WASHINGTON - In a campaign season of anti-establishment ferment, some of the Republican Party's best-known insiders are building an ambitious fundraising machine for the fall elections and beyond.
They started with a bang in April, cashing a $1 million check from a Texas oil magnate. After a quiet May, friends and foes are watching to see if the new organization's core group, American Crossroads, can reach its goal of raising $52 million by November.
Karl Rove, who was President George W. Bush's top political strategist, and Ed Gillespie, a former Republican Party chairman and White House aide, modeled their network on successful operations created by Democrats several years ago.
American Crossroads is a 527 organization - named for a section in the tax law - that is exempt from limits on campaign fundraising and spending that apply to party-affiliated groups. It can tap rich conservatives, such as Trevor Rees-Jones, president of Dallas-based Chief Oil and Gas, who chipped in the first $1 million.
But eyebrows rose in political circles when the group filed its next monthly report with the Internal Revenue Service, showing only $200 raised in May.
Steven Law, a former U.S. Chamber of Commerce lawyer and now president of American Crossroads, said the group has about $30 million in pledges that Rove, Gillespie and others secured during recent trips to various cities.
Four affiliated political groups, some of them several years old, are working closely with American Crossroads. They don't hesitate to admit they are trying to catch up with Democratic rivals.
The blue chip pedigrees of the groups' leaders may seem somewhat at odds with the anti-establishment energy coursing through conservative communities. Led by the tea party movement, the fervor already has cost a Republican senator and two House members their seats in party primaries.
American Crossroads, however, seems to have no qualms about backing tea party favorites. Among its first actions was spending $360,000 on TV ads in Nevada criticizing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who faces tea party-backed Republican Sharron Angle this fall.
Law said his group also will try to oust Democratic senators in Arkansas, Colorado and Washington state, and to help Republicans win open Senate seats in Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania. He said American Crossroads will get involved in about a dozen House races. Some Republican insiders want that number expanded.