucial early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire on September 15, with ads starting in South Carolina the week after. The commercials, first reported by The Associated Press, will focus on promoting the former Florida governor's record and will run through December.

The Ricketts family sweepstakes are over and Scott Walker has won handily, according to Republicans familiar with Unintimidated, the super PAC supporting the Wisconsin governor and presidential candidate. Federal election filings will soon show that billionaire investor Joe Ricketts and his wife, Marlene, have together given $5 million to the Walker-allied group — a significant haul from one of the GOP’s biggest donors. Their son, Todd, is another Walker donor and co-chairman of his national fundraising efforts. In recent months he has hosted events for the governor and traveled with him on the campaign trail. Federal filings will also show...

Jeb Bush has officially become the $100 million man. The Republican front-runner’s Right to Rise super PAC, which will take on an unprecedented role in tandem with his presidential campaign, announced on Thursday that it has banked $103 million in the past six months, exceeding its own ambitious goal of $100 million. The group has $98 million in cash and is unlikely to truly begin spending its massive war chest until the end of the year, according to multiple sources. The organization made the announcement on Twitter less than an hour after Bush’s campaign, which cannot coordinate with the super...

Jeb Bush is under growing pressure to acknowledge what to some voters and a number of campaign finance lawyers seems obvious: He is running for president. The lawyers say Mr. Bush, a former Florida governor, is stretching the limits of election law by crisscrossing the country, hiring a political team and raising tens of millions of dollars at fund-raisers, all without declaring — except once, by mistake — that he is a candidate. Some election experts say Mr. Bush passed the legal threshold to be considered a candidate months ago, even if he has not formally acknowledged it. Federal law...

Hillary Rodham Clinton will begin personally courting donors for a super PAC supporting her candidacy, the first time a Democratic presidential candidate has fully embraced the independent groups that can accept unlimited checks from big donors and are already playing a major role in the 2016 race. Her decision is another escalation in what is expected to be the most expensive presidential campaign in history. Mrs. Clinton’s allies hope that with her support, Priorities USA Action, the top Democratic super PAC, will be able to raise as much as $200 million to $300 million, on par with what the largest...

Sen. Ted Cruz’s, R-Texas, state director has left his post to run a political action committee that supports Cruz, “Make DC Listen.” John Drogin embraced one of Cruz’s signature stump speech lines, “Make DC listen,” in naming the PAC, which will support Cruz’s presidential campaign as well as other conservative non-presidential candidates. Drogin was Cruz’s campaign manager in 2012 when the little-known Cruz won a come-from-behind race to beat then-Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst for the Senate. Drogin was earlier a press aide to Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. “Americans are worried about the federal government’s crippling effect on jobs and opportunity,”...

The super PAC “Ready for Hillary” may have tens of thousands of small-dollar donors and raised more than $11 million since its 2013 founding, but it’s in debt— to the tune of $1 million. The New York Timesreported that “Ready for Hillary” reported a bank balance of $875,626 to the Federal Election Commission on Nov. 24, but also owed Amalgamated Bank about $1 million. Amalgamated is tied to various unions and serves as a go-to source for Democratic candidates, parties and political action committees, The Times reported. The loan was incurred in October. “This investment, used to fund our massive...

Some of the most powerful political committees faced a Wednesday deadline to reveal how much cash they raised and spent during July, August and September. It was likely to be one the last times before Nov. 4’s elections that voters could see how millions of dollars were flowing into outside campaign groups. Only groups that report their money in three-month windows were filing Wednesday. …

One small governor's race has turned into a cattle call for potential 2016 presidential candidates: Nebraska. Specifically, one candidate in the Cornhusker State is getting outsized attention from talked-about Republican presidential contenders. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, 2012 vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas have all endorsed Omaha businessman Pete Ricketts ahead of Tuesday's primary. As potential candidates work to woo Republican mega-donors, the contest offers presidential contenders entrée with a billionaire sugar daddy of the most literal variety: Joe Ricketts, the TD Ameritrade-founding, Chicago Cubs-owning billionaire who also happens to be...

It was one of the more astonishing political images of the year: a newspaper advertisement that linked Osama bin Laden, the suspected international terrorist, with Senator Spencer Abraham, the Michigan Republican. Why is the senator, asked the advertisement that ran in some of Michigan's largest newspapers, ''trying to make it easier for terrorists like Osama bin Laden to export their way of terror to any street in America?''

Deep-pocketed donors are turning over multimillion-dollar checks to political organizations for November’s elections, and the sums raised by the national parties and their super PAC allies are already approaching the $1 billion mark. […] At the moment, Democrats seem to have a roughly 3-to-1 advantage over Republicans in cash raised and saved through independent groups. That balance of power could quickly change as more reports are filed. …