The Sunlight Foundation Shows Who Drove the Super Pac Contributions in 2011

— Restore Our Future gets $500,000 from MBF Family Investments and $500,000 Miguel "Mike" Fernandez of MBF Healthcare partners. Fernandez was fined by the FEC for making corporate contributions to a 2004 Senate campaign. Super PACs don't face those restrictions.

— Romney's Bain Capital connections pay off. Three Bain executives, Dominic Ferrante ($250,000), Steve Barnes ($125,000) and John Connaughton ($250,000) contribute a total of $625,000. Debra Barnes, Steve Barnes' spouse, kicked in another $125,000, bringing the total to $750,000.

— Restore Our Future, which supports Romney, got $1 million from the Pete Best of the Koch Brothers. Bill Koch, a Koch brother who left Koch Industries to form Oxbow Carbon, gave $250,000 to Restore Our Future; Oxbow Carbon kicked in another $750,000.

— Taking a quick look at Romney's bundling reports: Some of the high stakes bundlers include Barclay's lobbyist Patrick Durkin ($419,925) and Clearwater Group's Austin Barbour ($210,700). In the last quarter Durkin raised $187,025 and total earnings for Romney's campaign via bundlers is just over $1 million.

— Other big donors to Winning Our Future, which supports Gingrich: W.S. Propst of Alabama, in commercial real estate, $500,000; Sivan Ochshorn, who the Forward identifies as a daughter of Miriam Adelson and an executive Las Vegas Sands, the company that Miriam and Sheldon Adelson own, $500,000; and $250,000 from both Yasmin and Oren Lukatz. Yasmin Lukatz is another daughter of Miriam Adelson's from a prior marriage.

— No donations from Sheldon Adelson or his wife reported by Winning Our Future, the super PAC aligned with Newt Gingrich (this could be because the reported $10 million donation by the couple came after the Dec. 30 reporting deadline), but he did get $500,000 from big GOP donor Harold Simmons. Lobbyists for Simmons' company Contran and its subsidiaries reported being paid $320,000 in 2011, according to OpenSecrets.org.

— Priorities USA Action, the super PAC started by former White House staffers in April 2011 raised$1,239,080 in the last quarter of 2011 getting their cash on hand up to more than $4.4 million. So far, the super PAC has made independent expenditures totaling $321,229 on ads against GOP presidential front runner Mitt Romney.

— Fourth quarter reports show $215,234 in dark money coming into Priorities USA Action from the affiliated 501 c(4) which does not have to disclose donors.

-- Not super PAC related, but Romney's campaign reports $24,278,503 in the last quarter.

— House Majority PAC formed in 2011 by former DCCC official reports $910,215 in receipts in the last quarter of 2011 and has $1.1 million in hand. Major donor to the super PAC created to reelect House Democrats include Newsweb Corporation CEO Fred Eychaner who donated $150,000 in October. Eyechaner has earlier given to the pro-Obama super PAC, Priorities USA Action.

— Texas Gov. Rick Perry's exit from the race left the biggest super PAC supporting him, Make Us Great Again, with more than $600,000 in the bank. In less than five months of existence, the committee collected more than $5.4 million, mostly in large chunks: The roster of contributors lists plenty of $25,000, $50,000, $100,000. Robert McNair, the owner of the Houston Texans football team, kicked in $100,000 as did Drayton McLane, former owner of Major League Baseball's Houston Astros.

Perry famously attacked rival Mitt Romney as a "vulture capitalist" but the PAC backing him got a $1 million contribution from Harold Simmons, who made a reputation as a corporate raider. In 2004, Simmons also helped fund the "Swift Boat" ads which attacked the military record of Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., a Vietnam veteran who was that year's Democratic nominee. Two other donors to Make Us Great Again are on the Forbes 400 Richest Americans list: Telecom executive turned horse owner Kenny Troutt and former computer executive Darwin Deason (#379). Troutt gave $150,000; Deason, $250,000. The pro-Perry Pac also got $50,000 from the politically active Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, a tribe with extensive gambling interests.

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The Sunlight Foundation Shows Who Drove the Super Pac Contributions in 2011

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