Just think about all the water I can buy.
While nearly every GOP candidate has a Super PAC associated with his or her campaign, not every one of them has a secretive unaffiliated group funneling millions of dollars in anonymous donations their way. That's exactly what Marco Rubio has,
reports Julie Bykowicz.
Every pro-Rubio television commercial so far in the early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina has been paid for not by his campaign or even by a super PAC that identifies its donors, but instead by a nonprofit called Conservative Solutions Project. It's also sending Rubio-boosting mail to voters in those same states.
Although Rubio is rising in national polls, his fundraising has so far been dwarfed by that of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson. By the end of June, Bush and his super PAC had amassed $114 million — more than quadruple what Rubio and his super PAC collected. [...] Left unsaid was that a secret-money group is giving him at least an $8 million assist, according to information provided by advertising tracker Kantar Media's CMAG.
Rubio's Super-PAC had raised closer to $17 million by the end of the second quarter. But hey, who cares about that when you've got anonymous donors lavishing millions on your campaign and you might also be
the beneficiary of the Koch's big $1 billion giveaway.
According to a political insider who ran into David Koch at a recent event in Manhattan, Florida Sen. Rubio is the front-runner for dough now that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is out of the race.
“It’s sad. I think (Walker) just ran out of money,” our source heard David Koch tell friends.
Any chance Koch said that with an evil bellowing laugh? OK, probably not. Walker was the Koch's
golden boy early on. But it turns out that money can't totally buy the presidency. Voters actually have to like the guy or gal. Rubio has said that he's not all that worried about the influx of money in the political system but that it shouldn't be anonymous.
“We do have a Constitutional right to speech and I believe political contributions are a part of that speech, but they have to be disclosed,” Sen. Marco Rubio said at a New Hampshire town hall in February.
So he says. But in the meantime, he's in the money.