"We prefer to spend on issue-related stuff," he said, like voter registration and outreach efforts.
Instead, the true target turned out to be charities who now feel the chill of the acts's ban on campaigning in the year before an election, limiting what they can spend on issues such as climate change, child poverty, fracking, hunting or housing.
"I kind of think that the more time we spend on issues that we're divided on, the less time we have to spend on the other issues," he says.
Tens of millions of dollars more has been spent on issue advertisements whose precise costs are difficult to measure.
While soft money donations to both major parties broke records in the last election cycle -- a total of nearly half a billion dollars -- spending on issue advertisements also hit the half-billion dollar mark.
How much money Crossroads GPS spends on issue advocacy is a key question.
Leading the pack of Democratic dark money groups is the League of Conservation Voters with $9.7 million spent on issue and electoral advertising combined.
How much will finally be spent on issue ads praising or excoriating candidates is anybody's guess.
Lobbying Congress in the United States is a $3.5 billion dollar industry annually [2], with an additional $1.1 billion spent on issue advertising [3].
At the August 2015 meeting, the Koch network backed off some, stating that the $889 million would be spent on issue advocacy, education grants and political activity.
