Crossroads: The ATM of the Right

The Karl Rove-linked Crossroads groups are known for their multimillion-dollar ad campaigns attacking President Barack Obama, but behind the scenes they’ve also emerged as financiers of a network of conservative groups that look to them for not just cash — but strategy.

The Rove groups have been operating as a clearinghouse of sorts, doling out more than $17 million to a range of conservative groups, according to recently released tax forms, including several that participate in the Crossroads-coordinated Weaver Terrace Group strategy sessions, such as Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, Norm Coleman’s American Action Network, the 60 Plus Association and the National Federation of Independent Business.

Crossroads’s role as a funder of the right was intended to mimic — and help offset — the millions of dollars that labor unions for years have directed to an array of liberal groups that help Democrats, including environmentalist and gay-rights outfits and, more recently, Democratic super PACs.

“The unions have spent literally hundreds of millions of dollars in this way,” asserted Crossroads spokesman Jonathan Collegio. Crossroads is merely taking “a page out of the unions’ playbook by supporting philosophically aligned groups that share many of the same policy goals and have complementary assets,” he told POLITICO, adding that the “cross-fertilization of like-minded groups is critical to building an infrastructure for long-term policy change.”

The extent of Crossroads’s money role was revealed Tuesday when Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies – the shadowy nonprofit sister of the better known American Crossroads super PAC — released its tax filings for 2010 and 2011.

Crossroads GPS, as the group is known, directed major grants to Americans for Tax Reform, American Action Network, the 60 Plus Association, National Right to Life, the National Federation of Independent Business and the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action, according to the tax forms.

The forms show that Crossroads GPS raised nearly $77 million between its incorporation in May 2010 and the end of 2011, primarily from a couple dozen contributions of $1 million or more — including two $10 million donations — and also revealed that Crossroads President Steven Law earned about $600,000 last year.

It’s the first financial disclosure by Crossroads GPS and it shows that the nonprofit’s fundraising has surpassed that of its super PAC sibling American Crossroads.

American Crossroads, which previously revealed a $1.2 million 2010 donation to Gillespie’s Republican State Leadership Committee, is obligated to reveal its finances, including its donors, on a regular basis. But Crossroads GPS is registered under a section of the Internal Revenue Service code — 501(c)(4)that doesn’t require donor disclosure. However, such 501(c)(4) groups are obligated to spend a majority of their cash on non-political “social welfare” purposes, and that requirement may help explain GPS’s donations.