Candidate Rick Perry Super-PACs collected over $17 million; the campaign itself raised less than $2 million. With Perry dropping out, Super-PAC head Austin Barbour and the finance chair Brint Ryan are now issuing refunds.
TEXAS – A group of super PACs backing former Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s now-defunct presidential bid has refunded to donors most of the millions of dollars they collected, the groups’ finance chairman said.
“We’re still settling up with a few vendors … but we had a pretty good estimate of what those were so we were able to hold back a little bit of the reserve and refund the rest,” Brint Ryan, the super PACs’ finance chairman who runs a Dallas-based tax services company, told the Center for Public Integrity.
The pro-Perry super PACs, all named variations on Opportunity and Freedom PAC, are legally allowed to accept unlimited contributions.
They collectively reported raising $12.8 million during the first half of the year. Austin Barbour, the senior adviser, said they had received another $4 million contribution from a single donor after the reporting deadline, bringing the total to nearly $17 million. (more…)