At
The Huffington Post, Paul Blumenthal writes that the
Crossroads groups are the
biggest outside
force in the campaign.
Crossroads spokesman Jonathan Collegio told The Huffington Post that the groups will succeed in their $300 million effort.
"The Crossroads groups will meet their goal of raising $300m for the 2011-12 cycle because there is a great desire to change the direction of the country and donors see Crossroads as an effective and efficient platform for effecting change," he wrote in an email.
The organizations have emerged from the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision to become the best-financed independent political groups in modern political history. They will surpass the combined spending of all independent groups in the 2010 election and have already put nearly $100 million more into the election than the liberal groups Americans Coming Together and the Media Fund did in 2004
...
During the late spring and summer, Crossroads GPS pumped $50 million into a television and online advertising campaign with targeted messaging at disillusioned Obama supporters in swing states. The spending helped to fill the gap for Republican candidate Mitt Romney at a time when his campaign spent little on advertising and focused on raising money for the general election.
That spending has shifted in the last days of the campaign toward a strategy of "stretching the battlefield" to "make the Republican presidential candidate competitive in normally Democratic states—Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin," as a Republican consultant explained in a Wall Street Journal article late last year. American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS have recently placed advertising in the previously uncontested states of Pennsylvania and Michigan as well as in Minnesota. The groups also made a national advertising buy that will put their ads on the air across the country.
Collegio explained in an email how the Crossroads groups were able to help Romney in the television advertising race. "Amazingly, Barack Obama's campaign spent a billion dollars and outspent Romney on TV ads by more than $150m, yet he never achieved more than 48% support of the Americans he leads. Crossroads relentlessly kept America's attention focused on Obama's failed economic policies and his recovery -- the worst recovery in modern history."
