November 1, 2011

It Begins: Pro-Perry Group Runs First Super-PAC Ads of 2012

Mike Toomey (left) and Texas Governor Rick Perry go way back.Courtesy of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission

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Things could be going better for Rick Perry’s presidential campaign. He probably wishes he hadn’t gone into a total free-fall in the national polls (and in Iowa), for instance. Maybe he regrets giving a speech in New Hampshire on Friday in which he sounded like he’d just shotgunned a bottle of Robitussin. But there’s a reason Republicans still believe he has a shot to beat Mitt Romney: The Texas governor has a lot of money in the bank, and just as importantly, he’s got a lot of friends with a lot of money in the bank.

Perry has not one but two super-PACs working on his behalf—dark money groups that can accept unlimited donations (including from corporate sources)—the most notable of which is Make Us Great Again, founded by Perry’s former chief of staff and long-time friend, Austin mega-lobbyist Mike Toomey. Make Us Great Again has a goal of raising and spending $55 million on Perry’s behalf during the primaries alone, which is a lot. And now it’s on the air with its first set of television ads—making it the first super PAC to hit airwaves during the Republican primary:

We’re betting they won’t be the last.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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