Sen.-elect Kay Hagan received $199,000 from unions in 2008.

The Greensboro Democrat received donations from 29 political action committees affiliated with labor unions during her run for the Senate, according to federal campaign finance reports.

Top donors included the Teamsters, the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, United Food and Commercial Workers, the International Association of Firefighters and the Communications Workers of America, which each gave $10,000.

She also received significant donations from the AFL-CIO, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the United Transportation Union. 

Change to Win, a federation of unions including the Teamsters, also made robocalls on Hagan's behalf, and the SEIU and the UFCW donated to Majority Action, which ran ads attacking Sen. Elizabeth Dole.

A mailer criticizes U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole on Social Security.

Majority Action, a liberal 527 group, sent a mailer to North Carolina voters criticizing a plan Dole backed in 2002 to allow young workers to invest a portion of their Social Security contributions in personal savings accounts.

"Elizabeth Dole's plan to privatize our Social Security and invest it in the stock market is a real gamble these days," it says.

The mailer shows dice with the Social Security logo on them and the front page of The N&O from a day when the stock market plunged.

"$18.6 billion flows into the North Carolina economy from Social Security each year, supporting nearly 1.6 million residents," it reads inside. "Elizabeth Dole wants to eliminate that guarantee and risk our retirement in the stock market."

A mailer criticizes U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole's record on trade.

The glossy eight-page mailer from Majority Action, a liberal 527 group, argues that free trade agreements like NAFTA and CAFTA have led to losses in North Carolina's manufacturing sector.

"After 43 years in Washington, the only job Elizabeth Dole hasn't done is protect ours," it says. "She's sending North Carolina jobs overseas instead."

Inside, the mailer argues that "China was a Third World country when Dole went to Washington," but it has grown into a manufacturing giant because of free trade.

It also says that Dole voted to give tax breaks to companies that outsource, though it does not list any specific bills to back up its claim.

A national Republican group is airing ads on behalf of U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole.

The ad by the National Republican Senatorial Committee attacks Democratic rival Kay Hagan, playing off the Olympics to show Hagan winning gold medals for "financial irresponsibility" among other things.

Hagan spokeswoman Colleen Flanagan said the ad belies Dole's statements that she wants to run a positive campaign and her appeal to Hagan to avoid third-party ads.

"We just felt from the very beginning that this pledge was completely disingenuous," Flanagan said.

Dole spokesman Hogan Gidley said that Hagan's "shady, ultra-liberal friends" have spent $2.3 million on ads attacking Dole to date. 

The Demcratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, a 527 group called Majority Action and MoveOn.org are airing ads attacking Dole. The U.S. Chamber is running ads for Dole.

Democratic sources say the NRSC is spending about $300,000 on the ad. (Char-O)

George Soros did not "create" Majority Action.

Under the Dome has previously described the billionaire financier as the founder of the 527 organization currently running a TV ad attacking U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole. That is incorrect.

The group was founded in 2005 by Democratic political consultants Mark Longabaugh and Donnie Fowler. It currently is run by Longabaugh and consultants Bill Buck and Meghan Gaffney. 

Initial funding for the group came from the United Food & Commercial Workers Union and the Service Employees International Union as well as wealthy donors such as Texas philanthropist Linda Pritzker, New York apartment manager Adam Rose and Soros.

According to forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service, Soros gave $170,000 in 2006, making him the second largest donor after the SEIU, which gave $300,000. 

Because of Soros' backing, Majority Action has often been lumped in with a number of other 527 organizations that he helped fund in the 2006 cycle.

However, he has not donated to the group since 2006.

Dome regrets the error. 

A royalty relief provision from 2005 has not cost the federal government anything so far.

A recent TV ad attacked U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole for voting for the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which included a provision to allow oil companies to avoid paying royalties for deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

As noted previously, the ad's citation of a "$7 billion" cost estimate for that bill was inaccurate, as the editorial it quoted was referring to royalty relief given in the late 1990s.

But today, the U.S. Department of the Interior told Dome that the royalty relief provisions in the 2005 bill have not cost anything so far because unlike the earlier measures they included price thresholds that kicked in when oil prices rise.

The threshold for 2008 will be around $37 a barrel, but oil is currently selling for around $112.

Walter Cruickshank, the deputy director of the Minerals Management Service, said that the 2005 royalty relief will not really affect the federal budget or oil companies.

"As a practical matter, (it will cost) probably nothing," he said.

Majority Action, a liberal 527 group created by two Democratic political consultants, is running a TV ad attacking U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole's record on oil issues.

What it says: The ad flashes corporate logos as ominous music plays and a narrator talks about Dole's record. "Chevron, $18.7 billion. BP, $20.8 billion. ExxonMobil, $40.6 billion. Big oil companies are making billions at our expense. And where has Elizabeth Dole been? In Washington, taking over a quarter-million in campaign cash from Big Oil and voting to give them billions more in tax breaks. Tell Elizabeth Dole we need lower fuel costs, not billions for big oil." Text on the screen reproduces phrases from two news articles: "Big Oil's Big Windfall ... a minimum of $7 billion and as much as $28 billion" and "$2.6 billion for oil and gas industries."

The background: Oil companies drilling on federal land typically pay a royalty fee.

In 1995, Congress created a royalty relief program for oil companies to spur production in the Gulf of Mexico. Waivers granted between then and 2000 added up to at least $7 billion in lost revenue for the federal government.

Dole was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2002.

As part of an omnibus energy bill in 2005, Congress extended some of the royalty relief provisions by another five years, but it cost far less than the previous measure. Dole voted for that bill.

Though an exact figure is not available, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the extensions and several other provisions in the 2005 bill would cost the federal government about $200 million over the following five years.

(Update: The U.S. Department of the Interior says it has so far cost the goverment nothing.)

Apart from royalty relief, the 2005 energy bill included $2.6 billion in tax cuts for oil and gas companies, but it also included $2.9 billion in tax hikes — a net tax increase for the industry.

Congressional budget analysts say they do not consider the royalty relief program to be a "tax break," although it has a similar effect on the federal budget.

Dole has received $266,456 in campaign contributions from people associated with the oil and gas industry since 2002 and another $35,000 from oil and gas companies' political action committees, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Bill Buck, executive director of Majority Action, defended the ad, but did not offer any other specifics.

"We assert that Senator Dole voted for billions in tax cuts for the oil industry because it is true," he said in an e-mail to Dome.

Is the ad accurate? In large part, no. The ad does not back up its claim that Dole has given "billions ... in tax breaks" to oil companies. The $7 billion figure cited is wildly inaccurate, since it refers to legislation from before Dole's time in the Senate and is not even properly termed a "tax break." The $2.6 billion figure is also misleading, since it leaves out the offsetting tax hikes in that bill.

Correction: An earlier version of the post incorrectly described its founders.

Royalty relief is not a tax break.

A recent TV ad attacking U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole argues that she has voted to give oil companies "billions ... in tax breaks."

But experts say that one of the measures cited in the ad is not exactly a "tax break."

The ad refers to the 2005 energy bill, which included extensions of a measure to allow oil companies to avoid paying the standard 12 percent royalty when drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

Erich Pica, a researcher on oil issues for the Friends of the Earth, is not a fan of royalty relief, but he says he would not classify it as a "tax break" either.

"I tend to be very specific when I'm talking about tax breaks versus general subsidies," he said. "I consider (royalty relief) more of a subsidy," he said.

Taxes are levied on all corporations or individuals based on their activities, while a royalty is a specific charge for the use of a government resource.

Mark Holt, author of a Congressional Research Service report on the energy bill, said he did not consider royalty relief to be a tax break in his analysis.

The Congressional Research Service is basically the federal government's think tank.

As a legislative branch agency within the Library of Congress, the service writes reports on the effects of different bills for members of Congress, their committees and staff.

In a March 8, 2006, report on the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the research service concluded that the bill would actually lead to a tax increase for oil companies:

The $2.9 billion in energy tax increases, which increase the tax burden of U.S. refineries, offsets the $2.6 billion in tax cuts for the oil and gas industry as a whole. In fact, focusing only on refineries, their $2.9 billion in tax increases far outweigh the $400 million of tax cuts provided by the act (over 11 years).

A recent TV ad by Majority Action criticized U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole for voting for the act.

It is not clear whether the report includes the royalty relief in its calculations.

Majority Action has revisited an earlier claim about the 2005 energy bill.

In a radio ad over the Fourth of July weekend, the liberal 527 organization attacked U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole for voting for the bill.

And in a new TV ad that began airing today, the group again repeated its claim that Dole has voted to give "big oil companies" billions in tax breaks. Text in the ad cites the energy bill.

As we noted the first time, that charge is misleading.

As the nonpartisan FactCheck.org has reported, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 included tax cuts of about $2.6 billion for oil and gas companies, but it also included tax hikes worth about $2.9 billion, for a net increase of nearly $300 million over 11 years.

"The breaks that the oil and gas industry received were more than offset by tax increases contained in the same measure," FactCheck.org noted.