Two months after US President Barack Obama reluctantly embraced fundraising for big-money “Super PACs,” many major Democratic donors still have not given to such political groups because they are dismayed by how PACs are being used in the presidential campaign. Billionaire investor George Soros and insurance executive Peter Lewis - who together have donated more than $50 million to Democratic political groups since 2004 - are among scores of donors close to the Obama campaign who remain on the sidelines as PACs that can receive unlimited donations seek to load up before the November election. Their reluctance helps explain why Priorities USA Action, the Super PAC that supports Obama, has struggled to keep fund-raising pace with rival Republican groups that have already spent tens of millions on the presidential race. Many of the Democratic donors are alarmed that PACs, or political action committees, have been focused almost exclusively on spending tens of millions of dollars on ads to attack presidential candidates. Nearly all of that spending has been by Republican-backed groups in the bitter race for that party's nomination – most of it by Restore Our Future, a PAC that supports likely Republican nominee Mitt Romney and has overwhelmed rivals Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich with negative ads. Obama, who opposed a 2010 Supreme Court decision lifting donation limits on PACs that operate independently from campaigns, was reluctant to embrace such groups. He changed course after seeing the cash being amassed on the Republican side and impact of the pro-Romney group's ads. But many wealthy Democrats who would be potential donors to the pro-Obama PAC – including Lewis, chairman of the insurance giant Progressive Corp. – are turned off by the tactics of PACs in the presidential race.
