Stephen Colbert's super PAC is in a position to continue buying ads during the election. Colbert super PAC now has $815K

Comedy Central satirist Stephen Colbert’s super PAC has over $800,000 in the bank after raising $219,000 last month, almost entirely from small donors, and – just like a regular political committee – spent most of its cash on fundraising and consulting.

Colbert started his super PAC, technically called Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Inc., as part of an ongoing gag on his late-night faux news show highlighting the impact of a pair of 2010 federal court rulings that led to the creation of super PACs and allowed them to accept unlimited contributions from corporations, unions and individuals.


But, despite Colbert’s shtick, his super PAC did not receive a single contribution in January that exceeded the $5,000 limit on regular political action committees, according to a report filed Thursday morning with the Federal Election Commission. And the PAC only reported one corporate contribution: a $250 donation from a New York City gourmet foods market called Kashkaval Foods LTD – not exactly General Electric.

The super PAC report was filed only hours after Comedy Central suspended production of the popular show on which Colbert plays a blowhard conservative pundit character modeled partly after Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly. Comedy Central told POLITICO that production would resume next week, and did not offer an explanation for the interruption.

The super PAC, which Colbert jokingly transferred to fellow Comedy Central host Jon Stewart last month to allow Colbert to mount a gag presidential campaign in South Carolina, paid to produce and air a pair of ads in the run-up to that state’s GOP primary.

The super PAC ended last month with $815,000 in the bank – seemingly positioning it to shell out big bucks for ads as the presidential campaign progresses.

Its Thursday report shows that it paid $34,000 in January for media consulting, as well as $14,000 for finance consulting to a well-known Alexandria, Va., GOP firm run by Becki Donatelli, a veteran of the GOP presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and John McCain.

The firm of Trevor Potter, the former FEC chairman and McCain lawyer who has appeared on Colbert’s show to advise him on election rules, was paid $17,000, while the super PAC also paid $3,500 to the Marist Institute for Public Opinion for polling.