Election’s biggest corporate donor an enigma with $5.3 million in contributions
I’m going to differ with the reporter - Specialty Group Inc. does manufacture things: bile, fear, division.
The biggest corporate contributor in the 2012 election so far doesn’t appear to make anything — other than very large contributions to a conservative super PAC.
Specialty Group Inc., of Knoxville, Tenn., donated nearly $5.3 million between Oct. 1 and Oct. 11 to FreedomWorks for America, which is affiliated with former GOP House Majority Leader Dick Armey.
FreedomWorks’ super PAC has spent more than $19 million on political advertising, including $1.7 million on Oct. 29 opposing Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat running for Congress in Illinois against Tea Party favorite Joe Walsh, a first-term incumbent.The buy was more than four times greater than the group’s previous largest single expenditure.
Specialty was formed only a month ago. Its ‘principal office’ is a private home in Knoxville. It has no website. And the only name associated with it is that of its registered agent, a lawyer whose phone number, listed in a legal directory, is disconnected.
Specialty is the biggest and most mysterious corporate donor to super PACs, but it is not unique.
A new analysis by the Center for Public Integrity and the Center for Responsive Politics shows that companies have contributed roughly $75 million to super PACs in the 2012 election cycle.
Super PACs, which were created in the wake of the controversial U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010, can accept donations of unlimited size from corporations, unions and individuals. They spend the funds mostly on negative advertising.