Photograph by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

President Barack Obama, left, greets Penny Pritzker, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Pritzker Realty Group LLC and Obama’s nominee as secretary of commerce, in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, D.C., on May 2, 2013.

Is Penny Pritzker the wealthiest person ever to be nominated to the president’s Cabinet?

No.

The Chicago businesswoman, philanthropist and political fundraiser has a personal net worth estimated at more than $1.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

That’s chump change, when compared with Andrew W. Mellon, a banker who was secretary of the treasury before and during the Great Depression. Estimates vary, but when adjusted for inflation the Pittsburgh financier was worth tens of billions of dollars. Among the companies he helped found was Gulf Oil.

Mellon, a Republican, was appointed to his Treasury post in 1921 by Warren Harding. The Depression hurt his standing and he resigned in 1932.

An avid art collector and philanthropist, Mellon’s money and paintings helped establish the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

Original post is Pritzker’s Wealth in Perspective by Political Capital.

Photograph by Chris Goodney/Bloomberg

Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim in New York.

That’s the combined net worth of the world’s top-100 richest people included in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

No. 1 Carlos Slim Helu alone accounts for $72.1 billion of that, the index shows.

Bill Gates follows a close second at $67.2 billion.

No.100 Laureen Jobs is worth only $10.6 billion.

All told, those top-100 are worth $2.011 trillion.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: $2 Trillion by Political Capital.

Photograph by Mario Tama/Getty Images

Americans for Prosperity Group activists attend a rally in Manhattan on Sept. 20, 2012 in New York City.

President Barack Obama has made it clear that he despises the tax-exempt nonprofit groups that play in politics.

Yet now his own campaign is becoming one of them.

The nonprofit Americans for Prosperity — a frequent target of Obama’s criticism — decided the “moment of sheer hypocrisy was too blatant to pass up,” AFP spokesman Levi Russell said.

So the group made an online video.

The jaunty minute-long spot, which will be circulated on friendly blogs and through AFP’s social media sites, intersperses clips of Obama mentioning Americans for Prosperity, him decrying nonprofits in politics and news segments about Obama’s new nonprofit.

“Well, that’s a change in tune,” a narrator says. The video concludes, “President Obama, let’s get real. It’s time to stop the hypocrisy.”

Obama for America, which spent $737 million to get the president re-elected, is converting from a political committee into a tax-exempt nonprofit. Aides involved in the project have told reporters that the group, now called Organizing for America, will voluntarily disclose donors.

Like Americans for Prosperity, it isn’t legally required to do that. AFP President Tim Phillips said his group spent more than $125 million on the 2012 elections, including an effort to try to oust Obama.

AFP has drawn attention because of its ties to billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, who founded it a decade ago. The brothers, worth a combined $89.8 billion, have contributed to numerous nonprofits that help fund the anti-tax Tea Party movement.

Original post is Anti-Obama Nonprofit Calls Out Pro-Obama Nonprofit: ‘Hypocrisy’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Barrett Stinson/The Grand Island Independent/AP Photo

One of two police officers carrying an AR-15 assault rifle stands guard at the west entrance of Grand Island Senior High School, in Grand Island, Neb.

Updated at 12:10 pm EST

The White House scolded the National Rifle Association today for an ad calling the president an “elitist hypocrite” on gun control because his children have armed protection.

Jay Carney, the president’s press secretary, called the ad “repugnant and cowardly.”

“Most Americans agree that a president’s children should not be used as pawns in a political fight,” Carney said in a statement. “But to go so far as to make the safety of the president’s children the subject of an attack ad is repugnant and cowardly.”

On the day that President Barack Obama announced a sweeping agenda of 23 executive actions and more congressional proposals to curb gun violence, the NRA, which is proposing armed guards at the nation’s schools as an alternative, has released a video-ad calling the president an “elitist hypocrite” because his children are protected.

The narrator of the ad, appearing at the NRA Web-site and on the Sportsman Channel, does not identify the president’s two school-age daughters by name, but does ask this:

“Are the president’s kids more important than yours? Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools, when his kids are protected by armed guards at their schools?”

Obama’s children attend the private Sidwell Friends school in Washington, yet it is not the school that provides their primary protection. The family of the president is protected by the Secret Service. The girls have been spotted in such venues as trick or treating in Washington escorted by tall men with radios in their ears.

The ad, which closes with images of the assault weapons that the president proposed banning today at an announcement of his agenda at a White House annex, contends that Obama demands that the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes, yet “he’s just another elitist hypocrite when it comes to a fair share of security.”

In the aftermath of the shootings of 20 children and six educators at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, on Dec. 14, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre proposed armed guarding of all the nation’s schools. The only way to “stop bad guys with guns,” he said, is “good guys with guns.”

The NRA has suffered a certain loss of public approval in national opinion polls during the past month, while support for an assault weapons ban has increased in those surveys. The shooter in Newtown used a semi-automatic Bushmaster rifle with oversized ammo clips to riddle with bullets the first graders slain at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

As Obama and Vice President Joe Biden launch a campaign for gun control today, the gun lobby is mounting its own media assault: Sportsman Channel and the NRA “are bringing the NRA’s popular talk-radio show NRANEWS Cam & Co. to television every weekday live from 5-6pm ET beginning Jan. 15,” the organization announced. “Hosted by Cam Edwards, and airing live from the NRANEWS Studios in Washington, D.C., NRANEWS Cam & Co. will be the one and only news-talk series on television that can authoritatively address the issues that are vital to America’s more than 80 million sportsmen and sportswomen. ”

Like the assault weapons ban.

The weapons pictured in the NRA ad about the president’s children, closing with: `Protection for their kids, and gun-free zones for ours.”

Robert Gibbs, a former press secretary for Obama, called the NRA ad “disgusting” today in an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” It is the sort of ad, he said, that political activists make in the middle of the night after some excessive drinking. Usually, he said, people arrive in the morning with a more sober eye and censor it.

Roger Runningen and Margaret Talev contributed. 

Original post is White House Scolds NRA for Ad Challenging Obama Over Children by Political Capital.

Photograph by Philippe Lopez/AFP via Getty Images

Sheldon Adelson, left, and his wife Miriam look at a model of the Cotai Sheraton hotel after a press conference in Macau.

Sheldon Adelson, chairman of Las Vegas Sands Corp., and his wife Miriam spent $53.4 million on the 2012 elections, only to see most of their favored candidates go down to defeat.

Among their biggest losses: $20 million to the super-political action committee backing Republican Mitt Romney, who lost to President Barack Obama, and $15 million to the super-PAC supporting Newt Gingrich, who lost the Republican presidential nomination to Romney.

Adelson is recovering any losses — and more — this week.

The company he leads voted to pay a special dividend next month worth $1.2 billion to Adelson and his wife. And they’ll collect $611 million annually as a result of the company’s decision to boost its regular dividend.

That should help his standing in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which lists Adelson as the world’s 25th richest person, with an estimated worth of $20.7 billion.

See the full story at Bloomberg.com.

Original post is Why Adelson Could Blow $53 Million by Political Capital.

Photograph by Aaron M. Sprecher/Bloomberg

Semi-subermisible oil rigs and jackup shallow-water drilling units in the Gulf of Mexico.

Casino executive Sheldon Adelson, a $5 million contributor to Restore Our Future, the super-political action committee backing Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, and a $30,800 donor to the Republican National Committee, which also supports Romney, has found another table to place his bets.

Adelson contributed $798,385 for radio advertisements aired by the New American Energy Opportunity Foundation, a nonprofit group headed by oil and gas executives that has called for expanded oil drilling offshore and on federal lands, including in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve in Alaska.

The group has criticized President Barack Obama’s energy policies, and claims the admnistration is blocking an increase in oil and gas production. The association’s chairman, Scott Noble, held a press conference last month with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to push for increased energy production.

“At the very moment when we have the potential to dramatically increase our oil and gas production, the federal government is throwing up more restrictions to development,” the group says on its Web site.

Actually, total oil production on federal lands and offshore has gone up 12 percent since Obama became president, overall oil production in the U.S. is at its highest level since December 1996, and the country met 83 percent of its energy needs during the first six months of the year, on track for the highest percentage since 1991.

Adelson is the 25th richest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

He was 17th richest at the end of May, when Romney was paying a visit in Las Vegas to the casino magnate who had put $15 million into a super-PAC backing Romney-rival Gingrich’s campaign. Adelson also gave $7.5 million to the pro-Gingrich super-PAC Winning Our Future, as did his wife. Adelson and his wife combined have given $10 million to Restore Our Future.

Original post is Adelson Finds Another Avenue for Anti-Obama Campaign Spending by Political Capital.

Photograph by Doug Mills/The New York Times via Redux

President Barack Obama during a campaign event in Columbus, Ohio.

Campaigning for re-election, President Barack Obama has alerted supporters to the financial challenge he faces: millionaires and billionaires writing $10 million checks to defeat him.

Those checks are going to super-PACs and “social welfare” committees that draw their money from big donors — undisclosed donors in the case of the special committees — and support the campaign of Republican Mitt Romney.

“Keep in mind the other side has millionaires and billionaires who are writing $10 million checks and running non-stop ads,” Obama told an audience in Las Vegas recently — a line he has repeated at stop after stop.

Yet last night, with Obama appearing at a Waldorf-Astoria Hotel fundraiser and then another, $4 million fundraiser for his campaign at the New York City club of rapper Jay-Z and partner Beyonce, the president was making his own appeal for big checks.

“Our ideas are better and they’re more resonant with the American people,” Obama said at the Waldorf, while warning that pro-Romney super-PACs could “just bury us” with money. “Seven weeks goes by fast,” Obama said.

The president added that, if anyone wants to cut a $10 million check, he can’t solicit it. But he added wryly: “Feel free to use it wisely.”

That’s the kind of money Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, the 29th richest person in the world according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, has provided for the super-PAC Restore Our Future. The main Romney-supporting super-PAC has reported raising $89.7 million through July, including $10 million from Adelson and his wife.

The super-PAC led by a former Obama White House aide, Priorities USA Action, has had a more difficult time raising money. It has reported raising $25.5 million through July.

Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago and former White House chief of staff for Obama, recently quit his post as co-chairman of Obama’s campaign to enable him to raise money for the super-PAC. The two efforts are required to be independent. When word of his departure from the campaign got out earlier this month (The Washington Post reported it first), he already had raised $3 million for the super-PAC.

The campaigns and allied parties themselves are limited to relatively smaller-dollar donations, though the president’s Waldorf-Astoria event was collecting $12,500 per family with about 200 guests.

Obama didn’t name him there, but the idea was: We have Rahm’s number.

Mark Silva and Greg Giroux contributed to this report.

Original post is Obama’s Nod to $10 Million Donors by Political Capital.

Photograph by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Sen. Chuck Schumer arrives at a news conference to announce new legislation "to blunt the worst effects" of the Supreme Court's Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision.

Super-political action committees sound patriotic, as defined by David Keating, president of the Center for Competitive Politics: “It’s Americans getting together and pooling their money to talk to other Americans.”

Trevor Potter, president of the Campaign Legal Center, takes a darker view that super-PACs could hurt the country by corrupting the elected officials who benefit from their election spending.

The two joined in an Intelligence Squared U.S. debate last night in New York City. Joining Keating to make the case that there’s still too much regulation of money in politics was Jacob Sullum, senior editor of Reason Magazine, which advocates for free-markets. And Jonathan Soros, who founded a super-PAC to fight the influence of super-PACs, supported Potter — who is perhaps best known as the lawyer for comedian Stephen Colbert’s Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow.

Super-PACs, new to this year’s presidential race, can accept unlimited contributions from individuals, unions and corporations. So far this election cycle, such groups have raised about $350 million. They’re buying pricey television advertisements to talk up one candidate or attack another.

As for Keating’s “Americans getting together” point: One-quarter of that money comes from just 10 donors, led by Las Vegas casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based group that tracks such spending. Adelson is the 29th-richest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, his net worth about $20.8 billion.

Potter and Soros argued that candidates feel beholden to the people who write million-dollar checks to help them. Super-PACs may not legally coordinate with candidates, yet are often run by their top former advisers.

Sullum — after pointing out the irony of Soros’ position, given that his billionaire father spent tens of millions of dollars trying to defeat President George W. Bush in 2004 — said super-PACs are simply free speech. George Soros is the 25th-richest person, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index shows, his net worth about $21.9 billion.

Partner Keating chimed in that “there’s no evidence votes can be bought.”

The audience laughed.

That may be when the Keating-Sullum team lost them. More audience members took a negative view of super-PACs after the debate, crowning Potter and Soros the winners.

The pro-super-PAC team started from a disadvantage: Only 2 percent of Americans see the money outside groups spend as good for democracy, compared with 24 percent who believe it’s bad, according to a late July survey by the Pew Research Center and the Washington Post. (More than half of the respondents had no idea what a super-PAC is.)

Original post is Super-PAC Defenders Lose Debate — With Billionaires Behind the Curtains by Political Capital.

Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Americans for Prosperity Foundation chairman and Koch Industries Executive Vice President David H. Koch during the Defending the American Dream Summit in Washington, DC.

Tampa during convention week is awash in politicians, big donors and journalists. And sometimes they all choose the same place for dinner, as billionaire industrialist David Koch learned last night.

A group of reporters including Slate’s Dave Weigel spotted Koch and Republican Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, a millionaire businessman elected in 2010 with help from Koch Industries and tea party interests, in a private room at the well-reviewed SideBern’s.

(You know you’ve picked a good place to eat when one of the richest men in the world is at a table nearby.)

Koch, 72, and his brother, Charles Koch, 76, co-own Koch Industries, one of the largest closely held companies in the world. The two are currently Nos. 7 and 8 on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, together worth more than $70 billion.

David Koch is in Tampa as a New York delegate and will be honored at an Americans for Prosperity event on Thursday (he co-founded the group.). He and his wife, Julia, hosted a fundraiser for Mitt Romney last month at their beach home in the Hamptons. It was closed to the press. And David and Charles Koch typically prefer to route their political money through nonprofits, including Americans for Prosperity, that don’t disclose donors.

So Tampa represents a rare stepping out for David Koch. Judging by the look on his face when freelance reporter Matt Laslo snapped his photo, he’s not altogether thrilled about it.

Original post is Spotted: David Koch Dines with Wisconsin Senator by Political Capital.

Photograph by Kathy Kmonicek/AP Photo

New York State Police, local police and Secret Service guard the beachfront property of industrial billionaire David H. Koch before a fundraiser for Mitt Romney.

Mitt Romney is going island-hopping — New England-style — for campaign cash starting today and continuing Saturday.

After spending much of today at his campaign headquarters in Boston — where he’s raising more money through roundtable discussions with donors — the presumptive Republican presidential nominee will take an afternoon flight to Long Island and attend a fundraiser at a golf course in Southampton. Politico has reported an additional stop there will be at the home of hedge fund manager John Griffin of Blue Ridge Capital LLC. Campaign aides didn’t respond to a query about such an event.

Romney was in the Hamptons just more than a month ago, on July 8, when he attended three fundraisers in the area, including a $50,000 per-person dinner at the Southampton beach house of David Koch, an energy magnate who will serve as a convention delegate for Romney and is the eighth-richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $36.3 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

On Saturday, Romney’s stops include fundraisers on both Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard.

The News-Times newspaper in Danbury, Connecticut, has reported that one of Romney’s stops on Nantucket will be at the island home of Barry Sternlicht, the founder of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc.

That would come with a touch of irony because Romney is a Marriott man. His campaign often stays at the chain’s properties (a favorite among point-hoarding reporters, too). He served on the company’s board of directors and his family has longtime ties to the Marriotts.

Nantucket, of course, is where a photo of Senator John Kerry windsurfing during a 2004 vacation helped George W. Bush’s campaign brand him as an elitist. Since entering the White House, President Barack Obama has enjoyed spending part of his summer on the Vineyard, although not this election year.

Original post is Romney’s Island-Hop for Fundraising by Political Capital.