It’s not just wealthy GOP donors that have Romney in an unexpectedly close contest. Two labor groups and a pro-Obama super PAC have poured in more than $1 million to attack Romney. The two-front assault has the onetime front-runner from Massachusetts fighting to stave off a devastating defeat in next week’s Florida primary.
“For Romney, if he doesn’t win Florida, his campaign may pretty much be over, and Gingrich is looking for a knockout punch,’’ said Darryl Paulson, professor emeritus of government at the University of South Florida. “They will do whatever it takes to win.’’
The Adelsons’ $10 million to the pro-Gingrich super PAC is, while generous, not a record contribution from one family. It is, for example, far short of the $23.7 million billionaire hedge fund manager George Soros contributed in the 2004 election cycle to Democratic and liberal organizations. But those groups, known as 527s after the section of the tax code under which they operated, had restrictions on the timing and content of their electioneering messages. Those constraints were eliminated by the recent US Supreme Court ruling.
The Adelsons’ contributions to the pro-Gingrich super PAC have kept him in the ad war in Florida, an expensive venture by any campaign standard.
Winning Our Future, the super PAC backing Gingrich, says it will spend $6 million before next Tuesday in Florida, though as of yesterday the organization had purchased less than $3 million in broadcast, cable, radio, and Internet ads. A flight of ads mixing spots critical of Romney and promoting Gingrich was scheduled to start running today.
Rick Tyler, a spokesman for the super PAC, said that the total spending of $6 million would be on a variety of media, including Internet and social media, and that reports would be filed with the Federal Election Commission as early as today.
