The group behind the Republican takeover.

• Author: DiNovella, Elizabeth
• Position: Republican State Leadership Committee

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YOU MAY HAVE HEARD ABOUT e American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which helps Republicans draft bills in statehouses. (We reported on the group last month.) But you've probably not heard of the Republican State Leadership Committee, which gets them elected in the first place.

This little-known group, formed in 2002, is the only national organization that focuses on electing Republican majorities to state legislatures. It has been active in forty-six states and has spent tens of millions of dollars. Based in Alexandria, Virginia, the committee targets legislative chambers--from Maine to Wisconsin--where there is a chance for control to change hands.

The group played a decisive role in the 2010 elections, and helped flip twenty state legislative chambers from Democrat to Republican. Republicans now control more state legislatures than at any time since 1928.

The committee's main tactic was to barrage the public airwaves with negative ads, much of it done at the tail end of the campaign season. GOP stalwarts such as Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie aggressively executed the battle plans through their consulting firms.

"We've had hard-fought campaigns before, but we've never seen out-of-state money drop a negativity bomb in so many races," says Ann Luther, who sits on the board of Maine Citizens for Clean Elections. "It was shocking."

Able to raise unlimited funds, the Republican State Leadership Committee is a stalking horse for corporate America. Top contributors to the group include Altria (formerly Philip Morris), Anheuser-Busch, Citigroup, Comcast Cable, Exxon Mobil, Home Depot, Monsanto, PhRMA, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Verizon, and WellPoint.

The Republican State Leadership Committee played a pivotal role in Wisconsin, enabling Republicans to flip both houses of the state legislature and the governorship from Democrat to Republican last November. The group bet big---and won big--even though it was the first time it spent money on legislative races in the state. It dropped almost one million dollars in five races, and won four of the seats.

The group had originally registered as a political action committee in Wisconsin in 2009. But it ended the PAC after the January 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United and formed as a corporation making independent disbursements.

In 2010, the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board created rule 1.91, which required independent groups to file reports on political campaign spending.

"1.91 was a rule to basically, in the wake of Citizens United, say that a corporation had to register and report information," says Reid...