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February 22, 2012
ShareGOP super PACs have more cash than top candidates’ campaigns
The groups are growing more powerful than the contenders they support.
By Jack Gillum
Associated Press
Associated Press
Posted: Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2012
Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich’s campaign is supported by the political action committee Winning Our Future, which is financially backed in large part by Sheldon Adelson and his wife. Evan Vucci – AP
WASHINGTON An unmistakable dynamic is playing out in the money game among Republican presidential candidates: New super political action committees are growing more powerful than the campaigns they support.
For two of the GOP front-runners, their supportive super PACs raised more money and have more cash left in the bank than the candidates’ own campaigns. Helping their efforts are major financial gifts from wealthy business executives, whose contributions can be essential to the groups’ continued operations.
The Mitt Romney-leaning Restore Our Future and Newt Gingrich-supportive Winning Our Future raised a combined $17 million last month and spent nearly $24 million during the period. That financial strength allowed the groups to splash the airwaves in key primary states with millions of dollars in TV ads.
The proliferation of new super PACs continues to underscore how the groups, which can raise and spend unlimited sums, are influencing the race.
The groups were made possible under a 2010 Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case. The super PACs must legally remain independent from the candidates they support, but many are staffed with former campaign aides who have intimate knowledge of the campaigns’ strategies. Their fundraising last month provides a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the identities of the rich supporters who will help elect the next president, along with details on how the millions of dollars they donated have been spent.
Restore Our Future, which had $16 million cash on hand, has been boosted by more than two dozen repeat donors. Winning Our Future, which had $2.4 million in the bank, is largely supported by casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and his wife.
Meanwhile, Romney raised $6.5 million last month and had $7.7 million left for his presidential bid, while Gingrich’s presidential campaign raised $5.5 million during the period and had about $1.8 million in cash remaining.
The super PACs, as well as other groups supporting other candidates and the individual campaigns, were required to disclose their fundraising and the identities of their donors in reports filed with the Federal Election Commission by midnight Monday. Those reports also provided a snapshot of fundraising for President Barack Obama’s early campaign and for Republican candidates as they battled during important primary elections in January.
During the month, GOP candidates Gingrich and Rick Santorum had briefly surged ahead of Romney but trailed the former Massachusetts governor in fundraising. Since then, Santorum has climbed remarkably in polls while Gingrich’s support has eroded just as stunningly after his disappointing showing in Florida’s primary.
Restore Our Future has been a boon for Romney, who has benefited greatly from the group’s TV ads attacking Gingrich in particular. Such ads were paid for thanks to the financial help of repeat donors, including Marriott International Chairman J.W. Marriott Jr., who has given the super PAC $750,000 to date.
The super PAC also reported new donors, including Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman. Romney mentored Whitman, a recent unsuccessful candidate for California governor, during the 1980s at Boston-based Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney headed. Whitman’s $100,000 check came days after she joined Romney at a victory celebration in New Hampshire.
Restore Our Future counted on support from at least 30 repeat donors who, along with new contributors, gave a combined $6.6 million in January, according to a review of the reports by The Associated Press.
Meanwhile, Winning Our Future’s $11 million in contributions during the same period came almost exclusively from Adelson, a friend of Gingrich’s and a staunch supporter of Israel. Adelson and his wife, Miriam, each gave $5 million to the super PAC in January – a move that helped keep Gingrich’s struggling campaign alive.
For two of the GOP front-runners, their supportive super PACs raised more money and have more cash left in the bank than the candidates’ own campaigns. Helping their efforts are major financial gifts from wealthy business executives, whose contributions can be essential to the groups’ continued operations.
The Mitt Romney-leaning Restore Our Future and Newt Gingrich-supportive Winning Our Future raised a combined $17 million last month and spent nearly $24 million during the period. That financial strength allowed the groups to splash the airwaves in key primary states with millions of dollars in TV ads.
The proliferation of new super PACs continues to underscore how the groups, which can raise and spend unlimited sums, are influencing the race.
The groups were made possible under a 2010 Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case. The super PACs must legally remain independent from the candidates they support, but many are staffed with former campaign aides who have intimate knowledge of the campaigns’ strategies. Their fundraising last month provides a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the identities of the rich supporters who will help elect the next president, along with details on how the millions of dollars they donated have been spent.
Restore Our Future, which had $16 million cash on hand, has been boosted by more than two dozen repeat donors. Winning Our Future, which had $2.4 million in the bank, is largely supported by casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and his wife.
Meanwhile, Romney raised $6.5 million last month and had $7.7 million left for his presidential bid, while Gingrich’s presidential campaign raised $5.5 million during the period and had about $1.8 million in cash remaining.
The super PACs, as well as other groups supporting other candidates and the individual campaigns, were required to disclose their fundraising and the identities of their donors in reports filed with the Federal Election Commission by midnight Monday. Those reports also provided a snapshot of fundraising for President Barack Obama’s early campaign and for Republican candidates as they battled during important primary elections in January.
During the month, GOP candidates Gingrich and Rick Santorum had briefly surged ahead of Romney but trailed the former Massachusetts governor in fundraising. Since then, Santorum has climbed remarkably in polls while Gingrich’s support has eroded just as stunningly after his disappointing showing in Florida’s primary.
Restore Our Future has been a boon for Romney, who has benefited greatly from the group’s TV ads attacking Gingrich in particular. Such ads were paid for thanks to the financial help of repeat donors, including Marriott International Chairman J.W. Marriott Jr., who has given the super PAC $750,000 to date.
The super PAC also reported new donors, including Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman. Romney mentored Whitman, a recent unsuccessful candidate for California governor, during the 1980s at Boston-based Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney headed. Whitman’s $100,000 check came days after she joined Romney at a victory celebration in New Hampshire.
Restore Our Future counted on support from at least 30 repeat donors who, along with new contributors, gave a combined $6.6 million in January, according to a review of the reports by The Associated Press.
Meanwhile, Winning Our Future’s $11 million in contributions during the same period came almost exclusively from Adelson, a friend of Gingrich’s and a staunch supporter of Israel. Adelson and his wife, Miriam, each gave $5 million to the super PAC in January – a move that helped keep Gingrich’s struggling campaign alive.
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Sid HarthWho says rich (Reoublican, who else?) like power? They can afford to buy it. At any price. Go. (Rich) Republican spend the money. More money in the economy, means more jobs. That helps Obama too. Obama wishes all (Rich) Republicans major good times.
One job that (Rch) Republican cannot buy. CIC.
…and I am Sid Harth@arabuhuru.org
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Super PAC donors revealed: Who are the power players in the GOP primary?
By Dan Eggen and T.W. Farnam, Published: February 21
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An unmistakable dynamic is playing out in the money game among Republican presidential candidates: New “super” political action committees are growing more powerful than the campaigns they support. (Feb. 20)
In January, just five donors gave a total of $19 million, a quarter of the money raised for the presidential race that month, according to a Washington Post analysis of new contribution data filed this week. Overall, 23 people have directed about $54 million to super PACs this cycle, helping to bankroll a tide of negative ads in primary-contest states.
The dominance of a handful of well-to-do donors has suddenly reshaped campaign finance, but it could also pose a political risk to candidates in both parties at a time of economic distress, particularly as President Obama and his Republican rivals debate issues relating to tax fairness and income inequality ahead of the November election.
“I’m against very wealthy people attempting to or influencing elections,” casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who is funding a pro-
Gingrich super PAC, said in an interview published this week in Forbes magazine. “But as long as it’s doable, I’m going to do it.”
The biggest super PAC donors represent a cross section of the nation’s elite, from financiers backing Romney — such as hedge fund kings John Paulson and Julian Robertson — to ideologically driven contributors such as Adelson, who has said he supports Gingrich because of his hawkish views on Israel.
Many of the big donors don’t confine themselves to a single gift or group, returning to their checkbooks again and again.
PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel wrote four checks in December and January totaling $2.6 million to Endorse Liberty, a super PAC running ads on behalf of Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.), records show. Thiel, an iconoclastic former chess master who studied philosophy at Stanford University, has long backed libertarian causes and runs a San Francisco venture-capital firm.
“Men and women who want freedom and growth should take action,” Thiel said in a recent statement. “A good place to start is voting for Ron Paul.”
Another big check writer is Foster Friess, a Wyoming investor and evangelical Christian who has emerged as an enthusiastic and — for the cloistered world of top political donors — unusually talkative supporter of former senator Rick Santorum (Pa.). Friess’s volubility caused Santorum some trouble last week, when he made an ill-advised joke on television equating birth control to an aspirin held between a woman’s knees.
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- Super PACs: 2012′s campaign Godzillas
Super PACs: 2012′s campaign Godzillas
Wealthy individuals and corporate entities have been pouring money into super PACs. | Reuters
Wealthy individuals and some corporate entities have responded in some cases by pouring hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars into the super PACs.
All the while, the candidates must continue to adhere to strict fundraising limits, prompting Romney to gripe in December that “we really ought to let campaigns raise the money they need and just get rid of these super PACs.”
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The main super PAC supporting his reelection, Priorities USA Action, which is run by former Obama aides Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney — raised less than $59,000 in January.
Consider, now, that the GOP-supporting, Karl Rove-backed American Crossroads super PAC generated about $5 million last month — a crisp $100 for every $1.16 Priorities USA Action raised.
American Crossroads also boasts a cash reserve 20 times larger than that of Priorities USA Action.
Perhaps it’s no wonder, then, why Obama earlier this month personally blessed the work of the moribund super PAC, freeing campaign staff and Cabinet officials to aid it.
Obama’s decision also reflects a truth, for better or worse, about the nation’s new campaign finance rules: Even the free world’s leader couldn’t resist playing by them, no matter how politically unpalatable he finds them to be.
And Obama’s acceptance of Priorities USA Action will all but assuredly pay him cash dividends and buy parity with other super PACs, even if it cost him a self-styled perch on the campaign finance landscape’s high ground.
All the while, the candidates must continue to adhere to strict fundraising limits, prompting Romney to gripe in December that “we really ought to let campaigns raise the money they need and just get rid of these super PACs.”
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But without the Restore Our Future super PAC, which is run by former Romney staffers, Romney would have missed out on more than $20.5 million worth of independent political expenditures that to date have almost exclusively skewered Gingrich, and lately, Santorum.
Compared with his Republican rivals, however, President Barack Obama is dogged by an entirely different super PAC concern.The main super PAC supporting his reelection, Priorities USA Action, which is run by former Obama aides Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney — raised less than $59,000 in January.
Consider, now, that the GOP-supporting, Karl Rove-backed American Crossroads super PAC generated about $5 million last month — a crisp $100 for every $1.16 Priorities USA Action raised.
American Crossroads also boasts a cash reserve 20 times larger than that of Priorities USA Action.
Perhaps it’s no wonder, then, why Obama earlier this month personally blessed the work of the moribund super PAC, freeing campaign staff and Cabinet officials to aid it.
Obama’s decision also reflects a truth, for better or worse, about the nation’s new campaign finance rules: Even the free world’s leader couldn’t resist playing by them, no matter how politically unpalatable he finds them to be.
And Obama’s acceptance of Priorities USA Action will all but assuredly pay him cash dividends and buy parity with other super PACs, even if it cost him a self-styled perch on the campaign finance landscape’s high ground.
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Santorum ‘super’ PAC returned big foreign donation
By STEPHEN BRAUN, Associated Press – 16 hours agoWASHINGTON (AP) — A super political action committee supporting Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum has refunded a $50,000 donation from a London-based securities firm.
A spokesman for the group said Tuesday that the action was taken because the contribution could have violated a U.S. law that guards against foreign money in American political campaigns.
The donation returned last month was the first acknowledged evidence of foreign money surfacing in the 2012 presidential race. The concern has worried political observers following a landmark 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision that removed restrictions on corporate and individual donations to political committees supporting presidential candidates.
Stuart Roy, the spokesman for the Red, White and Blue super PAC, said the $50,000 donation made in January by Liquid Capital Markets Ltd. originated with an American executive at the firm. The money was returned, Roy said, because the donation was mistakenly drawn from the foreign firm’s accounts.
Under U.S. law, foreign corporations, individuals and governments have been prohibited since 1966 from providing funds for national elections — a ban the Supreme Court upheld earlier this year.
But the court’s earlier ruling in the case of Citizens United enabled U.S. corporations and other well-financed donors to give money to political committees that avoid direct coordination with individual campaigns. Later rulings gave these super PACs more latitude by allowing donors to make unlimited donations with minimal disclosure, which spurred alarm about hidden donations from foreign sources.
The Associated Press reported less than two weeks ago, before the disclosure about the $50,000 refund, on growing concerns among election law experts about the prospect of illegal foreign donations because of the massive amounts of money flowing to the super PACs and lax oversight of disclosure. One Federal Election Commission member, Cynthia L. Bauerly, warned of the potential for circumventing existing rules.
Roy said the $50,000 donation was proposed by an American executive at Liquid Capital Markets in London. Roy said the executive informed super PAC officials he intended to make the donation then mistakenly provided the money from the firm’s accounts — which would have violated the ban on foreign money.
Red, White and Blue’s officials noticed the discrepancy and quickly returned the donation, Roy said.
“We had spoken to one of the executives there who’s an American citizen,” he said. “But instead of sending the money himself, he sent it from the company.”
Roy did not identify the executive, but Liquid Capital Market’s website describes its CEO, Chris Siepman, and his brother, Gregg Siepman, a co-founder of the company, as Americans. There was no immediate response to attempts by the AP to reach Chris Siepman or other Liquid Capital officials.
Associated Press writer Gregory Katz in London contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Democratic senators want super PAC crackdown
Al Franken is one of 10 Senate Democrats calling for super PACs to be more transparent. | AP Photo
By ROBIN BRAVENDER | 2/21/12 5:19 PM EST
Senate Democrats are calling on the Federal Election Commission to crack down on super PACs, arguing that voters deserve more information about who is funding independent political advertisements.
Eleven Democrats on Tuesday sent a letter to FEC Chairwoman Caroline Hunter urging the commission to enact broad disclosure and disclaimer rules in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision that struck down limits on corporate and union contributions to the outside groups.
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Signatories included Democratic Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), Al Franken (Minn.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Tom Udall (N.M.), Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Michael Bennet (Colo.), Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), Barbara Boxer (Calif.), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), and Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Super PACs are required under campaign finance laws to disclose their donors throughout the campaign cycle. But reform advocates argue that loopholes in disclosure requirements hinder donor transparency.
Some donors can remain anonymous by giving to non-profit corporations known as 501(c)(4) groups that aren’t required to reveal their donor lists, but those groups can then donate to super PACs. For example, the Karl Rove-linked super PAC American Crossroads and the Democratic super PAC Priorities USA Action both have related nonprofit arms that aren’t required to release their donors.
Seven of the same Democrats wrote another letter last week to the Internal Revenue Service, asking the agency to investigate — or acknowledge that it’s currently investigating — such nonprofit group’s political activities so far this election cycle.
Eleven Democrats on Tuesday sent a letter to FEC Chairwoman Caroline Hunter urging the commission to enact broad disclosure and disclaimer rules in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision that struck down limits on corporate and union contributions to the outside groups.
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The letter comes a day after super PACs reported hauling in tens of millions of dollars in January alone, with much of that cash raised by groups that support GOP presidential candidates and conservative causes.
“While the First Amendment guarantees the right of free speech, we must be sure that the corporate structure does not obscure the speaker,” the senators wrote. “This is why we believe that the identity of individual contributors should also be disclosed when they make substantial donations to organizations financing independent expenditures.”Signatories included Democratic Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), Al Franken (Minn.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Tom Udall (N.M.), Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Michael Bennet (Colo.), Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), Barbara Boxer (Calif.), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), and Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Super PACs are required under campaign finance laws to disclose their donors throughout the campaign cycle. But reform advocates argue that loopholes in disclosure requirements hinder donor transparency.
Some donors can remain anonymous by giving to non-profit corporations known as 501(c)(4) groups that aren’t required to reveal their donor lists, but those groups can then donate to super PACs. For example, the Karl Rove-linked super PAC American Crossroads and the Democratic super PAC Priorities USA Action both have related nonprofit arms that aren’t required to release their donors.
Seven of the same Democrats wrote another letter last week to the Internal Revenue Service, asking the agency to investigate — or acknowledge that it’s currently investigating — such nonprofit group’s political activities so far this election cycle.
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UPDATE 1-Paltry fundraising by Obama “Super PAC” prompted new strategy
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Tue Feb 21, 2012 4:02pm EST
* Priorities USA January fundraising supported by one primary donor* Obama campaign manager raised concerns about PAC money in January
* Priorities’ strategist says donor enthusiasm lifted in February (Updates with Democratic official’s comment, paragraphs 10-11)
By Jeff Mason
WASHINGTON, Feb 21 (Reuters) – In early January, President Barack Obama’s campaign manager Jim Messina called David Axelrod, the president’s top strategist, into his Chicago office and started writing on a white board.
On one side of the board, Messina sketched out the amounts of money he expected Republican “Super PACs” and other groups to raise and spend to try to defeat the Democratic president in the Nov. 6 election.
Drawing a line under that cumulative number — roughly $700 million — Messina then highlighted the amount raised by the Republican groups’ Democratic counterparts. It was a measly figure.
“We’ve got to talk about this. This is a problem,” Messina told Axelrod, according to a campaign official.
Roughly a month later, on Feb. 6, the Obama campaign announced it would start supporting Priorities USA Action, the struggling Super PAC formed to help Obama. The move reversed a position rooted in Obama’s distaste for the Supreme Court decision that allowed such independent groups to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to try to influence elections.
If there were any lingering questions about why Obama’s campaign changed course, they were answered late on Monday.
Priorities USA raised a paltry $59,000 in January, Federal Election Commission filings showed, and that amount came almost entirely from one longtime Obama supporter, John W. Rogers, who donated $50,000.
The disappointing figures were a sharp contrast with the tens of millions of dollars raised by the political action committees, or PACs, that support Republican presidential candidates.
The results reinforced concerns among Obama’s advisers that despite his campaign’s fundraising strength, Republican PACs could help the opposition outspend the president’s re-election efforts this year.
A campaign spokesman declined to comment about the Priorities USA figures, but one Democratic official familiar with Super PACs said January was a rough month to fundraise because Democrats did not have a nominating battle.
“You have to look at it in context,” the official said. “If you don’t have a primary, if you don’t have a caucus, if there isn’t an urgency there … people don’t really start getting engaged again until the middle of January.”
ENTHUSIASM RISING?
On Feb. 6, Messina announced that Obama campaign and White House officials would start appearing at Priorities USA events, though they would not directly solicit contributions.
However, Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, would not participate in the Super PAC events.
Greater involvement by the campaign and the White House has made a difference in donor enthusiasm, said Bill Burton, a former White House official who helped found Priorities USA and is a senior strategist for the group.
“Interest and enthusiasm has increased significantly since the announcement,” he said in an email.
Despite the PAC’s financial weakness, the Obama campaign itself is still a fundraising juggernaut, raising $29.1 million in January along with the Democratic National Committee and other allies. It is expected to raise at least as much for the president’s re-election as the $750 million it collected in the 2008 presidential race.
But there are limits to how much the campaign can take in from big donors.
Individual donations to campaigns are limited to $2,500 during the primary season and another $2,500 for the fall general campaign. Because of the 2010 Supreme Court ruling that banned limits on fundraising and spending by independent political groups, Super PACs have no such limit on donations.
Obama opposed that ruling, which erased longstanding limits on corporate and union money in federal elections.
Obama “believes that this is an unhealthy development in our political process, but it is a reality of the rules as they stand,” Axelrod said in an interview.
“This was not a quick decision, but he also feels a responsibility to win this election,” Axelrod added. “There’s a lot hanging on this beyond him.”
Priorities USA had raised just $4.2 million by the end of January, only a fraction of that raised by Restore Our Future, the group supporting Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney, which had raised $36.8 million by the end of last month.
The figures showed Priorities USA had $1.3 million in cash on hand at the end of January and no debt.
The PAC’s incoming contributions in January averaged less than $2,000 a day. Without Rogers’ $50,000 donation on Jan. 17, the group would have pulled in less than $10,000 last month.
For full campaign coverage click on (Additional reporting by Alexander Cohen; Editing by Jackie Frank)
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Comments (3)
AlDorman wrote:
C’mon Reuters, we expect a bit more from you. This is patent political theatre, since we know that Wall St. is backing Obama and he can expect $1B.
Feb 21, 2012 4:55pm EST – Report as abuse
GalacticCat wrote:
Doesn’t this money thing make you sick . How can you trust politicians who are beholding to $$$$$dollar bills. ???
Feb 21, 2012 5:03pm EST – Report as abuse
GalacticCat wrote:
Doesn’t this money thing make you sick . How can you trust politicians who are beholding to $$$$$dollar bills. ???
Feb 21, 2012 5:03pm EST – Report as abuse
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When it comes to big money in politics, Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons’ influence has long been apparent in Texas, where he has plowed more than $1 million into Rick Perry‘s gubernatorial campaigns.
Now Simmons has found a new outlet for his outsize political giving — the explosion this election cycle of “super PACs,” independent political organizations that can accept massive contributions to influence the presidential race and other federal elections.
Simmons and his privately held holding company, Contran Corp., dumped $8.6 million into a series of GOP-allied super PACs last year, according to campaign finance records released late Tuesday night. That propels Simmons into the top tier of a newly minted millionaires’ club — super-rich individuals who are using their personal and corporate wealth to influence American politics in an unprecedented manner.
Seventeen people or companies gave at least $1 million each to super PACs last year, according to an analysis by the Los Angeles Times data desk. The infusion ushered in an era of Texas-style unlimited donations at the national level. The organizations have emerged as heavyweights in this year’s presidential contest, at times outstripping the influence of the candidates’ own campaigns.
That’s the case with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, whose presidential bid has been kept afloat by Winning Our Future, a super PAC that has received $11 million from Las Vegas Sands Chief Executive Sheldon Adelson and his family.
The Adelsons gave the funds with no strings attached and no specific expectations, because Gingrich “is an old friend in a time of need,” said one person close to the couple. It’s wealthy individuals like the Adelsons who are largely powering these new organizations — not major corporations, as many critics on the left had warned. But because companies are probably giving to tax-exempt organizations that do not have to reveal their donors, it is impossible to get a full picture of their influence.
Many members of the millionaires’ club have, like Adelson, long been generous political donors and fundraisers. Simmons, Houston home builder Bob Perry and Dallas real estate magnate Harlan Crow are among a group of wealthy Texans that helped finance the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, an outside group that during the 2004 campaign attacked Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry’s war record. They and their companies are now backing American Crossroads, the biggest Republican super PAC, which aims to spend $240 million this cycle.
In 2010, Robert Mercer, manager of the New York hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, gave $640,000 to a super PAC that tried unsuccessfully to defeat Democratic Rep. Peter A. DeFazio of Oregon, a vocal Wall Street critic. Last year, Mercer was among 10 individuals or companies writing $1-million checks to Restore Our Future, a pro-Mitt Romney super PAC.
Seven-figure contributions were rarer on the Democratic side, whose super PACs have not yet matched the fundraising of their GOP counterparts. One of the few contributions that large came from DreamWorks Animation Chief Executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, who gave $2 million in May to Priorities USA Action, a super PAC supporting President Obama.
The left relies in this cycle — as it has in the past — on the muscular role of organized labor in funding ads and turning out its members. In this election, the unions are also filling the coffers of new super PACs. The Service Employees International Union, which represents 2 million workers, gave nearly $1.6 million to Democratic-leaning super PACs in 2011. All told, SEIU is expected to spend about $85 million on political activity, equal to the record amount the union dedicated to the 2008 presidential election.
Super PACs sprang up as a result of a series of court decisions in 2010, including the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, which freed corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts on political activity. That decision has been heatedly decried by campaign finance reform advocates and many Democrats, including Obama, who has warned it will lead to a flood of unregulated corporate cash in politics.
It is difficult to determine exactly how much corporate money is in the system, since many of the outside groups are organized as nonprofits, allowing them to keep their donors secret. While American Crossroads, co-founded by GOP political strategist Karl Rove, reported the donors that gave it $18.4 million last year, its nonprofit affiliate, Crossroads GPS, raised an additional $32.6 million from undisclosed contributors.
The latest campaign finance records reveal that dozens of private companies, hedge funds and business partnerships contributed to super PACs last year. But in an initial review of the filings, Chesapeake Energy, a natural gas producer based in Oklahoma City, appears to be the only publicly traded company that gave money, making a $250,000 donation to a super PAC backing Rick Perry’s since-suspended presidential bid.
Chesapeake did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The paucity of well-known corporate names among the disclosures doesn’t mean that leading businesses won’t be involved in electoral politics this presidential cycle, according to top corporate lobbyists in Washington.
Major companies are expected to fuel record political activity at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which plans to spend at least $50 million on congressional races this year. The chamber, which does not disclose its donors, disputed the amount.
Although many of the nation’s leading CEOs are eager to participate in this year’s election, they largely plan to steer clear of super PACs because of the disclosure requirements.
“I think the Target experience makes them gun-shy,” said Scott Talbott, chief lobbyist for the Financial Services Roundtable, referring to a national boycott against the retail chain in 2010 after it donated to a political group backing a conservative Republican gubernatorial candidate in Minnesota who had made negative statements about gay and lesbian rights.
Simmons, a buyout investor who controls a stable of companies that produce metals and chemicals, has never been hesitant about using his fortune to promote his brand of conservative politics. He gave $3 million to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004 and helped finance a nonprofit group in 2008 that spent $2.9 million on ads attacking Obama’s ties to William Ayers, a former member of the 1960s-era Weather Underground.
Simmons has poured $1.1 million into Perry’s campaigns, making him the second-largest individual donor to the Texas governor. Under Perry’s administration, one of Simmons’ companies, Waste Control Specialists, received permission to build the first new low-level radioactive waste disposal site in the country in three decades in an isolated patch of West Texas, despite objections from some state environmental agency staffers.
Simmons now has even more wealth at his disposal: In the last year, his net worth ballooned to roughly $9.6 billion, largely because the stock of Valhi, a chemicals conglomerate he controls, rose 170%, Forbes reported in December.
In the last year, he gave $1.1 million to two super PACs backing Perry’s presidential bid, along with $500,000 to Winning Our Future, the pro-Gingrich super PAC. In the fall, he donated $5 million to American Crossroads, while Contran gave $2 million.
“Mr. Simmons is a passionate conservative, and he has been for quite some time,” said his spokesman, Chuck McDonald, who described Simmons as “pro-business” and a supporter of tort reform.
But Simmons is not pursuing a specific policy agenda with his donations, McDonald said.
“I know people want to think he is,” he said. “He is a man who has a lot of personal wealth and believes in conservative ideology, and that’s where he puts his money.”
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Tags: campaign finance, Congress, Crossroads, finance reform, First Amendment, Karl Rove, lobbying, Obama, PAC money, politics, Super PAC, Supreme Court, The Best Government Money Can Buy?, US Chamber of Commerce
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Tags: campaign finance, finance reform, First Amendment, PAC money, politics, Super PAC, Supreme Court, The Best Government Money Can Buy?
Trevor Potter is an unlikely repeat guest for a late-night comedy show. As the former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, the courtly Washington lawyer is a leading expert on campaign finance law — not the kind of material that generates a lot of laughs.
So the fact that he’s appeared seven times on “The Colbert Report” in the last year, helping host Stephen Colbert set up his own “super PAC” as part of a mischievous political parody, underscores an unexpected development in the 2012 presidential race:
Super PACs have seized the zeitgeist.
An indirect outgrowth of the Supreme Court ruling in the 2010 Citizens United case, the independent political groups have mushroomed in the last year. They are now dominating not just the action in key primary states such as South Carolina, but the political conversation. In the last month, the number of Google searches for the term “super PAC” was about five times higher than the last year’s monthly average.
Spending by such organizations has exceeded $27 million already this year, according to the FEC, much of it going to biting television ads. Pummeled by super PACs aligned with their rivals, the Republican presidential contenders are now loudly denouncing their influence.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said in recent days that all of the candidates wished the outside organizations would disappear and that their outsized sway was “a very bad idea.”
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was forced to disavow an error-riddled documentary aired by a super PAC run by his former aides, while he and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum have had to defend themselves against attacks by Restore Our Future, a pro-Romney super PAC. At a campaign stop in Columbia, S.C., this week, Santorum accused Romney of sending “his henchmen” to spread disinformation.
The complaints mark a sharp turnabout for Republicans, who had largely heralded the Citizens United decision, which allowed unlimited corporate and union spending on campaigns. (The campaigns themselves remain under strict fundraising limits.)
The candidates are not opposed to unlimited fundraising but, once confronted with how the decision is playing out, have blamed one another, not the court.
“This particular approach, I think, has nothing to do with the Citizens United case,” Gingrich said on MSNBC this month. “It has to do with a bunch of millionaires getting together to run a negative campaign, and Gov. Romney refusing to call them off.”
Most of the major super PACs are run by longtime associates of the candidates, but their ostensible independence allows them access to the unlimited donations. That has led to eye-popping contributions by billionaires such as casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, a Gingrich backer, and mutual fund investor Foster Friess, who supports Santorum. Romney’s super PAC has been fueled in part by former colleagues from Bain Capital.
In South Carolina, super PACs have dropped $6.9 million on TV ads scheduled to run through Saturday’s primary, compared with $5.4 million spent on television by the candidates, according to a campaign source familiar with the buys.
“We have never seen anything like this in terms of the amount of money being raised and spent,” Potter said. “The scale of it is the surprise. They are spending more than the candidates are.”
Critics view the groups as essentially an end-run around campaign contribution limits. Colbert — Potter’s frequent host — highlighted the loopholes in the system last week when he declared his candidacy for “president of the United States of South Carolina.” With a figurative wink, he handed off control of his super PAC to fellow Comedy Central host Jon Stewart, renaming it the Definitely Not Coordinating With Stephen Colbert Super PAC.
The group is running an ad urging South Carolinians to vote for businessman Herman Cain — who dropped out of the race but is still on the ballot — as a proxy show of support for Colbert. Colbert, who is not on the ballot and separately called for the Cain strategy, suggested Tuesday that he and Stewart “have developed some kind of psychic-twin connection, where one feels what the other is experiencing.”
Outside groups played a role in political campaigns before Citizens United – perhaps most famously in 2004, when a group of Vietnam War-era Swift boat veterans financed largely by wealthy Texans ran ads questioning the military service of Democratic nominee Sen. John F. Kerry. But they operated as so-called 527 organizations — politically active tax-exempt groups that could not expressly advocate for the election or the defeat of a candidate. Groups that wanted to be more explicit in their support had to register as political action committees and could only accept donations of up to $5,000.
That changed two years ago, when a federal court of appeals ruled in a case called Speechnow.org vs. FEC that individual contributions to political advocacy groups could not be limited. The court cited the majority opinion in Citizens United, which concluded that independent spending does not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.
After the Speechnow ruling, the FEC created a new category for such political groups, bestowing them with the ungainly handle “independent expenditure-only committees.” A reporter for Roll Call, Eliza Newlin Carney, dubbed them “super PACs” in an early write-up.
Election law attorney Michael Toner said the moniker had increased the spotlight on their activities.
“It’s certainly a cooler name” than 527 organization, Toner said. “‘Super PAC’ — who can’t be intrigued by that?”
David Keating, the president of Speechnow.org, the group that brought the case that triggered the creation of super PACs, is unfazed by the controversy that has raged around their proliferation.
“The 1st Amendment is written to protect speech, and it doesn’t say that everyone is going to have the same-size megaphone,” he said.
He does have one complaint, however: “I think it would have been much better to call them ‘Speechnow PACs.’”
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Tags: campaign finance, Congress, finance reform, First Amendment, lobbying, PAC money, politics, Super PAC, Supreme Court, The Best Government Money Can Buy?
Well-established candidates have always had the edge in fundraising, but under the new rules governing money in politics, it looks as if the rich are just getting richer.The vast majority of the $14 million in spending from “super PACs,” a new type of political group, has been spent on behalf of three candidates: Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman Jr., federal records show. Those are the same three candidates already most reliant on money from large donors. Washington Post
“It’s just proven to be a vehicle for getting around contribution limits,” said Michael Malbin, a scholar at the Campaign Finance Institute, which advocates for regulations encouraging small donors. “It’s made for people who’ve already maxed out.”
Two years after the Supreme Court decided the landmark Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case, it is becoming clear that the super PACs created under the new rules will act as a counterweight to a rise in online grass-roots fundraising. The online efforts, which tend to attract small donations, have been driving unconventional contenders in the GOP field, including Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.) and Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.). (Bachmann dropped out of the race last week after a sixth-place finish in Iowa.)
By contrast, super PACs, because they can pull in donations well above the $2,500 limit on donations to campaigns, are boosting establishment candidates who already rely on rich donors.
The Citizens United decision created a cascade of lower-court rulings, allowing for the creation of super PACs that can accept huge donations from individuals and corporations. Several of the groups active in this year’s race have already accepted many donations over $1 million from one person.
The advantage is likely to grow as the candidates move to the next round of primaries and caucuses, where they will be competing in bigger states and relying more on television advertising to reach voters.
Spending on television ads by groups independent of the campaigns is already five times what it was during the entire Republican primary season four years ago, according to estimates from Kantar Media/CMAG.
Romney has received $5 million in help from the super PAC founded by three former aides from his 2008 bid.
A group aiding Perry has spent $3.8 million on ads backing him, and Huntsman has benefited from $2.5 million worth of ads from a super PAC.
Combined, those three candidates are receiving 80 percent of all super PAC spending.
The super PACs helping Romney and Perry have spent more on television ads than the candidates themselves in recent weeks, according to Kantar’s estimates. Huntsman’s campaign just launched his first ad.
Paul and Bachmann received more than 60 percent of their money from donors giving less than $200. A super PAC helping Paul has spent $735,000 on Internet advertising. And a group that initially announced it was helping Bachmann went on to run $500,000 in ads for Romney.
While Newt Gingrich’s campaign was struggling in the summer, he relied more on smaller donors. As he gained steam, he received help from a super PAC founded by former aides. But the group’s late start appears to have been a problem: It has reported $1 million in spending so far.
Rick Santorum has benefited from about $755,000 in spending from two super PACs backing him.
Just as the Internet allowed candidates to raise money from small donors faster than they had through direct mail, the same is true for super PACs.
“You make a phone call and get a million dollars,” Malbin said.
The new wave of spending has also allowed some candidates to benefit from negative advertising while avoiding the blame for attacking fellow Republicans.
Campaign finance regulations passed by Congress in 2002 have a “stand by your ad” provision requiring candidates to appear on screen stating their approval of the spot. But rules prevent super PACs from coordinating the campaign operations, allowing candidates to say the ads are out of their control.
“It changes the dynamic for candidates who are more reliant on small donors,” said a Paul strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to talk freely. “You have two tiers of candidates: those with super PACs that can have negative messaging without having to take the heat for it, and those who have to do it themselves.”
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Politico: Super PACs echo parodies
Tuesday, February 14th, 2012 The law couldn’t be more clear: campaigns aren’t supposed to communicate strategy or coordinate spending with their super PAC supporters. And all the candidates claim they’re not doing anything wrong — Santorum insists super PACs don’t come up in his chats with Freiss, and representatives for Gingrich, Romney and Obama all say they’re not breaking the rules either.
It looks like they’ll get the last laugh, since there’s no sign of serious legal or technical challenges to the brazen behavior that might force campaigns or super PACs to reverse course before Election Day.
Politico
When it comes to super PACs, it’s getting hard to tell the difference between reality and a Comedy Central bit.
Stephen Colbert made an ongoing gag last month out of lampooning the rules barring coordination between outside groups and campaigns. When he announced a plan to run for president, he made a big show of handing off his super PAC to his fellow Comedy Central host Jon Stewart. Stewart promised not to coordinate with Colbert — giving the camera a wink and a nod.
But it was no joke last week when President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney cleared their top aides to raise cash for the super PACs supporting their campaign.
Meanwhile, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, whose family has pumped $11 million into the super PAC boosting Newt Gingrich’s campaign, sat in on a meeting of the campaign’s national finance committee at one of his Las Vegas hotels this month. He also met privately with both Gingrich and Romney.
And Rick Santorum took the podium at the Conservative Political Action Conference last weekend after a warm introduction from his friend Foster Friess, a Wyoming multimillionaire who’s given hundreds of thousands of dollars to two super PACs credited with Santorum’s surge.
Friess has become part of Santorum’s campaign inner circle, traveling with the candidate on the trail and participating in sensitive conversations about campaign advertising. Santorum told reporters last week that Friess is “someone who I talk to, who gives me plenty of advice on how I say it and what I say.”
The law couldn’t be more clear: campaigns aren’t supposed to communicate strategy or coordinate spending with their super PAC supporters. And all the candidates claim they’re not doing anything wrong — Santorum insists super PACs don’t come up in his chats with Freiss, and representatives for Gingrich, Romney and Obama all say they’re not breaking the rules either.
It looks like they’ll get the last laugh, since there’s no sign of serious legal or technical challenges to the brazen behavior that might force campaigns or super PACs to reverse course before Election Day.
“It sounds to me as if the current – admittedly inadequate – rules are being bent or broken, especially when persons responsible for [super PAC ads] are also traveling with the candidates and/or advising them,” said Trevor Potter, a former Federal Election Commission chairman who was the top lawyer for John McCain’s Republican presidential campaigns, which discouraged outside spending groups.
It’s a bit of life imitating art for Potter, who has been participating in the ongoing Colbert-Stewart gag on their late-night shows. Colbert’s faux pundit character has talked about the “loopchasms” in the coordination restrictions and it’s not hard to imagine him devising a scenario like the Friess-Santorum talks.
While the coordination ban has been in effect for years, it’s gotten a lot more attention since a pair of 2010 federal court decisions created super PACs, allowing them to take unlimited funds from individuals, corporations and unions. The major limitation, as reinforced in the first decision, Citizens United vs. FEC, is that outside group ads “by definition” cannot be “coordinated with a candidate.” The FEC in June issued an opinion making clear that election rules don’t prohibit candidates or their campaigns from helping super PACs fundraise within pre-existing limits.
And last summer, Romney appeared at multiple fundraisers for the super PAC supporting him, while Sens. Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer and House Speaker John Boehner and Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi have availed themselves of the FEC decision to boost super PAC fundraising pushes.
Santorum’s campaign hasn’t discussed dispatching representatives to help its super PAC raise money, said a source familiar with the outside group. And, while Gingrich’s campaign is considering assisting the fundraising of a supportive super PAC, it has yet to do so, though the pro-Gingrich group, like the ones boosting Obama and Romney, is run by former close associates of the candidate.
The super PACs are like the “the evil twin of the candidate’s campaign committee,” FEC vice chairman Ellen Weintraub told POLITICO. “We really do not know whether this is at all what the courts had in mind when they opened the door to independent spending committees with no contribution limits.”
Obama had blasted such outside groups as a distortion of democracy and he particularly criticized non-profit groups that – unlike super PACs – do not disclose their donors. So Republicans hit him for hypocrisy last week when he bowed to political reality and cleared his top campaign and administration officials to help raise money for Priorities USA Action, the struggling super PAC set up to boost his campaign.
While it had received $215,000 from an affiliated non-disclosing non-profit group called Priorities USA, the groups quietly moved on Friday to segregate their finances in an effort to shield Obama from additional criticism. Because of “all the questions that were raised about it, we just wanted to eliminate any sense that there was a co-mingling that made people uncomfortable,” Bill Burton, the groups’ founder, told POLITICO.
The super PAC is still trying to figure out how it will work with Obama aides to raise money within the rules, Burton said. The super PAC’s January fundraising haul – which will be disclosed in a report due next week – will not show the benefits of the Obama blessing and will be “a pretty small number,” said Burton, who worked as a top aide to Obama on the 2008 campaign and in the White House.
It’s partly ties like Burton’s that have watchdogs and rival operatives accusing campaigns and super PACs of flouting the coordination ban. They point out, for instance, that the super PAC supporting Romney is being run in part by a fundraiser who came on board directly from the campaign and a lawyer whose wife continues to work for the campaign.
Likewise, opponents clucked their tongues when Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s since-aborted presidential campaign produced an ad using video footage shot by the super PAC and when POLITICO reported that billionaire industrialist Jon Huntsman, Sr., was both communicating daily with his son’s now-defunct presidential campaign and funding the super PAC supporting it.
Perhaps the most extreme cross-pollination between a campaign and a super PAC is the case of Friess, a 71-year old retired mutual fund manager. Through the end of last year, he had donated $381,000 to a pair of super PACs that buoyed Santorum with ads and robo-calls at a time when his campaign lacked the resources for such important expenditures.
The two men campaigned together nearly around-the-clock in the days before Santorum’s victory in January’s Iowa caucuses and his sweep of last week’s contests in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri. During Santorum’s victory speeches in both instances, Friess stood beaming on stage behind the former Pennsylvania senator. Then on Friday, it was Friess at the podium at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, introducing Santorum as “a dear friend” and “the next president of the United States.”
Behind the scenes, Friess has been even more important to Santorum’s effort.
Days after influential Iowa conservative leader Bob Vander Plaats gave his coveted endorsement to Santorum in the run-up to his state’s caucuses, his organization established Leaders For Families Super PAC, which quickly took in $125,000 – almost all of its cash – from Friess, and a pro-Santorum super PAC called the Red, White and Blue Fund, for which Friess is the biggest donor.
Leaders For Families used the cash to air radio and television ads and place automated telephone calls touting the endorsement from Vander Plaats, who had reportedly told Santorum he “needed money to promote the endorsement.”
The Vander Plaats endorsement and promotion thereof “was world changing,” Friess told POLITICO.
And though Friess said he’s asked Red, White and Blue Fund not to use his cash on negative ads, and suggested he’d like its ads to focus on Santorum’s work against Islamic extremism, he said he has nothing to do with the super PAC’s advertising strategy.
“I just send the money in and those guys take care of the ads,” he said. On the other hand, he has actively worked to boost the Red, White and Blue Fund’s fundraising, telling POLITICO he tried to convince Adelson to support Santorum and also planned to solicit donations from donors linked to the libertarian billionaire industrialist Koch brothers. Their most recent gathering of major donors, held late last month in Indian Wells, Calif. was attended by both Adelson and Friess.
“There isn’t a person at the Koch brothers events who would not get a good return on their investment by investing in [Santorum] as president, because of what they believe about the free enterprise system,” said Friess.
But, Friess said, he leaves all the super PAC business at the door when he’s with Santorum. “All my lawyer tells me is, to avoid any problems, don’t even mention the super PAC.”
Pressed last week on how he could travel with Friess, given his relationship to the super PAC, Santorum told reporters, “We know what the rules are, and the bottom line is, I don’t think it crosses a line whatsoever. He’s a friend, he’s been a friend for many, many years and has traveled with me in the past before it was a super PAC.” When the issue of Friess’s work on behalf of the super PAC came up again a couple days later, Santorum asserted, “I have no idea what Foster Friess is doing to my super PAC. That’s his business.”
Yet Friess has been privy to sensitive campaign business, including fundraising figures, and a private conversation this month between Santorum and Gingrich, who complained that his positions were distorted by a pair of Santorum campaign ads.
“Newt just came up and said that’s not true and it would be great if you could change that,” said Friess.
Adelson, meanwhile, this month huddled at his Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas with Gingrich, his campaign staff and other big donors for the finance committee meeting. He also held separate private meetings with Gingrich and Romney. Afterwards, Bloomberg News reported that Adelson intended to cut off the flow of cash to the pro-Gingrich super PAC, Winning Our Future.
Adelson has had no formal role in campaign strategy talks, and he and his wife Miriam Adelson stopped by the finance meeting only long enough to hear Gingrich speak before leaving, said a source close to the couple.
The source dismissed the Bloomberg report, explaining Adelson has not made it known whether he intends to continue contributing to Winning Our Future, and would not be influenced in his decision by pressure from other donors or candidates.
Winning Our Future has gone quiet after spending millions on tough ads criticizing Romney’s record at the private equity firm he helmed – an attack Gingrich at first embraced, then backed away from.
The coordination rules make “it much more difficult for the super PAC to do a positive ad for the candidate, since they cannot discuss with the candidate what issues they would like for advertising to address,” said Jim Bopp, a leading GOP campaign finance attorney. “It is easier to do a negative ad on the opponent since consistency of message is not as important there,” said Bopp, a Romney supporter who has advised the former Massachusetts governor on campaign finance policy.
Bopp’s proposal for merged candidate-super PAC fundraising led to the FEC opinion clearing such fundraising, and he suggested he might consider challenging the coordination rules “if I had a client” with a strong case.
“I think the FEC’s coordination rules are very strict, more strict than allowed by the First Amendment,” said Bopp. Rejecting the allegations that the coordination rules are easily circumvented, Bopp asserted campaigns and super PACs are paying close attention to the letter of the law because “the penalties for violation are very severe” and “an investigation is very onerous and burdensome.”
Posted in General Information | No Responses »It looks like they’ll get the last laugh, since there’s no sign of serious legal or technical challenges to the brazen behavior that might force campaigns or super PACs to reverse course before Election Day.
Politico
When it comes to super PACs, it’s getting hard to tell the difference between reality and a Comedy Central bit.
Stephen Colbert made an ongoing gag last month out of lampooning the rules barring coordination between outside groups and campaigns. When he announced a plan to run for president, he made a big show of handing off his super PAC to his fellow Comedy Central host Jon Stewart. Stewart promised not to coordinate with Colbert — giving the camera a wink and a nod.
But it was no joke last week when President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney cleared their top aides to raise cash for the super PACs supporting their campaign.
Meanwhile, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, whose family has pumped $11 million into the super PAC boosting Newt Gingrich’s campaign, sat in on a meeting of the campaign’s national finance committee at one of his Las Vegas hotels this month. He also met privately with both Gingrich and Romney.
And Rick Santorum took the podium at the Conservative Political Action Conference last weekend after a warm introduction from his friend Foster Friess, a Wyoming multimillionaire who’s given hundreds of thousands of dollars to two super PACs credited with Santorum’s surge.
Friess has become part of Santorum’s campaign inner circle, traveling with the candidate on the trail and participating in sensitive conversations about campaign advertising. Santorum told reporters last week that Friess is “someone who I talk to, who gives me plenty of advice on how I say it and what I say.”
The law couldn’t be more clear: campaigns aren’t supposed to communicate strategy or coordinate spending with their super PAC supporters. And all the candidates claim they’re not doing anything wrong — Santorum insists super PACs don’t come up in his chats with Freiss, and representatives for Gingrich, Romney and Obama all say they’re not breaking the rules either.
It looks like they’ll get the last laugh, since there’s no sign of serious legal or technical challenges to the brazen behavior that might force campaigns or super PACs to reverse course before Election Day.
“It sounds to me as if the current – admittedly inadequate – rules are being bent or broken, especially when persons responsible for [super PAC ads] are also traveling with the candidates and/or advising them,” said Trevor Potter, a former Federal Election Commission chairman who was the top lawyer for John McCain’s Republican presidential campaigns, which discouraged outside spending groups.
It’s a bit of life imitating art for Potter, who has been participating in the ongoing Colbert-Stewart gag on their late-night shows. Colbert’s faux pundit character has talked about the “loopchasms” in the coordination restrictions and it’s not hard to imagine him devising a scenario like the Friess-Santorum talks.
While the coordination ban has been in effect for years, it’s gotten a lot more attention since a pair of 2010 federal court decisions created super PACs, allowing them to take unlimited funds from individuals, corporations and unions. The major limitation, as reinforced in the first decision, Citizens United vs. FEC, is that outside group ads “by definition” cannot be “coordinated with a candidate.” The FEC in June issued an opinion making clear that election rules don’t prohibit candidates or their campaigns from helping super PACs fundraise within pre-existing limits.
And last summer, Romney appeared at multiple fundraisers for the super PAC supporting him, while Sens. Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer and House Speaker John Boehner and Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi have availed themselves of the FEC decision to boost super PAC fundraising pushes.
Santorum’s campaign hasn’t discussed dispatching representatives to help its super PAC raise money, said a source familiar with the outside group. And, while Gingrich’s campaign is considering assisting the fundraising of a supportive super PAC, it has yet to do so, though the pro-Gingrich group, like the ones boosting Obama and Romney, is run by former close associates of the candidate.
The super PACs are like the “the evil twin of the candidate’s campaign committee,” FEC vice chairman Ellen Weintraub told POLITICO. “We really do not know whether this is at all what the courts had in mind when they opened the door to independent spending committees with no contribution limits.”
Obama had blasted such outside groups as a distortion of democracy and he particularly criticized non-profit groups that – unlike super PACs – do not disclose their donors. So Republicans hit him for hypocrisy last week when he bowed to political reality and cleared his top campaign and administration officials to help raise money for Priorities USA Action, the struggling super PAC set up to boost his campaign.
While it had received $215,000 from an affiliated non-disclosing non-profit group called Priorities USA, the groups quietly moved on Friday to segregate their finances in an effort to shield Obama from additional criticism. Because of “all the questions that were raised about it, we just wanted to eliminate any sense that there was a co-mingling that made people uncomfortable,” Bill Burton, the groups’ founder, told POLITICO.
The super PAC is still trying to figure out how it will work with Obama aides to raise money within the rules, Burton said. The super PAC’s January fundraising haul – which will be disclosed in a report due next week – will not show the benefits of the Obama blessing and will be “a pretty small number,” said Burton, who worked as a top aide to Obama on the 2008 campaign and in the White House.
It’s partly ties like Burton’s that have watchdogs and rival operatives accusing campaigns and super PACs of flouting the coordination ban. They point out, for instance, that the super PAC supporting Romney is being run in part by a fundraiser who came on board directly from the campaign and a lawyer whose wife continues to work for the campaign.
Likewise, opponents clucked their tongues when Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s since-aborted presidential campaign produced an ad using video footage shot by the super PAC and when POLITICO reported that billionaire industrialist Jon Huntsman, Sr., was both communicating daily with his son’s now-defunct presidential campaign and funding the super PAC supporting it.
Perhaps the most extreme cross-pollination between a campaign and a super PAC is the case of Friess, a 71-year old retired mutual fund manager. Through the end of last year, he had donated $381,000 to a pair of super PACs that buoyed Santorum with ads and robo-calls at a time when his campaign lacked the resources for such important expenditures.
The two men campaigned together nearly around-the-clock in the days before Santorum’s victory in January’s Iowa caucuses and his sweep of last week’s contests in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri. During Santorum’s victory speeches in both instances, Friess stood beaming on stage behind the former Pennsylvania senator. Then on Friday, it was Friess at the podium at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, introducing Santorum as “a dear friend” and “the next president of the United States.”
Behind the scenes, Friess has been even more important to Santorum’s effort.
Days after influential Iowa conservative leader Bob Vander Plaats gave his coveted endorsement to Santorum in the run-up to his state’s caucuses, his organization established Leaders For Families Super PAC, which quickly took in $125,000 – almost all of its cash – from Friess, and a pro-Santorum super PAC called the Red, White and Blue Fund, for which Friess is the biggest donor.
Leaders For Families used the cash to air radio and television ads and place automated telephone calls touting the endorsement from Vander Plaats, who had reportedly told Santorum he “needed money to promote the endorsement.”
The Vander Plaats endorsement and promotion thereof “was world changing,” Friess told POLITICO.
And though Friess said he’s asked Red, White and Blue Fund not to use his cash on negative ads, and suggested he’d like its ads to focus on Santorum’s work against Islamic extremism, he said he has nothing to do with the super PAC’s advertising strategy.
“I just send the money in and those guys take care of the ads,” he said. On the other hand, he has actively worked to boost the Red, White and Blue Fund’s fundraising, telling POLITICO he tried to convince Adelson to support Santorum and also planned to solicit donations from donors linked to the libertarian billionaire industrialist Koch brothers. Their most recent gathering of major donors, held late last month in Indian Wells, Calif. was attended by both Adelson and Friess.
“There isn’t a person at the Koch brothers events who would not get a good return on their investment by investing in [Santorum] as president, because of what they believe about the free enterprise system,” said Friess.
But, Friess said, he leaves all the super PAC business at the door when he’s with Santorum. “All my lawyer tells me is, to avoid any problems, don’t even mention the super PAC.”
Pressed last week on how he could travel with Friess, given his relationship to the super PAC, Santorum told reporters, “We know what the rules are, and the bottom line is, I don’t think it crosses a line whatsoever. He’s a friend, he’s been a friend for many, many years and has traveled with me in the past before it was a super PAC.” When the issue of Friess’s work on behalf of the super PAC came up again a couple days later, Santorum asserted, “I have no idea what Foster Friess is doing to my super PAC. That’s his business.”
Yet Friess has been privy to sensitive campaign business, including fundraising figures, and a private conversation this month between Santorum and Gingrich, who complained that his positions were distorted by a pair of Santorum campaign ads.
“Newt just came up and said that’s not true and it would be great if you could change that,” said Friess.
Adelson, meanwhile, this month huddled at his Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas with Gingrich, his campaign staff and other big donors for the finance committee meeting. He also held separate private meetings with Gingrich and Romney. Afterwards, Bloomberg News reported that Adelson intended to cut off the flow of cash to the pro-Gingrich super PAC, Winning Our Future.
Adelson has had no formal role in campaign strategy talks, and he and his wife Miriam Adelson stopped by the finance meeting only long enough to hear Gingrich speak before leaving, said a source close to the couple.
The source dismissed the Bloomberg report, explaining Adelson has not made it known whether he intends to continue contributing to Winning Our Future, and would not be influenced in his decision by pressure from other donors or candidates.
Winning Our Future has gone quiet after spending millions on tough ads criticizing Romney’s record at the private equity firm he helmed – an attack Gingrich at first embraced, then backed away from.
The coordination rules make “it much more difficult for the super PAC to do a positive ad for the candidate, since they cannot discuss with the candidate what issues they would like for advertising to address,” said Jim Bopp, a leading GOP campaign finance attorney. “It is easier to do a negative ad on the opponent since consistency of message is not as important there,” said Bopp, a Romney supporter who has advised the former Massachusetts governor on campaign finance policy.
Bopp’s proposal for merged candidate-super PAC fundraising led to the FEC opinion clearing such fundraising, and he suggested he might consider challenging the coordination rules “if I had a client” with a strong case.
“I think the FEC’s coordination rules are very strict, more strict than allowed by the First Amendment,” said Bopp. Rejecting the allegations that the coordination rules are easily circumvented, Bopp asserted campaigns and super PACs are paying close attention to the letter of the law because “the penalties for violation are very severe” and “an investigation is very onerous and burdensome.”
Tags: campaign finance, First Amendment, Obama, PAC money, politics, Super PAC, Supreme Court, The Best Government Money Can Buy?
Fox News: Battle of the billionaires — Super PACs offer chance for high rollers to sway 2012 race
Sunday, February 12th, 2012 Fox News joins the mainstream media in recognizing the flow of campaign money from a select group of wealthy individuals.
Fox News
If the American presidential system were boiled down into a Las Vegas casino game, “Super PAC” betting would be placed exclusively in the high-stakes room.
The Super PAC system, a product of recent Supreme Court rulings, allows unlimited donations for political causes. And recent federal disclosure forms reveal the people behind them are the whales of the campaign trail — putting up donations frequently in excess of a quarter-million dollars.
For the first time, voters are getting a glimpse at who’s funding the previously opaque organizations boosting the presidential candidates’ campaigns with outside spending.
Mitt Romney, not surprisingly, has a slew of investment titans — including former colleagues at Bain Capital — pumping money into the Super PAC supporting his campaign. Newt Gingrich enjoys high-powered support out of Vegas. Ron Paul is being indirectly funded by the co-founder of PayPal. Rick Santorum’s Super PAC is backed mostly by two people. And President Obama’s Super PAC is kept well-heeled by Hollywood and union support.
The nature of the donations is a world apart from the traditional campaign finance of presidential campaigns themselves — for which individual donations are capped at $2,500.
In the world of Super PACs, $2,500 makes for a modest starting point. Donors routinely put up $100,000 and up in support of the campaign committee of their choice. And a relatively small number of high-dollar contributors are involved.
No Super PAC better exemplifies the unbound financial potential of the new system than Romney’s group Restore Our Future.
According to end-of-year filings with Federal Election Commission, the pro-Romney committee has raised more than $30 million, from just 282 donors. The average donation tops $100,000, and the fund is backed by plenty of high-rollers.
At the top are donors like Robert Mercer, an executive at hedge fund firm Renaissance Technologies; John Paulson, president of hedge fund Paulson and Co.; Julian Robertson, founder of hedge fund Tiger Management; Paul Singer, founder of Elliott Management Corp.; and Edward Conard, a former Bain colleague. All put up $1 million apiece.
J.W. Marriott Jr., chairman of Marriott International, also contributed $500,000, as did Richard Marriott, chief of Marriott offshoot Host Hotels & Resorts.
By law, these campaign committees cannot coordinate with the presidential campaigns themselves or directly fund them. This catch explains why, when Romney and other candidates are challenged on Super PAC-funded ads, they note that their campaigns had nothing to do with the production.
But they are surely aware, and the Super PACs serve a blunt purpose.
According to a study by the Center for Responsive Politics, Restore Our Future has spent $17 million in opposition to Gingrich – in large part through advertising.
The other Super PACs don’t have nearly as much money, but nevertheless serve as a potent tool for the candidates.
Winning Our Future, a pro-Gingrich group, has been backed by Texas businessman Harold Simmons. The group reported raising over $2 million at the end of the year, from just 18 people.
More recently, and subsequent to the 2011 filing period, Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson drew headlines for putting up $5 million for the Gingrich Super PAC. His wife reportedly followed suit with another $5 million.
In Paul’s corner is the Endorse Liberty group, which reported about $1 million raised for 2011. The group is supported almost exclusively by Peter Thiel, a hedge fund manager who co-founded PayPal.
Santorum’s Red White and Blue Fund has raised slightly less than Paul’s Super PAC. That, too, is backed by a handful of supporters, including wealthy investor Foster Friess and John Templeton Jr., son of philanthropist John Templeton.
And the pro-Obama Priorities USA Super PAC has raised a total of $4.4 million as of the end of 2011. About half of that came in the form of a $2 million donation from DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg. Steven Spielberg also threw in $100,000.
Those five groups are just a slice of the national Super PAC pie, though they account for much of the money raised. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, 318 groups have raised nearly $99 million as of early February. They’ve spent nearly $47 million in the 2012 cycle.
The campaign finance free-for-all has raised pressing questions all along about whether the new system is a boon for free speech — speech, that is, in the form of monetary donations and ads — or a barrier for candidates who might not have the behind-the-scenes support of such wealth.
Gingrich, despite the support of his Las Vegas benefactors, has complained that the glut of negative advertising by Romney’s supporters has damaged his candidacy.
In Congress, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and others are pushing for a new bill that would, among other provisions, require TV ads to name top donors.
Yet Obama’s campaign this past week seemed to embrace the new Super PAC reality. The campaign said Obama officials would speak at Priorities USA events.
Romney reportedly has sanctioned the same kind of interaction.
Posted in General Information | No Responses »Fox News
If the American presidential system were boiled down into a Las Vegas casino game, “Super PAC” betting would be placed exclusively in the high-stakes room.
The Super PAC system, a product of recent Supreme Court rulings, allows unlimited donations for political causes. And recent federal disclosure forms reveal the people behind them are the whales of the campaign trail — putting up donations frequently in excess of a quarter-million dollars.
For the first time, voters are getting a glimpse at who’s funding the previously opaque organizations boosting the presidential candidates’ campaigns with outside spending.
Mitt Romney, not surprisingly, has a slew of investment titans — including former colleagues at Bain Capital — pumping money into the Super PAC supporting his campaign. Newt Gingrich enjoys high-powered support out of Vegas. Ron Paul is being indirectly funded by the co-founder of PayPal. Rick Santorum’s Super PAC is backed mostly by two people. And President Obama’s Super PAC is kept well-heeled by Hollywood and union support.
The nature of the donations is a world apart from the traditional campaign finance of presidential campaigns themselves — for which individual donations are capped at $2,500.
In the world of Super PACs, $2,500 makes for a modest starting point. Donors routinely put up $100,000 and up in support of the campaign committee of their choice. And a relatively small number of high-dollar contributors are involved.
No Super PAC better exemplifies the unbound financial potential of the new system than Romney’s group Restore Our Future.
According to end-of-year filings with Federal Election Commission, the pro-Romney committee has raised more than $30 million, from just 282 donors. The average donation tops $100,000, and the fund is backed by plenty of high-rollers.
At the top are donors like Robert Mercer, an executive at hedge fund firm Renaissance Technologies; John Paulson, president of hedge fund Paulson and Co.; Julian Robertson, founder of hedge fund Tiger Management; Paul Singer, founder of Elliott Management Corp.; and Edward Conard, a former Bain colleague. All put up $1 million apiece.
J.W. Marriott Jr., chairman of Marriott International, also contributed $500,000, as did Richard Marriott, chief of Marriott offshoot Host Hotels & Resorts.
By law, these campaign committees cannot coordinate with the presidential campaigns themselves or directly fund them. This catch explains why, when Romney and other candidates are challenged on Super PAC-funded ads, they note that their campaigns had nothing to do with the production.
But they are surely aware, and the Super PACs serve a blunt purpose.
According to a study by the Center for Responsive Politics, Restore Our Future has spent $17 million in opposition to Gingrich – in large part through advertising.
The other Super PACs don’t have nearly as much money, but nevertheless serve as a potent tool for the candidates.
Winning Our Future, a pro-Gingrich group, has been backed by Texas businessman Harold Simmons. The group reported raising over $2 million at the end of the year, from just 18 people.
More recently, and subsequent to the 2011 filing period, Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson drew headlines for putting up $5 million for the Gingrich Super PAC. His wife reportedly followed suit with another $5 million.
In Paul’s corner is the Endorse Liberty group, which reported about $1 million raised for 2011. The group is supported almost exclusively by Peter Thiel, a hedge fund manager who co-founded PayPal.
Santorum’s Red White and Blue Fund has raised slightly less than Paul’s Super PAC. That, too, is backed by a handful of supporters, including wealthy investor Foster Friess and John Templeton Jr., son of philanthropist John Templeton.
And the pro-Obama Priorities USA Super PAC has raised a total of $4.4 million as of the end of 2011. About half of that came in the form of a $2 million donation from DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg. Steven Spielberg also threw in $100,000.
Those five groups are just a slice of the national Super PAC pie, though they account for much of the money raised. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, 318 groups have raised nearly $99 million as of early February. They’ve spent nearly $47 million in the 2012 cycle.
The campaign finance free-for-all has raised pressing questions all along about whether the new system is a boon for free speech — speech, that is, in the form of monetary donations and ads — or a barrier for candidates who might not have the behind-the-scenes support of such wealth.
Gingrich, despite the support of his Las Vegas benefactors, has complained that the glut of negative advertising by Romney’s supporters has damaged his candidacy.
In Congress, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and others are pushing for a new bill that would, among other provisions, require TV ads to name top donors.
Yet Obama’s campaign this past week seemed to embrace the new Super PAC reality. The campaign said Obama officials would speak at Priorities USA events.
Romney reportedly has sanctioned the same kind of interaction.
Tags: campaign finance, Crossroads, Democracy 21, finance reform, Karl Rove, lobbying, Obama, PAC money, Super PAC, Supreme Court, The Best Government Money Can Buy?, Wall Street
Kansas City Star: Five Democratic ‘super’ PACs may seek joint operation
Thursday, February 9th, 2012 Five Democratic “super” political action committees are reaching out to party mega-donors seeking $1 million to $10 million contributions, now that President Barack Obama has blessed the outside spending group working to get him re-elected.
Kansas City Star
Discussions among the five super PACs are under way about setting up a joint fundraising committee, said Bill Burton, a former deputy White House press secretary and co-founder of Priorities USA Action, which was launched last spring to help Obama win a second term.
“We’re in serious talks,” Burton told iWatch News of the Center for Public Integrity, but he added that a final decision hasn’t been made about establishing a joint fundraising mechanism. Either way, “there are a lot of people in the progressive donor community who have not yet gotten involved who are likely to be involved.”
Other top Democratic fundraisers say that a joint fundraising entity is likely and stress that the White House’s abrupt shift on super PACs – which came Monday in a conference call to leading donors and fundraisers with campaign manager Jim Messina – could help prod large donors to write seven-figure checks.
Democratic fundraisers are hoping that several major donors such as Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg and Chicago media executive Fred Eychaner, both of whom already have written large checks to Priorities USA Action, will pony up considerably more to a joint committee.
Katzenberg has donated $2 million to Priorities USA Action, the super PAC that Burton and ex-White House aide Sean Sweeney created, and Eychaner, an old friend of Obama’s, has chipped in $500,000.
“There are donors who have expressed interest in a unified effort,” said Harold Ickes, president of Priorities USA Action, who is also a veteran Democratic fundraiser and a lobbyist with strong union ties. “A unified effort makes an enormous amount of sense and is likely to result in more money being raised.”
Democratic super PACs, which were created early last year and have struggled to catch up to better-funded Republican groups such as American Crossroads, are aimed at helping Obama win re-election, preserve the Democratic majority in the Senate and win back the House of Representatives.
Besides Priorities USA Action, the other Democratic groups involved in the joint committee talks include Majority PAC, which is focused on the Senate, and House Majority PAC, which is House-focused. The other two super PACs are American Bridge 21st Century, an opposition research entity that helps the other PACs, and America Votes, a get-out-the-vote operation for Democrats.
Last year, the five super PACs and two affiliated nonprofits raised a combined $19.6 million. In contrast, American Crossroads and its nonprofit affiliate, Crossroads GPS, pulled in $51 million.
Priorities USA Action and its nonprofit affiliate have said they want to raise $100 million. They pulled in $6.7 million in 2011. American Crossroads and its nonprofit arm, launched in early 2010 by GOP consultants Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, are trying to raise $300 million, according to fundraisers close to the group.
The fundraising gold rush by super PACs on both sides has been spurred by court rulings in early 2010 that overturned decades of campaign finance law and opened the floodgates to corporations, individuals and unions writing unlimited checks to pay for ads by outside groups that directly support or oppose candidates.
The new joint effort, fundraisers stress, is expected to be contingent on pulling together a group of super donors who collectively would pony up between $40 million and $100 million. Fundraisers note that it’s important to potential big individual donors that if they write checks in the $5 million range, their contributions would be matched by several others.
The new drive comes after months of growing anxiety among Democrats about their weak super PAC fundraising compared to their GOP counterparts.
Democratic fundraisers say that potential donors have been confused by multiple requests for help from different super PACs working to boost Obama’s campaign as well as the two congressional campaign committees. Last fall, several of the super PACs tried to allay some of these concerns by holding joint meetings with donors, including one in Boston.
The weak super PAC fundraising last year is partly attributable to the much more robust efforts of the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee, which together pulled in more than $233 million. By comparison, leading GOP contender Mitt Romney’s campaign and the Republican National Committee pulled in only $144 million.
In recent weeks, Democratic fundraisers have grown especially concerned about the powerful impact of the negative ads that two GOP super PACs backing Romney and Newt Gingrich have run in key primaries. In Florida, the pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future, which last year raised $30 million, spent close to $10 million on mostly negative ads against Gingrich to help the former Massachusetts governor win a resounding victory.
In South Carolina, Gingrich’s super PAC Winning Our Future, which has received $11 million from casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his family, ran about $3 million of blistering ads against Romney to help Gingrich score his only win.
Besides Katzenberg and Eychaner, other big donors whose names come up as potential candidates for $5 million or larger donations include Penny Pritzker, an heir to a hotel fortune, who was finance chief for Obama’s 2008 campaign; Haim Saban, a media mogul whose company created the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers; and banking executive Robert Wolf, who chairs UBS Group Americas.
Democratic fundraisers, however, are not counting on billionaire George Soros, who gave more than $20 million in 2004 to two outside groups spearheaded by Ickes. Soros contributed $100,000 to Majority PAC in December and $75,000 to House Majority PAC last May, according to Federal Election Commission records.
A top aide to Soros has said that the billionaire has not yet made up his mind about giving more for the presidential effort this year.
Notwithstanding their more bullish fundraising prospects, the new endorsement of Priorities USA Action by the president has sparked heavy criticism from different quarters, including campaign reform advocates and Republicans who have accused the president of betraying his principles and of hypocrisy. The president last year had called super PACs a “threat to democracy” and even Monday morning voiced worries about their negative impacts.
Jonathan Collegio, a spokesman for American Crossroads, in a statement called the new policy a “brazenly cynical move by Barack Obama and his political handlers who just a year ago had the chutzpah to call outside groups a threat to democracy.”
Fred Wertheimer of Democracy 21, which favors strict regulation of campaign donations, is writing to the Justice Department to ask for an investigation of the super PACs backing Obama and Mitt Romney.
“We believe that these super PACs are merely arms of the presidential campaigns being run by close associates of the candidates and not legally entitled to be independent groups,” Wertheimer told iWatch News.
Leaders of the two super PACs have said their operations are legal and independent of the campaigns.
Even some longtime Democratic fundraisers voiced concerns about the new push for unlimited funds.
Retired Philadelphia educator Peter Buttenwieser, who raised more than $500,000 for the first Obama campaign and still backs the president, said in an interview: “I understand that the president had virtually no other choice and so I’m supportive of it. But I’m not happy about the new direction. I think it puts us in a somewhat compromised position.”
Posted in General Information, Interviewees in the News | No Responses »Kansas City Star
Discussions among the five super PACs are under way about setting up a joint fundraising committee, said Bill Burton, a former deputy White House press secretary and co-founder of Priorities USA Action, which was launched last spring to help Obama win a second term.
“We’re in serious talks,” Burton told iWatch News of the Center for Public Integrity, but he added that a final decision hasn’t been made about establishing a joint fundraising mechanism. Either way, “there are a lot of people in the progressive donor community who have not yet gotten involved who are likely to be involved.”
Other top Democratic fundraisers say that a joint fundraising entity is likely and stress that the White House’s abrupt shift on super PACs – which came Monday in a conference call to leading donors and fundraisers with campaign manager Jim Messina – could help prod large donors to write seven-figure checks.
Democratic fundraisers are hoping that several major donors such as Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg and Chicago media executive Fred Eychaner, both of whom already have written large checks to Priorities USA Action, will pony up considerably more to a joint committee.
Katzenberg has donated $2 million to Priorities USA Action, the super PAC that Burton and ex-White House aide Sean Sweeney created, and Eychaner, an old friend of Obama’s, has chipped in $500,000.
“There are donors who have expressed interest in a unified effort,” said Harold Ickes, president of Priorities USA Action, who is also a veteran Democratic fundraiser and a lobbyist with strong union ties. “A unified effort makes an enormous amount of sense and is likely to result in more money being raised.”
Democratic super PACs, which were created early last year and have struggled to catch up to better-funded Republican groups such as American Crossroads, are aimed at helping Obama win re-election, preserve the Democratic majority in the Senate and win back the House of Representatives.
Besides Priorities USA Action, the other Democratic groups involved in the joint committee talks include Majority PAC, which is focused on the Senate, and House Majority PAC, which is House-focused. The other two super PACs are American Bridge 21st Century, an opposition research entity that helps the other PACs, and America Votes, a get-out-the-vote operation for Democrats.
Last year, the five super PACs and two affiliated nonprofits raised a combined $19.6 million. In contrast, American Crossroads and its nonprofit affiliate, Crossroads GPS, pulled in $51 million.
Priorities USA Action and its nonprofit affiliate have said they want to raise $100 million. They pulled in $6.7 million in 2011. American Crossroads and its nonprofit arm, launched in early 2010 by GOP consultants Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, are trying to raise $300 million, according to fundraisers close to the group.
The fundraising gold rush by super PACs on both sides has been spurred by court rulings in early 2010 that overturned decades of campaign finance law and opened the floodgates to corporations, individuals and unions writing unlimited checks to pay for ads by outside groups that directly support or oppose candidates.
The new joint effort, fundraisers stress, is expected to be contingent on pulling together a group of super donors who collectively would pony up between $40 million and $100 million. Fundraisers note that it’s important to potential big individual donors that if they write checks in the $5 million range, their contributions would be matched by several others.
The new drive comes after months of growing anxiety among Democrats about their weak super PAC fundraising compared to their GOP counterparts.
Democratic fundraisers say that potential donors have been confused by multiple requests for help from different super PACs working to boost Obama’s campaign as well as the two congressional campaign committees. Last fall, several of the super PACs tried to allay some of these concerns by holding joint meetings with donors, including one in Boston.
The weak super PAC fundraising last year is partly attributable to the much more robust efforts of the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee, which together pulled in more than $233 million. By comparison, leading GOP contender Mitt Romney’s campaign and the Republican National Committee pulled in only $144 million.
In recent weeks, Democratic fundraisers have grown especially concerned about the powerful impact of the negative ads that two GOP super PACs backing Romney and Newt Gingrich have run in key primaries. In Florida, the pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future, which last year raised $30 million, spent close to $10 million on mostly negative ads against Gingrich to help the former Massachusetts governor win a resounding victory.
In South Carolina, Gingrich’s super PAC Winning Our Future, which has received $11 million from casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his family, ran about $3 million of blistering ads against Romney to help Gingrich score his only win.
Besides Katzenberg and Eychaner, other big donors whose names come up as potential candidates for $5 million or larger donations include Penny Pritzker, an heir to a hotel fortune, who was finance chief for Obama’s 2008 campaign; Haim Saban, a media mogul whose company created the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers; and banking executive Robert Wolf, who chairs UBS Group Americas.
Democratic fundraisers, however, are not counting on billionaire George Soros, who gave more than $20 million in 2004 to two outside groups spearheaded by Ickes. Soros contributed $100,000 to Majority PAC in December and $75,000 to House Majority PAC last May, according to Federal Election Commission records.
A top aide to Soros has said that the billionaire has not yet made up his mind about giving more for the presidential effort this year.
Notwithstanding their more bullish fundraising prospects, the new endorsement of Priorities USA Action by the president has sparked heavy criticism from different quarters, including campaign reform advocates and Republicans who have accused the president of betraying his principles and of hypocrisy. The president last year had called super PACs a “threat to democracy” and even Monday morning voiced worries about their negative impacts.
Jonathan Collegio, a spokesman for American Crossroads, in a statement called the new policy a “brazenly cynical move by Barack Obama and his political handlers who just a year ago had the chutzpah to call outside groups a threat to democracy.”
Fred Wertheimer of Democracy 21, which favors strict regulation of campaign donations, is writing to the Justice Department to ask for an investigation of the super PACs backing Obama and Mitt Romney.
“We believe that these super PACs are merely arms of the presidential campaigns being run by close associates of the candidates and not legally entitled to be independent groups,” Wertheimer told iWatch News.
Leaders of the two super PACs have said their operations are legal and independent of the campaigns.
Even some longtime Democratic fundraisers voiced concerns about the new push for unlimited funds.
Retired Philadelphia educator Peter Buttenwieser, who raised more than $500,000 for the first Obama campaign and still backs the president, said in an interview: “I understand that the president had virtually no other choice and so I’m supportive of it. But I’m not happy about the new direction. I think it puts us in a somewhat compromised position.”
Tags: campaign finance, Congress, First Amendment, lobbying, Obama, PAC money, politics, Super PAC, Supreme Court, The Best Government Money Can Buy?
Politico: What super PAC filings left out
Saturday, February 4th, 2012 About the only thing more notable than the donor information super PACs this week revealed is the information they didn’t.
Super PACs filed reports with the Federal Election Commission that outlined what they raised — and from whom — in the last six months of 2011.
Politico
But nowhere to be found is a $10 million donation that casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife have made since — money that largely fueled a several million dollars in advertising highly critical of Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney ahead of Gingrich’s decisive Jan. 21 victory in the South Carolina primary.
The Red White and Blue Fund, which supports Rick Santorum, only disclosed receiving $331,000 from businessman Foster Friess, although he reportedly made more, large contributions in January.
Super PACs supporting GOP candidates Rick Perry, Jon Huntsman, Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain, meanwhile, didn’t formally disclose a dime of the millions they together raised prior to their candidates ending their candidacies.
Voters in New Hampshire learned this week, three weeks after their presidential primary where Huntsman made his last stand, that Huntsman’s billionaire father had contributed $1.9 million to Our Destiny PAC, the super PAC backing him. The figure is likely higher, but won’t be known until late February when super PACs, which may raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to overtly advocate for or against political candidates, are required by law to release their January donation records.
And long after Perry headed back to the Lone Star state for good, the Make Us Great Again super PAC backing him disclosed that a handful of corporations, lobbyists and wealthy Texas businessmen accounted for most of the $5.5 million it raised through the year’s end.
For now, blame — or thank — a loophole in federal election law for an even greater super PAC disclosure delay than expected.
In December, super PACs supporting presidential candidates began systematically changing their campaign finance filing status from quarterly (and semi-annually during non-election years) to monthly, a chance that would seemingly hasten them revealing their monied backers.
Instead, the super PACs did it to avoid filing mandatory 12-day, pre-primary reports that quarterly filers must submit but monthly filers don’t.
The practical effect: super PACs received a Federal Election Commission-approved no-disclosure pass until the end of January, meaning voters had little idea who was funding the seemingly endless attack ads lambasting various candidates.
In other words, while the public will quickly know numerous details about a highly critical, $1 million television campaign against, say, Romney or Gingrich, the source of the money remains a mystery for weeks or months.
The situation is prompting a sharp debate at the Federal Election Commission and among campaign finance activists over whether today’s political committee disclosure laws, largely established in the 1970s, are simply obsolete.
“Nobody ever thought that PACs would end up spending more than candidates in a race,” said Ellen Weintraub (D), the FEC’s vice chairman. “Now they’re functioning pretty much as the alter-ego of candidate committees, so they probably ought to be on the same reporting schedule.”
But such a change would likely require a statutory change or lengthy rule making process, and that will take significant time that could probably be better spent, FEC Chairman Caroline Hunter (R) said.
“We can look at this, sure, although I think we have a pretty good system set up now,” Hunter said.
Former FEC Chairman Brad Smith agrees, arguing that the current disclosure set-up “allows you to know the kind of people that are supporting the PACs and the kind of money they’re spending,” which is the point of campaign disclosure in the first place.
While some tweaks in deadlines may be in order, “people blow this issue out of proportion,” said Smith, who now serves as chairman of the Center for Competitive Politics, which advocates for campaign finance deregulation.
Not so, says Bill Allison, editorial director of the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation, which is calling for greater super PAC transparency.
“If super PACs can file their expenditures every 24 or 48 hours, why can’t they file more frequently on the income side? There isn’t a good reason,” Allison said.
Where these campaign finance officials and watchers generally agree: The system in place now for the 2012 election cycle almost assuredly won’t change before the election with neither the FEC nor Congress showing interest in rejiggering the system.
Posted in General Information | 1 Response »Super PACs filed reports with the Federal Election Commission that outlined what they raised — and from whom — in the last six months of 2011.
Politico
Absent from their heady reports are potentially similar hauls in January, when super PACs played critical roles in determining the outcomes of the four early presidential primary and caucus contests — particularly those in Iowa and South Carolina, when voters culled more than half the candidate field.
The pro-Newt Gingrich super PAC Winning Our Future, for example, on Tuesday reported $1.17 million cash on hand after raising a shade more than $2 million through Dec. 31.But nowhere to be found is a $10 million donation that casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife have made since — money that largely fueled a several million dollars in advertising highly critical of Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney ahead of Gingrich’s decisive Jan. 21 victory in the South Carolina primary.
The Red White and Blue Fund, which supports Rick Santorum, only disclosed receiving $331,000 from businessman Foster Friess, although he reportedly made more, large contributions in January.
Super PACs supporting GOP candidates Rick Perry, Jon Huntsman, Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain, meanwhile, didn’t formally disclose a dime of the millions they together raised prior to their candidates ending their candidacies.
Voters in New Hampshire learned this week, three weeks after their presidential primary where Huntsman made his last stand, that Huntsman’s billionaire father had contributed $1.9 million to Our Destiny PAC, the super PAC backing him. The figure is likely higher, but won’t be known until late February when super PACs, which may raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to overtly advocate for or against political candidates, are required by law to release their January donation records.
And long after Perry headed back to the Lone Star state for good, the Make Us Great Again super PAC backing him disclosed that a handful of corporations, lobbyists and wealthy Texas businessmen accounted for most of the $5.5 million it raised through the year’s end.
For now, blame — or thank — a loophole in federal election law for an even greater super PAC disclosure delay than expected.
In December, super PACs supporting presidential candidates began systematically changing their campaign finance filing status from quarterly (and semi-annually during non-election years) to monthly, a chance that would seemingly hasten them revealing their monied backers.
Instead, the super PACs did it to avoid filing mandatory 12-day, pre-primary reports that quarterly filers must submit but monthly filers don’t.
The practical effect: super PACs received a Federal Election Commission-approved no-disclosure pass until the end of January, meaning voters had little idea who was funding the seemingly endless attack ads lambasting various candidates.
For those super PACs that existed before June 30, it was the first disclosure report they filed in seven months, and for those formed after, it was their first such report ever.
This slow-motion unveiling of contributors stands in stark contrast to laws mandating that political committees file reports, which detail independent expenditures made to support or oppose candidates, almost immediately after making them.In other words, while the public will quickly know numerous details about a highly critical, $1 million television campaign against, say, Romney or Gingrich, the source of the money remains a mystery for weeks or months.
The situation is prompting a sharp debate at the Federal Election Commission and among campaign finance activists over whether today’s political committee disclosure laws, largely established in the 1970s, are simply obsolete.
“Nobody ever thought that PACs would end up spending more than candidates in a race,” said Ellen Weintraub (D), the FEC’s vice chairman. “Now they’re functioning pretty much as the alter-ego of candidate committees, so they probably ought to be on the same reporting schedule.”
But such a change would likely require a statutory change or lengthy rule making process, and that will take significant time that could probably be better spent, FEC Chairman Caroline Hunter (R) said.
“We can look at this, sure, although I think we have a pretty good system set up now,” Hunter said.
Former FEC Chairman Brad Smith agrees, arguing that the current disclosure set-up “allows you to know the kind of people that are supporting the PACs and the kind of money they’re spending,” which is the point of campaign disclosure in the first place.
While some tweaks in deadlines may be in order, “people blow this issue out of proportion,” said Smith, who now serves as chairman of the Center for Competitive Politics, which advocates for campaign finance deregulation.
Not so, says Bill Allison, editorial director of the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation, which is calling for greater super PAC transparency.
“If super PACs can file their expenditures every 24 or 48 hours, why can’t they file more frequently on the income side? There isn’t a good reason,” Allison said.
Where these campaign finance officials and watchers generally agree: The system in place now for the 2012 election cycle almost assuredly won’t change before the election with neither the FEC nor Congress showing interest in rejiggering the system.
Tags: campaign finance, lobbying, Super PAC, Supreme Court, The Best Government Money Can Buy?
Los Angeles Times: ‘Super PACs’ largely funded by a wealthy few
Thursday, February 2nd, 2012A few super-rich individuals are using their personal and corporate wealth to influence American politics in an unprecedented manner
LA TimesWhen it comes to big money in politics, Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons’ influence has long been apparent in Texas, where he has plowed more than $1 million into Rick Perry‘s gubernatorial campaigns.
Now Simmons has found a new outlet for his outsize political giving — the explosion this election cycle of “super PACs,” independent political organizations that can accept massive contributions to influence the presidential race and other federal elections.
Simmons and his privately held holding company, Contran Corp., dumped $8.6 million into a series of GOP-allied super PACs last year, according to campaign finance records released late Tuesday night. That propels Simmons into the top tier of a newly minted millionaires’ club — super-rich individuals who are using their personal and corporate wealth to influence American politics in an unprecedented manner.
Seventeen people or companies gave at least $1 million each to super PACs last year, according to an analysis by the Los Angeles Times data desk. The infusion ushered in an era of Texas-style unlimited donations at the national level. The organizations have emerged as heavyweights in this year’s presidential contest, at times outstripping the influence of the candidates’ own campaigns.
That’s the case with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, whose presidential bid has been kept afloat by Winning Our Future, a super PAC that has received $11 million from Las Vegas Sands Chief Executive Sheldon Adelson and his family.
The Adelsons gave the funds with no strings attached and no specific expectations, because Gingrich “is an old friend in a time of need,” said one person close to the couple. It’s wealthy individuals like the Adelsons who are largely powering these new organizations — not major corporations, as many critics on the left had warned. But because companies are probably giving to tax-exempt organizations that do not have to reveal their donors, it is impossible to get a full picture of their influence.
Many members of the millionaires’ club have, like Adelson, long been generous political donors and fundraisers. Simmons, Houston home builder Bob Perry and Dallas real estate magnate Harlan Crow are among a group of wealthy Texans that helped finance the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, an outside group that during the 2004 campaign attacked Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry’s war record. They and their companies are now backing American Crossroads, the biggest Republican super PAC, which aims to spend $240 million this cycle.
In 2010, Robert Mercer, manager of the New York hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, gave $640,000 to a super PAC that tried unsuccessfully to defeat Democratic Rep. Peter A. DeFazio of Oregon, a vocal Wall Street critic. Last year, Mercer was among 10 individuals or companies writing $1-million checks to Restore Our Future, a pro-Mitt Romney super PAC.
Seven-figure contributions were rarer on the Democratic side, whose super PACs have not yet matched the fundraising of their GOP counterparts. One of the few contributions that large came from DreamWorks Animation Chief Executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, who gave $2 million in May to Priorities USA Action, a super PAC supporting President Obama.
The left relies in this cycle — as it has in the past — on the muscular role of organized labor in funding ads and turning out its members. In this election, the unions are also filling the coffers of new super PACs. The Service Employees International Union, which represents 2 million workers, gave nearly $1.6 million to Democratic-leaning super PACs in 2011. All told, SEIU is expected to spend about $85 million on political activity, equal to the record amount the union dedicated to the 2008 presidential election.
Super PACs sprang up as a result of a series of court decisions in 2010, including the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, which freed corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts on political activity. That decision has been heatedly decried by campaign finance reform advocates and many Democrats, including Obama, who has warned it will lead to a flood of unregulated corporate cash in politics.
It is difficult to determine exactly how much corporate money is in the system, since many of the outside groups are organized as nonprofits, allowing them to keep their donors secret. While American Crossroads, co-founded by GOP political strategist Karl Rove, reported the donors that gave it $18.4 million last year, its nonprofit affiliate, Crossroads GPS, raised an additional $32.6 million from undisclosed contributors.
The latest campaign finance records reveal that dozens of private companies, hedge funds and business partnerships contributed to super PACs last year. But in an initial review of the filings, Chesapeake Energy, a natural gas producer based in Oklahoma City, appears to be the only publicly traded company that gave money, making a $250,000 donation to a super PAC backing Rick Perry’s since-suspended presidential bid.
Chesapeake did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The paucity of well-known corporate names among the disclosures doesn’t mean that leading businesses won’t be involved in electoral politics this presidential cycle, according to top corporate lobbyists in Washington.
Major companies are expected to fuel record political activity at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which plans to spend at least $50 million on congressional races this year. The chamber, which does not disclose its donors, disputed the amount.
Although many of the nation’s leading CEOs are eager to participate in this year’s election, they largely plan to steer clear of super PACs because of the disclosure requirements.
“I think the Target experience makes them gun-shy,” said Scott Talbott, chief lobbyist for the Financial Services Roundtable, referring to a national boycott against the retail chain in 2010 after it donated to a political group backing a conservative Republican gubernatorial candidate in Minnesota who had made negative statements about gay and lesbian rights.
Simmons, a buyout investor who controls a stable of companies that produce metals and chemicals, has never been hesitant about using his fortune to promote his brand of conservative politics. He gave $3 million to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004 and helped finance a nonprofit group in 2008 that spent $2.9 million on ads attacking Obama’s ties to William Ayers, a former member of the 1960s-era Weather Underground.
Simmons has poured $1.1 million into Perry’s campaigns, making him the second-largest individual donor to the Texas governor. Under Perry’s administration, one of Simmons’ companies, Waste Control Specialists, received permission to build the first new low-level radioactive waste disposal site in the country in three decades in an isolated patch of West Texas, despite objections from some state environmental agency staffers.
Simmons now has even more wealth at his disposal: In the last year, his net worth ballooned to roughly $9.6 billion, largely because the stock of Valhi, a chemicals conglomerate he controls, rose 170%, Forbes reported in December.
In the last year, he gave $1.1 million to two super PACs backing Perry’s presidential bid, along with $500,000 to Winning Our Future, the pro-Gingrich super PAC. In the fall, he donated $5 million to American Crossroads, while Contran gave $2 million.
“Mr. Simmons is a passionate conservative, and he has been for quite some time,” said his spokesman, Chuck McDonald, who described Simmons as “pro-business” and a supporter of tort reform.
But Simmons is not pursuing a specific policy agenda with his donations, McDonald said.
“I know people want to think he is,” he said. “He is a man who has a lot of personal wealth and believes in conservative ideology, and that’s where he puts his money.”
Tags: campaign finance, Congress, Crossroads, finance reform, First Amendment, Karl Rove, lobbying, Obama, PAC money, politics, Super PAC, Supreme Court, The Best Government Money Can Buy?, US Chamber of Commerce
Politico: Super PAC takeover? Not so fast, campaigns say
Monday, January 30th, 2012 The big money outside groups best known for airing ruthless ads in the early state GOP primaries are elbowing their way onto the turf of presidential campaigns and parties — and some campaigns aren’t happy.
In the last few weeks, super PACs and other outside groups supporting Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul and President Barack Obama launched activities in Florida, other key states, and nationally — including phone banking, field organizing, direct mail, polling, state-of-the-race memos and even surrogate operations — that were once left mostly to the campaigns and parties.
Politico
The ambitious expansion is another example of a shift in political power away from the major parties and their candidates to deep-pocketed outsiders. But it’s left campaign operatives and even candidates grumbling about whether the super PACs are actually helping their favored candidates.
Campaigns generally are happy to let super PACs carpet bomb opponents with attack ads, but when it comes to direct-contact with voters and sensitive messaging, they fear that super PACs will muddle their framing, create confusion in the field and duplicate efforts — wasting cash rather than complementing their campaigns.
“It would be much better for the super PACs to just focus on running ads and not try to get into the ground game because that can get really confusing and reduplicative, and I think there can be some headaches,” said Jesse Benton, Ron Paul’s campaign manager.
While a handful of pro-Paul outside groups have spent about $3.4 million on television and internet ads boosting Paul’s insurgent campaign, Benton said their organizing efforts have sometimes conflicted with the campaign’s.
There have been complaints from voters who are getting duplicate calls — first from a PAC, then the campaign.
There’s also been some confusion on-the-ground at pivotal moments, like during the Iowa caucuses, where at least a couple campaign representatives dispatched to speak at targeted precincts on Paul’s behalf arrived to find PAC representatives who also wanted to address voters.
“Luckily, everybody was friendly and there wasn’t any friction, and they allowed the campaign’s reps to be the official speaker for Ron.” But, Benton said, “it just shows that when every single ounce of energy counts … phones and grassroots organizing is really best left to the campaign and the people that Ron’s picked to do that.”
Increasingly, though, outside groups are not always heeding that advice. And there’s not much the campaigns can do about it, because – even though the super PACs often are run by close allies of the candidate – outside groups and campaigns are legally barred from strategic coordination.
Since last week, Federal Election Commission records show, the super PAC supporting Romney’s presidential campaign, Restore Our Future, has spent about $215,000 on phone banking in Florida. That’s a departure for the juggernaut group, which has devoted the overwhelmingly majority of its $17 million (and counting) of spending to massive airtime buys for brutal negative ads like those that sunk Gingrich in Iowa.
The super PAC backing Santorum’s presidential campaign, Red White and Blue Fund, has reported spending more than $340,000 on a phone-banking operation it started during the South Carolina primary. It’s placed 1.5 million so-called “voter identification” calls in Florida, and is also targeting Florida voters with three direct mail pieces, touting him as – among other things – “the right choice for Florida Republicans.” And it’s planning to release a memo this week laying out a path through which Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator who’s trailing Romney and Gingrich in polls, can compete for the nomination — precisely the kind of thing that campaigns often do to try to influence media coverage.
But the super PAC supporting Gingrich, Winning Our Future, has perhaps the most ambitious organizing plans. While it’s only reported spending about $240,000 on phone banking – a tiny fraction of the $6 million it’s spent mostly on ads attacking Romney – it has trumpeted its intention to build a shadow campaign of sorts to boost the former House Speaker. It plans to set up field operations and hire state directors in Florida, Nevada, Minnesota, Arizona and California, and has begun purchasing voter files and courting the state operations built by the now-aborted presidential campaign of Texas Gov. Rick Perry.
The idea is to fill a void in those states, where Gingrich’s campaign has very little in the way of on-the-ground organization, because it was focusing on South Carolina as a firewall and has struggled to raise cash, at least compared to Romney, a former Massachusetts governor. Winning Our Future, on the other hand, got a second $5 million check from Las Vegas casino mogul and longtime booster Sheldon Adelson after Gingrich’s surprisingly strong win in South Carolina.
“We’re prepared to do what’s necessary and do what it takes to achieve our goal, which is to get Newt Gingrich elected,” said Rick Tyler, a top Winning Our Future strategist, explaining the group is hiring grassroots organizers and planning more phone-banking in upcoming states. “We’re not going to leave any aspect, any tool of campaigning, on the shelf.”
But Dave Carney, who served as a top strategist for Gingrich’s campaign before jumping to Perry’s, said super PACs lack both the lead time and organizational muscle to build effective ground organizations. That’s in contrast to unions, which have worked for years to build and hone effective third party operations that are deployed for Democratic candidates.
“I just can’t see how that’s a very efficient use of resources, but it’s the Wild Wild West out there right now and these super PACs are raising lots of money and experimenting with new things,” said Carney.
The biggest of the super PACs that supported Perry, Make Us Great Again, which was run by a close Carney associate, spent nearly $4 million on ads and direct mail supporting Perry.
“I don’t think they made much difference one way or another,” he said. “We asked [big donors] not to give to any of the super PACs. We felt they would be a distraction,” pointing out that GOP presidential candidates have been asked to answer for controversial tactics from the super PACs supporting them.
Romney, in the days before the South Carolina primary, said “the whole idea of the PACs becoming larger than the campaigns themselves is a very bad idea.” And he and Gingrich have both distanced themselves from super PAC ads attacking the other, even as both have clearly benefited.
But the same plausible deniability actually hurts outside groups’ ability to set up ground operations, said a GOP super PAC operative who ran a group in 2010 that tried – and failed – to supplement its ads with robust grassroots organizing.
“No one is going to volunteer for you. They volunteer for candidates. They don’t volunteer for third party groups,” said the operative, who is active in the presidential race. “That means that you have to hire a lot of people, or, in the case of door to door stuff, you have to contract with a firm that hires a bunch of temp workers to go out and do it. I can tell you from my own experience that attempting to executive on-the-ground organizing is incredibly difficult as a third party group.”
It’s complicated further by the election rules barring coordination between the campaigns and outside groups, said Jason Torchinsky, a GOP election lawyer who was general counsel for Rudy Giuliani’s 2008 presidential campaign and is advising a super PAC backing a 2012 presidential candidate.
With advertising, campaigns and outside groups can figure out what one another are doing by consulting spending reports with details of buys that each is required to disclose in close to real time. With on-the-ground organizing, it’s tougher to determine quickly who’s doing what, while staying within the bounds of the rules, said Torchinsky.
And, he said “the lawyers have scared everybody into understanding the potential problems the coordination rules pose for the campaigns and the super PACs, and the donors. And I think they’ve done a pretty good job of getting everybody to respect the boundaries and the rules.”
Some campaign committees may be “frustrated” by super PACs “because they can’t control them or tell them what to do, conceded Abe Niederhauser, an official with Endorse Liberty, the biggest of the super PACs boosting Paul.
While Niederhauser said his group has tried to avoid stepping on the campaign’s toes “by occupying the digital space where they haven’t done a whole lot,” he conceded there’s no way to know if “we’re being complementary” to the Paul campaign’s strategy.
“I hope so,” Niederhauser said.
Posted in General Information | No Responses »In the last few weeks, super PACs and other outside groups supporting Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul and President Barack Obama launched activities in Florida, other key states, and nationally — including phone banking, field organizing, direct mail, polling, state-of-the-race memos and even surrogate operations — that were once left mostly to the campaigns and parties.
Politico
The ambitious expansion is another example of a shift in political power away from the major parties and their candidates to deep-pocketed outsiders. But it’s left campaign operatives and even candidates grumbling about whether the super PACs are actually helping their favored candidates.
Campaigns generally are happy to let super PACs carpet bomb opponents with attack ads, but when it comes to direct-contact with voters and sensitive messaging, they fear that super PACs will muddle their framing, create confusion in the field and duplicate efforts — wasting cash rather than complementing their campaigns.
“It would be much better for the super PACs to just focus on running ads and not try to get into the ground game because that can get really confusing and reduplicative, and I think there can be some headaches,” said Jesse Benton, Ron Paul’s campaign manager.
While a handful of pro-Paul outside groups have spent about $3.4 million on television and internet ads boosting Paul’s insurgent campaign, Benton said their organizing efforts have sometimes conflicted with the campaign’s.
There have been complaints from voters who are getting duplicate calls — first from a PAC, then the campaign.
There’s also been some confusion on-the-ground at pivotal moments, like during the Iowa caucuses, where at least a couple campaign representatives dispatched to speak at targeted precincts on Paul’s behalf arrived to find PAC representatives who also wanted to address voters.
“Luckily, everybody was friendly and there wasn’t any friction, and they allowed the campaign’s reps to be the official speaker for Ron.” But, Benton said, “it just shows that when every single ounce of energy counts … phones and grassroots organizing is really best left to the campaign and the people that Ron’s picked to do that.”
Increasingly, though, outside groups are not always heeding that advice. And there’s not much the campaigns can do about it, because – even though the super PACs often are run by close allies of the candidate – outside groups and campaigns are legally barred from strategic coordination.
Since last week, Federal Election Commission records show, the super PAC supporting Romney’s presidential campaign, Restore Our Future, has spent about $215,000 on phone banking in Florida. That’s a departure for the juggernaut group, which has devoted the overwhelmingly majority of its $17 million (and counting) of spending to massive airtime buys for brutal negative ads like those that sunk Gingrich in Iowa.
The super PAC backing Santorum’s presidential campaign, Red White and Blue Fund, has reported spending more than $340,000 on a phone-banking operation it started during the South Carolina primary. It’s placed 1.5 million so-called “voter identification” calls in Florida, and is also targeting Florida voters with three direct mail pieces, touting him as – among other things – “the right choice for Florida Republicans.” And it’s planning to release a memo this week laying out a path through which Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator who’s trailing Romney and Gingrich in polls, can compete for the nomination — precisely the kind of thing that campaigns often do to try to influence media coverage.
But the super PAC supporting Gingrich, Winning Our Future, has perhaps the most ambitious organizing plans. While it’s only reported spending about $240,000 on phone banking – a tiny fraction of the $6 million it’s spent mostly on ads attacking Romney – it has trumpeted its intention to build a shadow campaign of sorts to boost the former House Speaker. It plans to set up field operations and hire state directors in Florida, Nevada, Minnesota, Arizona and California, and has begun purchasing voter files and courting the state operations built by the now-aborted presidential campaign of Texas Gov. Rick Perry.
The idea is to fill a void in those states, where Gingrich’s campaign has very little in the way of on-the-ground organization, because it was focusing on South Carolina as a firewall and has struggled to raise cash, at least compared to Romney, a former Massachusetts governor. Winning Our Future, on the other hand, got a second $5 million check from Las Vegas casino mogul and longtime booster Sheldon Adelson after Gingrich’s surprisingly strong win in South Carolina.
“We’re prepared to do what’s necessary and do what it takes to achieve our goal, which is to get Newt Gingrich elected,” said Rick Tyler, a top Winning Our Future strategist, explaining the group is hiring grassroots organizers and planning more phone-banking in upcoming states. “We’re not going to leave any aspect, any tool of campaigning, on the shelf.”
But Dave Carney, who served as a top strategist for Gingrich’s campaign before jumping to Perry’s, said super PACs lack both the lead time and organizational muscle to build effective ground organizations. That’s in contrast to unions, which have worked for years to build and hone effective third party operations that are deployed for Democratic candidates.
“I just can’t see how that’s a very efficient use of resources, but it’s the Wild Wild West out there right now and these super PACs are raising lots of money and experimenting with new things,” said Carney.
The biggest of the super PACs that supported Perry, Make Us Great Again, which was run by a close Carney associate, spent nearly $4 million on ads and direct mail supporting Perry.
“I don’t think they made much difference one way or another,” he said. “We asked [big donors] not to give to any of the super PACs. We felt they would be a distraction,” pointing out that GOP presidential candidates have been asked to answer for controversial tactics from the super PACs supporting them.
Romney, in the days before the South Carolina primary, said “the whole idea of the PACs becoming larger than the campaigns themselves is a very bad idea.” And he and Gingrich have both distanced themselves from super PAC ads attacking the other, even as both have clearly benefited.
But the same plausible deniability actually hurts outside groups’ ability to set up ground operations, said a GOP super PAC operative who ran a group in 2010 that tried – and failed – to supplement its ads with robust grassroots organizing.
“No one is going to volunteer for you. They volunteer for candidates. They don’t volunteer for third party groups,” said the operative, who is active in the presidential race. “That means that you have to hire a lot of people, or, in the case of door to door stuff, you have to contract with a firm that hires a bunch of temp workers to go out and do it. I can tell you from my own experience that attempting to executive on-the-ground organizing is incredibly difficult as a third party group.”
It’s complicated further by the election rules barring coordination between the campaigns and outside groups, said Jason Torchinsky, a GOP election lawyer who was general counsel for Rudy Giuliani’s 2008 presidential campaign and is advising a super PAC backing a 2012 presidential candidate.
With advertising, campaigns and outside groups can figure out what one another are doing by consulting spending reports with details of buys that each is required to disclose in close to real time. With on-the-ground organizing, it’s tougher to determine quickly who’s doing what, while staying within the bounds of the rules, said Torchinsky.
And, he said “the lawyers have scared everybody into understanding the potential problems the coordination rules pose for the campaigns and the super PACs, and the donors. And I think they’ve done a pretty good job of getting everybody to respect the boundaries and the rules.”
Some campaign committees may be “frustrated” by super PACs “because they can’t control them or tell them what to do, conceded Abe Niederhauser, an official with Endorse Liberty, the biggest of the super PACs boosting Paul.
While Niederhauser said his group has tried to avoid stepping on the campaign’s toes “by occupying the digital space where they haven’t done a whole lot,” he conceded there’s no way to know if “we’re being complementary” to the Paul campaign’s strategy.
“I hope so,” Niederhauser said.
Tags: campaign finance, Congress, Crossroads, First Amendment, lobbying, PAC money, Super PAC, The Best Government Money Can Buy?
Seattle Post: Casino boss doubles down on Newt Gingrich
Tuesday, January 24th, 2012 The $10 million contribution, reportedly the largest single giver donation in the history of presidential politics, has revitalized Newt Gingrich’s campaign.
Seattle Post
Posted in General Information | No Responses »Seattle Post
The family of Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson is putting its second $5 million cash infusion into a “SuperPAC” supporting former House Speaker Newt Gingrich for the Republican presidential nomination.
Jon Ralston of the Las Vegas Sun, who breaks most political stories in Nevada, reports that $5 million will come from Dr. Miriam Adelson. Sheldon Adelson gave the first $5 million, a $3.4 million chunk of which was spent in the South Carolina primary.
The Adelsons have virtually dealt Gingrich back into the presidential race.
The $5 million donations — largest by a single giver in the history of presidential politics — were made possible by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 corporations-are-people “Citizens United” ruling.
Under campaign rules, the Adelsons could legally give $5,000 to Gingrich, or perhaps hit up friends and “bundle” $100,000 or $200,000 in donations. With the SuperPACs, supposedly independent of the candidate, they can made a thousand-times-greater donation.
The Gingrich SuperPAC is entitled Winning Our Future. Mitt Romney’s SuperPAC has spent weeks advertising for the Jan. 31st Florida primary, where voters are already casting advance ballots.
Winning Our Future has shelled out $354,000 for a TV blitz in the Tampa area.
Sheldon Adelson became friends with Gingrich when he was building the Venetian, and trying (successfully) to keep the culinary workers union from organizing casino workers.
Jon Ralston of the Las Vegas Sun, who breaks most political stories in Nevada, reports that $5 million will come from Dr. Miriam Adelson. Sheldon Adelson gave the first $5 million, a $3.4 million chunk of which was spent in the South Carolina primary.
The Adelsons have virtually dealt Gingrich back into the presidential race.
The $5 million donations — largest by a single giver in the history of presidential politics — were made possible by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 corporations-are-people “Citizens United” ruling.
Under campaign rules, the Adelsons could legally give $5,000 to Gingrich, or perhaps hit up friends and “bundle” $100,000 or $200,000 in donations. With the SuperPACs, supposedly independent of the candidate, they can made a thousand-times-greater donation.
The Gingrich SuperPAC is entitled Winning Our Future. Mitt Romney’s SuperPAC has spent weeks advertising for the Jan. 31st Florida primary, where voters are already casting advance ballots.
Winning Our Future has shelled out $354,000 for a TV blitz in the Tampa area.
Sheldon Adelson became friends with Gingrich when he was building the Venetian, and trying (successfully) to keep the culinary workers union from organizing casino workers.
Tags: campaign finance, finance reform, First Amendment, PAC money, politics, Super PAC, Supreme Court, The Best Government Money Can Buy?
LA Times: ‘Super PACs’ dominate the political landscape
Thursday, January 19th, 2012Even the GOP candidates whom the groups are supporting now denounce their expanded influence in South Carolina and beyond.
Los Angeles TimesTrevor Potter is an unlikely repeat guest for a late-night comedy show. As the former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, the courtly Washington lawyer is a leading expert on campaign finance law — not the kind of material that generates a lot of laughs.
So the fact that he’s appeared seven times on “The Colbert Report” in the last year, helping host Stephen Colbert set up his own “super PAC” as part of a mischievous political parody, underscores an unexpected development in the 2012 presidential race:
Super PACs have seized the zeitgeist.
An indirect outgrowth of the Supreme Court ruling in the 2010 Citizens United case, the independent political groups have mushroomed in the last year. They are now dominating not just the action in key primary states such as South Carolina, but the political conversation. In the last month, the number of Google searches for the term “super PAC” was about five times higher than the last year’s monthly average.
Spending by such organizations has exceeded $27 million already this year, according to the FEC, much of it going to biting television ads. Pummeled by super PACs aligned with their rivals, the Republican presidential contenders are now loudly denouncing their influence.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said in recent days that all of the candidates wished the outside organizations would disappear and that their outsized sway was “a very bad idea.”
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was forced to disavow an error-riddled documentary aired by a super PAC run by his former aides, while he and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum have had to defend themselves against attacks by Restore Our Future, a pro-Romney super PAC. At a campaign stop in Columbia, S.C., this week, Santorum accused Romney of sending “his henchmen” to spread disinformation.
The complaints mark a sharp turnabout for Republicans, who had largely heralded the Citizens United decision, which allowed unlimited corporate and union spending on campaigns. (The campaigns themselves remain under strict fundraising limits.)
The candidates are not opposed to unlimited fundraising but, once confronted with how the decision is playing out, have blamed one another, not the court.
“This particular approach, I think, has nothing to do with the Citizens United case,” Gingrich said on MSNBC this month. “It has to do with a bunch of millionaires getting together to run a negative campaign, and Gov. Romney refusing to call them off.”
Most of the major super PACs are run by longtime associates of the candidates, but their ostensible independence allows them access to the unlimited donations. That has led to eye-popping contributions by billionaires such as casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, a Gingrich backer, and mutual fund investor Foster Friess, who supports Santorum. Romney’s super PAC has been fueled in part by former colleagues from Bain Capital.
In South Carolina, super PACs have dropped $6.9 million on TV ads scheduled to run through Saturday’s primary, compared with $5.4 million spent on television by the candidates, according to a campaign source familiar with the buys.
“We have never seen anything like this in terms of the amount of money being raised and spent,” Potter said. “The scale of it is the surprise. They are spending more than the candidates are.”
Critics view the groups as essentially an end-run around campaign contribution limits. Colbert — Potter’s frequent host — highlighted the loopholes in the system last week when he declared his candidacy for “president of the United States of South Carolina.” With a figurative wink, he handed off control of his super PAC to fellow Comedy Central host Jon Stewart, renaming it the Definitely Not Coordinating With Stephen Colbert Super PAC.
The group is running an ad urging South Carolinians to vote for businessman Herman Cain — who dropped out of the race but is still on the ballot — as a proxy show of support for Colbert. Colbert, who is not on the ballot and separately called for the Cain strategy, suggested Tuesday that he and Stewart “have developed some kind of psychic-twin connection, where one feels what the other is experiencing.”
Outside groups played a role in political campaigns before Citizens United – perhaps most famously in 2004, when a group of Vietnam War-era Swift boat veterans financed largely by wealthy Texans ran ads questioning the military service of Democratic nominee Sen. John F. Kerry. But they operated as so-called 527 organizations — politically active tax-exempt groups that could not expressly advocate for the election or the defeat of a candidate. Groups that wanted to be more explicit in their support had to register as political action committees and could only accept donations of up to $5,000.
That changed two years ago, when a federal court of appeals ruled in a case called Speechnow.org vs. FEC that individual contributions to political advocacy groups could not be limited. The court cited the majority opinion in Citizens United, which concluded that independent spending does not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.
After the Speechnow ruling, the FEC created a new category for such political groups, bestowing them with the ungainly handle “independent expenditure-only committees.” A reporter for Roll Call, Eliza Newlin Carney, dubbed them “super PACs” in an early write-up.
Election law attorney Michael Toner said the moniker had increased the spotlight on their activities.
“It’s certainly a cooler name” than 527 organization, Toner said. “‘Super PAC’ — who can’t be intrigued by that?”
David Keating, the president of Speechnow.org, the group that brought the case that triggered the creation of super PACs, is unfazed by the controversy that has raged around their proliferation.
“The 1st Amendment is written to protect speech, and it doesn’t say that everyone is going to have the same-size megaphone,” he said.
He does have one complaint, however: “I think it would have been much better to call them ‘Speechnow PACs.’”
Tags: campaign finance, Congress, finance reform, First Amendment, Obama, PAC money, politics, Super PAC, Supreme Court, The Best Government Money Can Buy?
ABC News: Super PACs: Super Powerful, Super Secret and Super Confusing
Saturday, January 14th, 2012 Super PACs – given the superlative for their ability to raise unlimited amounts of money and spend as much as they want – have become an element of the 2012 presidential race because of a Supreme Court ruling two years ago that allowed their creation.
Now they’re getting even more scrutiny because of faux right-wing super pundit Stephen Colbert, who is teasing some sort of presidential bid by relinquishing control of his own (real) super PAC.
ABC
Posted in General Information | No Responses »Now they’re getting even more scrutiny because of faux right-wing super pundit Stephen Colbert, who is teasing some sort of presidential bid by relinquishing control of his own (real) super PAC.
ABC
Newt Gingrich blames them for his downfall. They’ve spent twice as much money on ads in South Carolina than the candidates have themselves. And they’re not going anywhere.
Super PACs – given the superlative for their ability to raise unlimited amounts of money and spend as much as they want – have become an element of the 2012 presidential race because of a Supreme Court ruling two years ago that allowed their creation. Now they’re getting even more scrutiny because of faux right-wing super pundit Stephen Colbert, who is teasing some sort of presidential bid by relinquishing control of his own (real) super PAC.
Colbert doesn’t have to try that hard to make fun of the role of money in politics. The rules that govern super PACs are hilarious.
Take the regulation that forbids candidates from “coordinating” with super PACs that support them, never mind that many of these super PACs are run by former aides and allies of the candidates themselves. Who’s to decide what constitutes coordination?
Mitt Romney explained in December: “I’m not allowed to communicate with a super PAC in any way, shape or form. My goodness, if we coordinate in any way whatsoever, we go to the big house.”
That’s not to say that Romney disavows the super PAC backing him, Restore Our Future. Thanks to the negative ads paid for by the group, Gingrich fell from first place in the polls before Iowa to fourth place in the vote.
For his part, Gingrich says that as long as he makes his message public, he knows his friends at the Winning Our Future PAC will hear it.
In a statement Friday, Gingrich said: “I am calling for the Winning Our Future Super-PAC supporting me to either edit its ‘King of Bain’ advertisement and movie to remove its inaccuracies, or to pull it off the air and off the internet entirely.”
So, message received? John Grimaldi, a spokesman for Winning Our Future, said Gingrich didn’t run afoul of the rule banning coordination because he was “making a specific comment” publicly, although he said the PAC is “standing by our premise” in the movie Gingrich cited, which is about Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital.
Confused yet?
It’s no surprise that Colbert is mocking these rules. In his Thursday-night show, Colbert cheekily signed over his PAC to his 11 p.m. counterpart, Jon Stewart, as they spoke with Trevor Potter – Colbert’s lawyer who is a former Federal Election Commission chairman – about how they can and can’t communicate.
Stewart asked Potter if he can hire Colbert’s super PAC staff to run ads against opponents. Yes, Potter said, “as long as they have no knowledge of Stephen’s plans.”
“From now on, I will just have to talk about my plans on my television show and just take the risk that you might watch it,” Colbert said.
Maybe it would be funnier if it weren’t entirely true.
Robert Maguire, a PAC researcher at the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, D.C., said it’s unlikely that Colbert’s stunt will change the way super PACs try to influence the 2012 election, but that it’s a brilliant effort to educate the public about one of the shadier elements of campaign finance.
“He’s doing it in a way that’s entertaining, and I think that people will catch on and start to understand that there’s free speech, and then there’s this,” Maguire said.
The PACs have already spent $7 million in South Carolina, more than twice what the candidates have spent. Donors to campaigns are limited to how much they can give per cycle, while super PACs can take and spend as much as they want.
And the rich contributors who helped boost major super PACs, such as Restore Our Future (for Mitt Romney) or Make Us Great Again (Rick Perry), will be anonymous until the end of January, thanks to another weird trick that super PACs use to sway voters without revealing too much about themselves.
In an odd-numbered year (or a non-election year), the groups don’t have to report their fundraising totals and donors every month. Instead, they can do so once every three months. That might seem like an arbitrary difference, but it means that the public won’t know who contributed to which super PACs until the end of January, after voters pick a candidate in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida.
“The people voting in these states won’t know by the time they’re voting who’s giving the money,” Maguire said.
Super PACs – given the superlative for their ability to raise unlimited amounts of money and spend as much as they want – have become an element of the 2012 presidential race because of a Supreme Court ruling two years ago that allowed their creation. Now they’re getting even more scrutiny because of faux right-wing super pundit Stephen Colbert, who is teasing some sort of presidential bid by relinquishing control of his own (real) super PAC.
Colbert doesn’t have to try that hard to make fun of the role of money in politics. The rules that govern super PACs are hilarious.
Take the regulation that forbids candidates from “coordinating” with super PACs that support them, never mind that many of these super PACs are run by former aides and allies of the candidates themselves. Who’s to decide what constitutes coordination?
Mitt Romney explained in December: “I’m not allowed to communicate with a super PAC in any way, shape or form. My goodness, if we coordinate in any way whatsoever, we go to the big house.”
That’s not to say that Romney disavows the super PAC backing him, Restore Our Future. Thanks to the negative ads paid for by the group, Gingrich fell from first place in the polls before Iowa to fourth place in the vote.
For his part, Gingrich says that as long as he makes his message public, he knows his friends at the Winning Our Future PAC will hear it.
In a statement Friday, Gingrich said: “I am calling for the Winning Our Future Super-PAC supporting me to either edit its ‘King of Bain’ advertisement and movie to remove its inaccuracies, or to pull it off the air and off the internet entirely.”
So, message received? John Grimaldi, a spokesman for Winning Our Future, said Gingrich didn’t run afoul of the rule banning coordination because he was “making a specific comment” publicly, although he said the PAC is “standing by our premise” in the movie Gingrich cited, which is about Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital.
Confused yet?
It’s no surprise that Colbert is mocking these rules. In his Thursday-night show, Colbert cheekily signed over his PAC to his 11 p.m. counterpart, Jon Stewart, as they spoke with Trevor Potter – Colbert’s lawyer who is a former Federal Election Commission chairman – about how they can and can’t communicate.
Stewart asked Potter if he can hire Colbert’s super PAC staff to run ads against opponents. Yes, Potter said, “as long as they have no knowledge of Stephen’s plans.”
“From now on, I will just have to talk about my plans on my television show and just take the risk that you might watch it,” Colbert said.
Maybe it would be funnier if it weren’t entirely true.
Robert Maguire, a PAC researcher at the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, D.C., said it’s unlikely that Colbert’s stunt will change the way super PACs try to influence the 2012 election, but that it’s a brilliant effort to educate the public about one of the shadier elements of campaign finance.
“He’s doing it in a way that’s entertaining, and I think that people will catch on and start to understand that there’s free speech, and then there’s this,” Maguire said.
The PACs have already spent $7 million in South Carolina, more than twice what the candidates have spent. Donors to campaigns are limited to how much they can give per cycle, while super PACs can take and spend as much as they want.
And the rich contributors who helped boost major super PACs, such as Restore Our Future (for Mitt Romney) or Make Us Great Again (Rick Perry), will be anonymous until the end of January, thanks to another weird trick that super PACs use to sway voters without revealing too much about themselves.
In an odd-numbered year (or a non-election year), the groups don’t have to report their fundraising totals and donors every month. Instead, they can do so once every three months. That might seem like an arbitrary difference, but it means that the public won’t know who contributed to which super PACs until the end of January, after voters pick a candidate in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida.
“The people voting in these states won’t know by the time they’re voting who’s giving the money,” Maguire said.
Tags: campaign finance, Congress, finance reform, First Amendment, lobbying, PAC money, politics, Super PAC, Supreme Court, The Best Government Money Can Buy?
Washington Post: Super PACs alter the dynamics of fundraising
Monday, January 9th, 2012“It’s just proven to be a vehicle for getting around contribution limits,” said Michael Malbin, a scholar at the Campaign Finance Institute, which advocates for regulations encouraging small donors. “It’s made for people who’ve already maxed out.”
Two years after the Supreme Court decided the landmark Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case, it is becoming clear that the super PACs created under the new rules will act as a counterweight to a rise in online grass-roots fundraising. The online efforts, which tend to attract small donations, have been driving unconventional contenders in the GOP field, including Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.) and Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.). (Bachmann dropped out of the race last week after a sixth-place finish in Iowa.)
By contrast, super PACs, because they can pull in donations well above the $2,500 limit on donations to campaigns, are boosting establishment candidates who already rely on rich donors.
The Citizens United decision created a cascade of lower-court rulings, allowing for the creation of super PACs that can accept huge donations from individuals and corporations. Several of the groups active in this year’s race have already accepted many donations over $1 million from one person.
The advantage is likely to grow as the candidates move to the next round of primaries and caucuses, where they will be competing in bigger states and relying more on television advertising to reach voters.
Spending on television ads by groups independent of the campaigns is already five times what it was during the entire Republican primary season four years ago, according to estimates from Kantar Media/CMAG.
Romney has received $5 million in help from the super PAC founded by three former aides from his 2008 bid.
A group aiding Perry has spent $3.8 million on ads backing him, and Huntsman has benefited from $2.5 million worth of ads from a super PAC.
Combined, those three candidates are receiving 80 percent of all super PAC spending.
The super PACs helping Romney and Perry have spent more on television ads than the candidates themselves in recent weeks, according to Kantar’s estimates. Huntsman’s campaign just launched his first ad.
Paul and Bachmann received more than 60 percent of their money from donors giving less than $200. A super PAC helping Paul has spent $735,000 on Internet advertising. And a group that initially announced it was helping Bachmann went on to run $500,000 in ads for Romney.
While Newt Gingrich’s campaign was struggling in the summer, he relied more on smaller donors. As he gained steam, he received help from a super PAC founded by former aides. But the group’s late start appears to have been a problem: It has reported $1 million in spending so far.
Rick Santorum has benefited from about $755,000 in spending from two super PACs backing him.
Just as the Internet allowed candidates to raise money from small donors faster than they had through direct mail, the same is true for super PACs.
“You make a phone call and get a million dollars,” Malbin said.
The new wave of spending has also allowed some candidates to benefit from negative advertising while avoiding the blame for attacking fellow Republicans.
Campaign finance regulations passed by Congress in 2002 have a “stand by your ad” provision requiring candidates to appear on screen stating their approval of the spot. But rules prevent super PACs from coordinating the campaign operations, allowing candidates to say the ads are out of their control.
“It changes the dynamic for candidates who are more reliant on small donors,” said a Paul strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to talk freely. “You have two tiers of candidates: those with super PACs that can have negative messaging without having to take the heat for it, and those who have to do it themselves.”
Tags: campaign finance, Congress, First Amendment, lobbying, PAC money, Super PAC, Supreme Court, The Best Government Money Can Buy?
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Stephen Colbert is laughing at the U.S. Supreme Court. He started Thursday night on his show, when he transferred control of his super PAC to his mentor, business partner and friend Jon Stewart. Here is the clip:
It’s a great set piece of comedic theater underscored by a serious argument: Justice Anthony Kennedy, joined by a majority on the Supreme Court, issued a ruling in 2010 rewriting the nation’s campaign-finance rules that is, on its face, pretty absurd.
The argument is actually worth exploring in some detail. Since the 1970s, many lawyers and judges have argued, quite reasonably, that the First Amendment’s right to free speech should permit anyone — an individual, a corporation or a union — to spend as much money as desired to influence elections. This argument posits that this sacred right to self-expression around elections simply trumps the danger that the large sums of money could corrupt the political process. It is a balancing test — the First Amendment on one side, the public interest in avoiding corruption on the other — and reasonable people can reach different conclusions about where the fulcrum should be placed.
But that is not what Kennedy and the Supreme Court did in the Citizens United case. In the majority opinion, the court agreed with past court rulings that the threat of corruption trumps the First Amendment rights of a person, corporation or union to give unlimited amounts of money to politicians for use in campaigns. But then Kennedy and the high court created a huge carve-out based on a factual statement: “We now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.”
In other words, Kennedy stated that if a wealthy individual, corporation or union spends its money to support its candidate independently, the First Amendment does not have to be more important than the threat of corruption. Rather, “corruption or the appearance of corruption” is simply no longer a threat. Candidates would no longer feel the need to repay their contributors with favors, and contributors would no longer feel they could influence the candidates with the money. The key word here is independent. And as I write in this week’s issue of TIME, available online to subscribers, this word, in the 2012 presidential campaign, does not really mean in practice what it seems to mean on paper.
It all comes down to the legal interpretation of independence that has been proffered by the Federal Election Commission. This regulatory body has decided that candidates can be considered independent of a supporting group as long as the candidate does not privately communicate with that group about the way it spends its money. That’s it. If the candidate appears at the group’s fundraisers to speak, the group is still independent. If the candidate publicly approves of the work the group is doing, the group is still independent. If the group is run entirely by former staff and close friends of the candidate, the group is still independent. If the group’s leaders tell donors they will spend all their money in a way that coincides with the candidate’s own public strategy, the group is still independent. If the candidate slips up, as Romney has done, and suggests publicly that a donation to the group is a donation to himself, the group is still independent.
And so we get the case of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert and the Definitely Not Coordinating with Stephen Colbert Super PAC, which has been established with the clear intent of showing how much coordination is still allowed without triggering the legal definition of coordination. It is a grand experiment. And it clearly mocks the logic the Supreme Court and the Federal Election Commission have constructed. If anyone thinks Stephen Colbert will not take note of, or be grateful for, contributions to the Definitely Not Coordinating with Stephen Colbert Super PAC, they can step forward now. As Rick Tyler, who is running the Newt Gingrich super PAC, told me for my TIME article on the topic, “It’s a big shell game.”
UPDATE: The Supreme Court’s reasoning is about to be further put to the test. Tyler, who runs Winning Our Future, previously told me that he takes his strategic cues from Gingrich’s public statements. Today in Florida, Gingrich called on Winning Our Future to pull its King of Bain attacks on Romney. The Los Angeles Times reports, “Rick Tyler, a spokesman for the PAC, responded that he was ‘aware of and share the speaker’s concerns about accuracy’ and promised a more thorough response would be forthcoming.” If Tyler does what he said he would do and follows Gingrich’s lead, there will be little doubt that Gingrich effectively controls Winning Our Future, even if he legally is not coordinating with the group.
Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2012/01/13/stephen-colbert-vs-the-supreme-court-testing-the-limits-of-super-pac-coordination/#ixzz1n6t84jrz
Stephen Colbert vs. the Supreme Court: Testing the Limits of Super-PAC Coordination
Yuri Gripas / Reuters
Stephen Colbert greets a jubilant crowd outside the headquarters of the Federal Election Commission after the FEC approved his proposal to establish a so-called Super PAC in Washington on June 30, 2011.
It’s a great set piece of comedic theater underscored by a serious argument: Justice Anthony Kennedy, joined by a majority on the Supreme Court, issued a ruling in 2010 rewriting the nation’s campaign-finance rules that is, on its face, pretty absurd.
The argument is actually worth exploring in some detail. Since the 1970s, many lawyers and judges have argued, quite reasonably, that the First Amendment’s right to free speech should permit anyone — an individual, a corporation or a union — to spend as much money as desired to influence elections. This argument posits that this sacred right to self-expression around elections simply trumps the danger that the large sums of money could corrupt the political process. It is a balancing test — the First Amendment on one side, the public interest in avoiding corruption on the other — and reasonable people can reach different conclusions about where the fulcrum should be placed.
But that is not what Kennedy and the Supreme Court did in the Citizens United case. In the majority opinion, the court agreed with past court rulings that the threat of corruption trumps the First Amendment rights of a person, corporation or union to give unlimited amounts of money to politicians for use in campaigns. But then Kennedy and the high court created a huge carve-out based on a factual statement: “We now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.”
In other words, Kennedy stated that if a wealthy individual, corporation or union spends its money to support its candidate independently, the First Amendment does not have to be more important than the threat of corruption. Rather, “corruption or the appearance of corruption” is simply no longer a threat. Candidates would no longer feel the need to repay their contributors with favors, and contributors would no longer feel they could influence the candidates with the money. The key word here is independent. And as I write in this week’s issue of TIME, available online to subscribers, this word, in the 2012 presidential campaign, does not really mean in practice what it seems to mean on paper.
It all comes down to the legal interpretation of independence that has been proffered by the Federal Election Commission. This regulatory body has decided that candidates can be considered independent of a supporting group as long as the candidate does not privately communicate with that group about the way it spends its money. That’s it. If the candidate appears at the group’s fundraisers to speak, the group is still independent. If the candidate publicly approves of the work the group is doing, the group is still independent. If the group is run entirely by former staff and close friends of the candidate, the group is still independent. If the group’s leaders tell donors they will spend all their money in a way that coincides with the candidate’s own public strategy, the group is still independent. If the candidate slips up, as Romney has done, and suggests publicly that a donation to the group is a donation to himself, the group is still independent.
And so we get the case of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert and the Definitely Not Coordinating with Stephen Colbert Super PAC, which has been established with the clear intent of showing how much coordination is still allowed without triggering the legal definition of coordination. It is a grand experiment. And it clearly mocks the logic the Supreme Court and the Federal Election Commission have constructed. If anyone thinks Stephen Colbert will not take note of, or be grateful for, contributions to the Definitely Not Coordinating with Stephen Colbert Super PAC, they can step forward now. As Rick Tyler, who is running the Newt Gingrich super PAC, told me for my TIME article on the topic, “It’s a big shell game.”
UPDATE: The Supreme Court’s reasoning is about to be further put to the test. Tyler, who runs Winning Our Future, previously told me that he takes his strategic cues from Gingrich’s public statements. Today in Florida, Gingrich called on Winning Our Future to pull its King of Bain attacks on Romney. The Los Angeles Times reports, “Rick Tyler, a spokesman for the PAC, responded that he was ‘aware of and share the speaker’s concerns about accuracy’ and promised a more thorough response would be forthcoming.” If Tyler does what he said he would do and follows Gingrich’s lead, there will be little doubt that Gingrich effectively controls Winning Our Future, even if he legally is not coordinating with the group.
Related Topics: jon stewart, rick tyler, stephen colbert, Supreme Court, 2012 Election, Campaign Finance, Elections, Media
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Campaign Finance February 22, 2012Among Romney Super PAC’s Corporate Donors, Big Names Not All Easy to Spot
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MomentoMoriFrom the article: “Stephen Colbert is laughing…”, “… it clearly mocks…”, “…comedic theater…”
It’s got to bother you on some level that comedians are doing a better job at journalism than journalists are. Which I’m assuming is why you felt the need to constantly reinforce that Stewart and Colbert are just semi-serious court jesters.
After all, it’s not the comedian who coined the word ‘truthiness’ that had to ask his audience whether or not he should be reporting facts over repeating lies. Unless the NY Times is hiring comedians instead of reporters.
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PollardtyI remember Colbert being critiqued as “not funny” at the White House Correspondents Association dinner. I’m guessing the Supreme Court won’t get the joke either.
- charlieromeobravoheh. The heck with that, Colbert’s performance at the WHCA dinner was hysterical. It was also one of the bravest examples of speaking truth to power that I can think of. It’s a wonder that Colbert can walk upright with a sack that large. That’s why I’m looking forward to the next couple of months. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are going to give America the most entertaining civics lesson seen in years and Colbert will deliver it without ever losing that irreverent smile.
- jmacThe look on Bush’s face was priceless. He finally got it. It took him awhile.
- It was, truly, one of the most unbelievable moments in performance art history. I think it’s important to not marginalize these guys as something as simple (and vital) as the court jester. This is high level & high concept perfomance art…. there’s a reason so many Republicans don’t get that he’s lampooning it all. Court jesters provide interesting satire and social commentary, but performance art can impact all of culture, and truly affect change. My two cents.
- PollardtyIt was so funny that I laughed ’til cried…I’m still crying.
- jmacIt’s way over Alito’s head. But maybe it will keep if from attending any more State of the Unions and shaking his head when Obama says something he doesn’t like. He might as well have yelled out “liar”.
- nflfoghornA court that IS a collective joke* won’t get it. *right-wing faction only
- apr2563The best was the Villagers “shocked response”.
- Paul, no not that oneScherer was one of the very few who “got it” or as Colbert would call him “An it getter”. Cohen at the WAPO had the classic “I’m a funny guy, everyone tells me so, and Colbert wasn’t funny” column.
- PollardtyI may be wrong but, wasn’t Michael Scherer one of them?
- kbanginmotownapr: The MSM has such a high opinion of itself, that being told it’s not wearing clothes is shocking indeed! Paul: Cohen’s column was priceless. It’s like Cohen was channeling Bruno Kirby in “Good Morning, Vietnam!”“Sir, I know in my heart that I’m funny.”
- apr2563Actually, Michael was one of the few journalists who praised Colbert.show more
He got it.
http://www.salon.com/2006/05/0…So it’s no wonder that those journalists at the dinner seemed so uneasy in their seats. They had put on their tuxes to rub shoulders with the president. They were looking forward to spotting Valerie Plame and “American Idol’s” Ace Young at the Bloomberg party. They invited Colbert to speak for levity, not because they wanted to be criticized. As a tribe, we journalists are all, at heart, creatures of this silly conversation. We trade in talking points and consultant-speak. We too often depend on…
- jmac“They invited Colbert to speak for levity, …” I don’t think they had a clue who Colbert was. Many of his guest in the beginning didn’t have a clue. Many people thought he was actually a conservative. It’s giving them w-a-y too much credit to assume they hired him for “levity”.
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- deconstructivaComedians have a long history of analyzing the news and cutting thru the BS (Johnny Carson, etc.). Maybe Scherer can hit the DC comedy clubs’ amateur nights to sharpen his claws.
- Dan5404The first, to my knowledge, was the great Will Rogers. He could hold his own with any of today’s comedians. And, he didn’t pull any punches for either party.
- FredsDead“The Democrats and Republicans are equally corrupt — it’s only in the amount where the Republicans excel.” – Will Rogers
- MomentoMori“It began upon the following occasion. It is allowed on all hands, that the primitive way of breaking eggs, before we eat them, was upon the larger end; but his present majesty’s grandfather, while he was a boy, going to eat an egg, and breaking it according to the ancient practice, happened to cut one of his fingers. Whereupon the emperor his father published an edict, commanding all his subjects, upon great penalties, to break the smaller end of their eggs.” It’s much older than that. That’s from Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels c 1726
- D_BobNice to finally have an actual comedian in the race, to show them how it’s done. Plus, we’re getting an education in Super-PACs that might actually-possibly-maybe lead to some change in this cynical nonsense in the future. More than tell it like it is, Colbert is showing it like it is. Bravo. Hope he beats Mitts.
- grape_crushCompare/contrast: But then Kennedy and the High Court created a huge carve-out based on a factual statement: “We now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made byshow more
corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.”
to:
As Rick Tyler, who is running the Newt Gingrich Super PAC told me for my TIME article on the topic, “It’s a big shell game.”
Add to that the fact that these PACs are supporting politicians who have done favors for their contributors in the past or will likely do in the future, the SCOTUS judgment was horribly, even willingly,…
- shepherdwongIf we had any elite accountability in this society, John Roberts and Sam Alito would be impeached for every single utterance of the phrase “stare decisis” during their confirmation hearings. They’re bald-faced liars and perjurers. It’s not the appearance of corruption, it’s corruption writ large on the entire judicial edifice of our democracy. Every lawyer and judge in America should feel ashamed. As if.
- apr2563The really subtle message is the response by Potter (who is great by the way) and Stewart about the amount of money raised and by whom. It is secret.
Colbert and Potter have given us a civic lesson.
- cinPotter is hysterical; that sh!t-eating grin is plastered on his face the entire time he’s on the show. He is having the time of his life!
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- D_BobHis participation in Colbert’s efforts absolves him of all sins.
- After watching the clip where Colbert hands his Super PAC over to Jon Stewart I went to Google to see how this was being covered. I was surprised and very disappointed to find that almost every article ignored the satire and questions about the Citizens United ruling that this stunt raises. Thank you for taking on the true issue.
- apr2563Chris Matthews and some guests had a long discussion about the Colbert PAC today and thought his satire was great and he was doing more to educate than the MSM.
- TiamattyThis could end up getting very interesting. It’s certainly going to be funny. Stewart and Colbert are the pre-eminent political satirists of the day.
- apr2563If you watch the best journalists on tv, Stewart and Colbert, you would know Colbert has been taking on the Super Pacs for months.
Here is an example of how they do it:
Stewart takes down Gingrich regarding blacks and welfare..
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo….
- jmacPerry with an “a” Did he every find out how many votes he got?
- killerdrgnNope, the Iowa GOP counters just lumped them into Rick Perry’s votes.
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- jmacI gave money for that! Then Colbert made fun of me. Maybe I’ll send him another donation so he can skewer me again.
- richardbooseyWe are proving that you get the best government that money can buy. And if you can’t afford to bribe, er, contribute, to a PAC, then you don’t deserve to be heard.
- 53dash3Hey! The more the merrier! Hells bells, divil take the hind parts! Full speed ahead! Damn those torpedo(e)s, er, whatever!
Colbert for Our Fearless Lizard!
Sort of…
- bobcnToday Gingrich publicly issued orders to his super-pac: “This week, fact check organizations like The Washington Post and Politifact have ranked advertisements produced by Super-PACs supporting Governor Romney and myself as containing enormous inaccuracies,” Gingrich said in an e-mailed statement
to reporters. “I am calling for the Winning Our Future Super-PAC supporting me to either edit its ‘King of Bain’ advertisement and movie to remove its inaccuracies, or to pull it off the air and off the internet entirely.”
Coordination maybe??
- ERenger“Coordination maybe??” Legally, no. In reality, yes.
- JGsadly, everyone who’s commenting on this is educated and can ‘get’ satire and all that’s wrong with the “citizens united” decision. the rest of america, the masses, have the luxury of not getting it…and by luxury, I mean, if they don’t know what’s wrong about it, they can’t be conflicted about it. and let me tell you, it takes a lot of energy to know something is wrong and nothing (or almost nothing w/o the majority, i.e., the masses, clamoring for it) can be done about it. ignorance is bliss.
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cinWhy is the lamest-stream media ignoring Stephen? It’s a conspiracy, I say! The establishment must be shaking in its saddle shoes, otherwise every article on every site would be about Stephen Colbert, the great dispenser of truthiness! And if you don’t believe me, I’ll post videos of Stephen saying just that and then all your doubts will be dispelled! Only Stephen can save us now! My senile mother, my jobless college-graduate son, and my “special” brothers and sisters are all going to vote for Colbert. That makes at least six! Our next president, Stephen Colbert 2012!!!!!!!
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On Politics: The news, the people, the strategies
By Catalina Camia, USA TODAY
Updated 2011-06-30 6:17 PM
Updated at 2:49 p.m. ET
Stephen Colbert’s bid to launch a super PAC is no laughing matter, especially now that the comedian has won approval to raise unlimited campaign cash to influence the 2012 elections.
The Federal Election Commission today voted 5-1 to approve Colbert’s political action committee but with certain conditions. It gives him a shot at doing what political types such as Bush strategist Karl Rove and former Obama aide Bill Burton are already doing to finance TV ads — even if they are parodies on The Colbert Report — ahead of next year’s elections.
Colbert, who played it straight during the commission hearing, yukked it up with a crowd outside the FEC. “We won,” he said.”Thank you for standing with me for freedom,” Colbert said to cheers. “Today, we put liberty on layaway.”
He joked that he wasn’t making a statement about the evils of corporate America in campaigns, but wanted their money.
“I don’t accept the status quo,” Colbert joked, with a credit-card processing machine in hand. “I do accept Visa, Mastercard or American Express.”
The commission’s ruling narrowly interprets what the comedian and Viacom Inc., the parent company of Comedy Central, can do with Colbert’s super PAC.
Colbert sought a so-called media exemption that would allow him to use airtime, staff and other resources from his show on campaign activities such as TV ads without having to disclose any of those expenses as in-kind contributions from Viacom.
In an advisory opinion adopted by the commission today, the FEC said “some of Viacom’s activities would fall within the press exemption, others would not.”
Specifically, any ad produced for and shown on Colbert’s program would fall within the exemption and the costs incurred don’t have to be reported. But those Viacom-produced ads can’t be shown on other shows or networks, unless their costs are disclosed.
The FEC also said that the parent company’s administration and operation of the Colbert PAC would have to be reported “because these activities are not legitimate press functions.”
While Colbert’s super PAC started out as a parody of GOP presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty, it raised a real concern from watchdogs such as Democracy 21 and the Campaign Legal Center.
At issue is how corporations use their money for politics, stemming from a Supreme Court ruling last year that opened the floodgates to unlimited campaign funding by corporations, unions and wealthy individuals.
Democracy 21 and Campaign Legal Center argued Colbert’s super PAC could lead to a “radical evisceration” of campaign finance rules and the blurring of lines between politics and media.
For example, the watchdogs contend that politicians who appear on TV — such as former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and ex-GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, who now appear on Fox News — could use the resources of their networks to help their own political action committee.
Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, praised the “very narrow” ruling.
“In the course of dramatizing the campaign finance law’s problems in the way that Mr. Colbert dramatizes all problems, he almost opened up serious disclosure loopholes in campaign finance law,” Wertheimer said.
Tara Malloy of the Campaign Legal Center said the watchdog groups “wanted to prevent media companies from secretly subsidizing their commentators’ PACs under the guise of the media exemption.”
Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist with Public Citizen, said that “reason…more or less prevailed.”
Colbert was represented before the FEC by Trevor Potter, a campaign finance expert and former commission chairman. As president of the Campaign Legal Center, Potter recused himself from the group’s dealings on the Colbert case.
By the way, the slogan for Colbert’s super PAC: “Making a better tomorrow, tomorrow.” He tweeted before his FEC appearance that he’d reveal PAC stands for “Plastic And/Or Cash.”
See photos of: Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert’s bid to launch a super PAC is no laughing matter, especially now that the comedian has won approval to raise unlimited campaign cash to influence the 2012 elections.
The Federal Election Commission today voted 5-1 to approve Colbert’s political action committee but with certain conditions. It gives him a shot at doing what political types such as Bush strategist Karl Rove and former Obama aide Bill Burton are already doing to finance TV ads — even if they are parodies on The Colbert Report — ahead of next year’s elections.
By Mark Wilson, Getty Images
He joked that he wasn’t making a statement about the evils of corporate America in campaigns, but wanted their money.
“I don’t accept the status quo,” Colbert joked, with a credit-card processing machine in hand. “I do accept Visa, Mastercard or American Express.”
The commission’s ruling narrowly interprets what the comedian and Viacom Inc., the parent company of Comedy Central, can do with Colbert’s super PAC.
Colbert sought a so-called media exemption that would allow him to use airtime, staff and other resources from his show on campaign activities such as TV ads without having to disclose any of those expenses as in-kind contributions from Viacom.
In an advisory opinion adopted by the commission today, the FEC said “some of Viacom’s activities would fall within the press exemption, others would not.”
Specifically, any ad produced for and shown on Colbert’s program would fall within the exemption and the costs incurred don’t have to be reported. But those Viacom-produced ads can’t be shown on other shows or networks, unless their costs are disclosed.
The FEC also said that the parent company’s administration and operation of the Colbert PAC would have to be reported “because these activities are not legitimate press functions.”
While Colbert’s super PAC started out as a parody of GOP presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty, it raised a real concern from watchdogs such as Democracy 21 and the Campaign Legal Center.
At issue is how corporations use their money for politics, stemming from a Supreme Court ruling last year that opened the floodgates to unlimited campaign funding by corporations, unions and wealthy individuals.
Democracy 21 and Campaign Legal Center argued Colbert’s super PAC could lead to a “radical evisceration” of campaign finance rules and the blurring of lines between politics and media.
For example, the watchdogs contend that politicians who appear on TV — such as former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and ex-GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, who now appear on Fox News — could use the resources of their networks to help their own political action committee.
Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, praised the “very narrow” ruling.
“In the course of dramatizing the campaign finance law’s problems in the way that Mr. Colbert dramatizes all problems, he almost opened up serious disclosure loopholes in campaign finance law,” Wertheimer said.
Tara Malloy of the Campaign Legal Center said the watchdog groups “wanted to prevent media companies from secretly subsidizing their commentators’ PACs under the guise of the media exemption.”
Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist with Public Citizen, said that “reason…more or less prevailed.”
Colbert was represented before the FEC by Trevor Potter, a campaign finance expert and former commission chairman. As president of the Campaign Legal Center, Potter recused himself from the group’s dealings on the Colbert case.
By the way, the slogan for Colbert’s super PAC: “Making a better tomorrow, tomorrow.” He tweeted before his FEC appearance that he’d reveal PAC stands for “Plastic And/Or Cash.”
See photos of: Stephen Colbert
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314 comments
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Score: 0
SpeakUp
7:53 AM on June 30, 2011Hey now, PACs are the domain of the super wealthy, Big Corporations, and the elite. Can’t have the “common man” getting in on that action.
Score: -4
musicman10
8:08 AM on June 30, 2011What a buffoon. His ratings must have really tanked since Conan moved to 11-12am.
Score: 0
OtisCampbell
8:09 AM on June 30, 2011While him running as a joke can be funny, this would have huge repercussions. All the left/right channels that you don’t like could then promote their candidate even more than they do now.
Score: 0
gaptherockstar
8:11 AM on June 30, 2011The supreme court is a joke. Never thought I would say that in my lifetime but its a fact.
Score: 2
SisterMeg
8:16 AM on June 30, 2011Crazy like a fox. Sometimes it takes the jester to point out that the king has no clothes. Also, according to an episode at the beginning of his bid for a super PAC, he pointed out that with this power, he could raise loads of money and then run ads about any candidate, WITHOUT having the candidates permission. Who says he won’t skewer them all?
About Catalina Camia
Catalina Camia anchors the On Politics community. Catalina has focused on politics as a reporter or editor for much of her career. She was White House editor for USA TODAY during the 2008 presidential election and covered the GOP’s grip on Congress in the mid-1990s for The Dallas Morning News. She has also been a journalist at nearly every national political convention since 1992. Her interests include baseball, movies, travel and cooking. A native of San Francisco, she is a graduate of the University of Southern California.Follow @USATOnPolitics on Twitter
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 Newswire Washington Post Editorial: Ending secret money in politics Monday, February 20, 2012 NPR: White House And SuperPAC: How Close Is Too Close? Friday, February 17, 2012 POLITICO: Dems target non-profits, cite Rove Thursday, February 16, 2012 Los Angeles Times Editorial: Return of the DISCLOSE Act Wednesday, February 15, 2012 New York Times Editorial: Sunlight on Secret Donations Monday, February 13, 2012 New York Times Editorial: Another Campaign for Sale Wednesday, February 08, 2012 The Hill Op-ed by Fred Wertheimer: Citizens United more radical than realized Tuesday, February 07, 2012 New York Times Editorial: Congress moves on Ethics Saturday, February 04, 2012 Washington Post Editorial: The Senate tightens up insider trading Saturday, February 04, 2012 Salon Interview with Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer Saturday, January 28, 2012 Tampa Bay Times: Super PACs reshaping 2012 presidential campaign Friday, January 27, 2012 Huffington Post: Disclose Act: Super PAC Transparency Legislation To Be Introduced By House Democrats Thursday, January 26, 2012 | What’s New On Understanding the Impact of the Citizens United Decision on Campaign Contributions to Super PACs Tuesday, February 21, 2012 By Fred Wertheimer On January 21, 2010, the Supreme Court in a misguided and destructive decision ruled in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that the longstanding ban on corporate expenditures in federal campaigns was unconstitutional.President, Democracy 21 In reaching this decision, the Court unleashed a flood of unlimited contributions into federal elections through Super PACs and other independent spending entities, and thereby unleashed the corruption of our government. Recently the argument has been made that the Citizens United decision had little responsibility for the torrent of unlimited individual contributions being spent by Super PACs to influence the 2012 elections. This argument is wrong. A little history is in order. Double-Duty Donors, Part II: Large Numbers of Wealthy Donors Hit Legal Limit on Giving to Candidates, Turn to Presidential Super PACs in Continuing Trend Tuesday, February 21, 2012    Erin Kesler, Democracy 21: 202-355-9600 or ekesler@democracy21.org David Vance, Campaign Legal Center: 202-736-2200 or dvance@campaignlegalcenter.org Viveca Novak, Center for Responsive Politics: 202-354-0111 or vnovak@crp.org Super PACs supporting presidential candidates continue to take in six- and seven-figure contributions from individuals who also have given the legal maximum to the candidate’s campaign committee. During 2011, the super PAC supporting GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney pulled in contributions from 172 individuals who also gave the legal maximum to Romney’s campaign — 84 percent of Restore Our Future’s 205 donors. The double-givers included five individuals who gave $1 million to the super PAC: hedge fund titans Paul Singer, John Paulson and Julian Robertson, homebuilder Bob Perry and former Bain executive Edward Conard, according to a new analysis by Democracy 21, the Campaign Legal Center and the Center for Responsive Politics. On the other side of the aisle, the figures were less dramatic: 15 of the 55 individuals who donated to Priorities USA Action, the pro-Barack Obama super PAC formed by two of his former aides, maxed out to Obama’s campaign committee. Those 15 include Jeffrey Katzenberg, co-founder of DreamWorks Studios, who gave $2 million to Priorities USA Action. The number of people giving to both committees could increase now that Obama has given his blessing to the super PAC’s efforts, reversing his earlier stance. Democracy 21 Calls on Justice Department to Investigate Whether Candidate-Specific Super PAC Supporting Santorum Is Engaged in Campaign Finance Violations Tuesday, February 21, 2012 In a letter sent today to Attorney General Eric Holder, Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer called for an investigation by the Justice Department “into whether a candidate-specific Super PAC supporting former Senator Rick Santorum is engaged in violations of the campaign finance laws.” Read more…The letter states that the Justice Department has “has the jurisdiction and responsibility to enforce the nation’s campaign finance laws.” The Democracy 21 letter follows a letter sent by the organization last week on February 15, 2012 requesting a Justice Department investigation into whether the candidate-specific Super PACs supporting President Barack Obama and presidential candidate Mitt Romney are engaged in violations of the campaign finance laws. Democracy 21 also sent letters to the Justice Department on January 10 and January 13, 2012 expressing the organization’s serious concerns about the legality of the activities being undertaken by candidate-specific Super PACs. According to Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer: It appears that presidential candidate-specific Super PACs are routinely violating the requirement of the campaign finance law for outside spending by a group to be “independent” from the campaign of the candidate it is supporting. This requirement of “independence” is the linchpin of the Citizens United decision that struck down the ban on corporate expenditures in federal campaigns. Washington Post Editorial: Ending secret money in politics Monday, February 20, 2012 WITHIN THE contentious arena of campaign finance reform, one of the few areas in which all sides agree — or claim they do — is on the importance of disclosure. For years, opponents of other campaign finance reform measures argued that they were unneeded because disclosing the donations would cure other asserted ills, such as corporate donations or unlimited checks. Read more…Until recently, that is. Two years ago, Congress narrowly failed to pass legislation that would have required disclosure of the gusher of secret money flowing into elections by way of nonprofit groups and trade associations. The measure, known as the DISCLOSE Act, passed the House, then under Democratic control, but failed to garner enough votes in the Senate. Now, with the money spigot flowing with full force in the Republican primary, backers of the DISCLOSE Act are trying again, with a measure narrowly focused on disclosure and updated to take account of the new phenomenon of super political action committees. CNN Op-ed: Super PACs a disaster for democracy Wednesday, February 15, 2012 By Fred Wertheimer, Democracy 21 President Read more…(CNN) – In 1907, Congress banned corporate contributions to federal candidates in the wake of the robber baron-era scandals. In 1947, the ban was formally applied to corporate expenditures and extended to cover labor unions. In 1974, Congress enacted limits on individual contributions to federal candidates and political committees in the wake of the Watergate scandal. In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court in the Citizens United case declared the corporate expenditure ban unconstitutional, holding that independent expenditures could not be constitutionally limited in federal elections, and implicitly that corporations could give unlimited amounts to other groups to spend, as long…. | E-News Updates Support Our Work   Hot Quote In an election year, it might seem naive to expect Congress to approve more transparency in political spending. But would-be opponents of the DISCLOSE Act need to be reminded that even the Supreme Court that gave us Citizens United emphasized the importance of disclosure — and that resistance to reform invites an obvious question: What do you have to hide? -February 15, 2012 Los Angeles Times editorial entitled, “Return of the DISCLOSE Act.” |
Democracy 21 – phone: 202-355-9600 – fax: 202-355-9606 – info@democracy21.org – 2000 Massachusetts Avenue, NW – Washington, DC 20036
Political action committee
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A political action committee, or PAC, is an organization in the United States that campaigns for, or against, political candidates, ballot initiatives or legislation.[1] At the Federal level, an organization becomes a PAC when it receives more than $1,000 according to the Federal Election Campaign Act.[2] At the State level, an organization becomes a PAC according to the State’s election laws.
In the 1972 presidential election abuses still occurred. However, there was no regulatory group to enforce the Act.[3] Congress in 1974 set limits on contributions to PACs and established the Federal Election Commission (FEC). In brief, FEC rules include:
In the 2004 presidential election, campaign donations were via a 527 organization. One organization, Swift Boat “torpedoed” Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry presidential campaign, 2004 and George W. Bush was elected to a second term.[5] A reported $9.45 million came from three private individuals.[6][7][8][unreliable source?]
Swift Boat’s was cited as a front group for Republican interests.[9][10][11]
Details of the influence of wealthy individuals to control the course of elections became more clear in reports like one that documented the Wyly Brothers of Texas alone had made millions in campaign contributions to 200 Republican Candidates.[5]
In the 2010 case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled PACs may accept unlimited contributions from individuals, unions, and corporations (both for profit and not-for-profit) for the purpose of making independent expenditures.
The 2010 ruling made it legal for corporations and unions to spend from their general treasuries to finance independent expenditures. Because direct corporate or union contributions to federal campaigns are still prohibited,[12][unreliable source?] such organizations seeking to contribute to federal candidate campaigns must still rely on traditional PACs for that purpose. However, they may spend money independently of campaigns without forming a PAC.
During the 2012 election cycle, the exact boundary that defines when a campaign contribution is truly independent versus a coordinated one was lampooned on comedy shows, debated publicly and became the subject of additional Federal Court cases.
See section Super PAC backlash
Super PACs are not allowed to coordinate directly with candidates or political parties since they are “independent”. However, many people held a view early in the 2012 campaign that a candidate may “talk to his associated super PAC via the media. And the super PAC can listen, like everybody else.” Individuals making claims like this included: Peter Grier (journalist); Rick Hasen (an attorney and contributor to the Election Law Journal who was described as being an election law expert),[16]; and Trevor Potter (a former chairman of the United States Federal Election Commission who acted as a consulting attorney for TV satirists Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert).[17]
Even absent a formal connection to a campaign, super PACs openly supported particular candidacies. Typically, they did so by pouring tens of millions of dollars into negative ads.[18] The New York Times described in February 2012 several super PACs that were run or advised by a candidate’s former staff or associates.[19] Some PACs attracted large donations from a candidate’s associates. For example, by January 2012, Romney‘s associates contributed nearly $5 million dollars for his 2008 and 2012 runs.[20] In 2011, one Super PAC supporting President Barack Obama raised $4.4 million.[21]
Under the FEC rules, leadership PACs are non-connected PACs, and can accept donations from an individual or other PACs. Since currently elected officials have an easier time attracting contributions, Leadership PACs are a way a more dominate parties can capture more seats from another party. The currently elected official that sponsors a leadership PAC cannot use funds contained within it to support his own campaign. However, it may fund travel, administrative expenses, consultants, polling, and other non-campaign expenses. [23][24][25]
Between 2008 and 2009, leadership PACs raised and spent more than $47 million.[26]
During the 2012 election season, some news sources described money hidden from voters as “dark money”. An apparent spin on the term dark matter and keeping voters in the dark. One vivid remark attributed to editors at Mother Jones magazine, described “dark money” as originating from a “secretive coterie” of donors that powers a “Lovecraftian monster that moves from State to State, dissolving the foundations of the Republic that originates.”[34] The Boston Globe repeated the same term “dark money” and described money flowing from tax-exempt non-profits in the form of interest advocacy groups as “social welfare”.[35] A related term, “dark election” appears to have first been used regarding the 2010 mid-term election season owing to the amount of “dark money” present. [36]
According to US Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens “in a functioning democracy the public must have faith that its representatives owe their positions to the people, not to the corporations with the deepest pockets.” [37]
Yet despite disclosure rules, and importance of knowing who paid for multimillion dollar mostly negative ad campaigns, voters in the United States still went to the polls not knowing who paid.[38] Critics of PACs claimed they on occasion may have intentionally exploited a technicality in the filing requirements to postpone disclosure.[39] In federal elections, PACs have the option to choose to file reports on a “monthly” or “quarterly” filing schedule.[40][41]This means monies may be collected and spent long before the required filing date of a disclosure. Alternately, donors may list an LLC instead of their personal name.[42] One super PAC, that originally listed a $250,000 donation from an LLC that no one could find, led to a subsequent filing where the previously “secret donors” were revealed.[43]
In the case of PACs, the source of donations is eventually disclosed, however, depending on timing of disclosure reports, disclosure in some cases didn’t occur until after the election was held.[44] The eventual disclosure often lent credibility to a debate that some PACs were not truly independent.[45] Reports have disclosed instances where PACs were managed by close associates, former staff, or a candidates family member, and/or that those making the donations were individuals like these.[46] This in turn has led the press to determine voter intent to support the efforts of a specific candidate according to which PAC a contribution is made.[47] For example the press referred to a filing by Restore Our Future, Inc, that listed 3 large donations by coworkers of 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney, as being “Mitt Romney’s FEC filing”. [48]
An alternate route to fund a PAC has helped some special interest organizations keep the names of it’s donors secret years after an election. This route involves forming one firm, that is usually a 501 (c) non-profit, or 527 organization so the donation can be tax deductible, and then the PAC to receive them. The scheme, commonly known as a “money loop” or “money trail”, was detailed in the New York Times, and attracted the attention of the IRS in 2010, and the IRS subsequently advised big donors their tax deductions were questionable.[49]
One organization, the National Organization for Marriage, operated two non-profiit arms that received millions in donations from just a few donors. It in turn funded several different PACs and contested the release of names that gave to the non-profit.[50] One former 2012 Presidential candidate, Fred Karger, maintained that the National Organization for Marriage was set up by the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) as a front group to funnel anonymous money to candidates that are against the legalization of same-sex marriage.[51] In Washington State in February 2012, the organization vowed to follow through on a commitment spend $250,000 to help defeat the Republican state senators who voted for a bill to give same-sex couples the right to marry should they seek office again.[52]
In the wake of the 2010 landmark case filed by Citizens United that opened up the flood gates of money, Republican Senator John McCain, co-crafter of the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, said “there’s going to be, over time, a backlash … when you see the amounts of union and corporate money that’s going to go into political campaigns”.[53] Attorney James Bopp Jr, who first stated “No one that matters cares”,[54] has subsequently stated members of Congress may realize “they have cut their own throats.”[55]
World-wide news organizations began asking in February 2012 if US democracy itself was being bought and sold. [56]
Voter backlash, legal backlash, and congressional backlash are all occurring.[57] Contrary to many opinions that voter backlash would occur, research early in the 2012 campaign indicated most voters found negative advertising informative and candidates benefited from negative advertising sponsored by PACs. [58]
“The compelling State interest here is providing access to voters to information relevant to voting decision[s]….we do not agree with Family PAC’s contention that disclosure of small contributors does not provide information that enables the electorate to evaluate campaign messages and make informed decisions.”[62]
On January 31, 2012, the US First Circuit Court of Appeals rule against the National Organization for Marriage‘s attempts to continue to keep their donor list secret. The group had also previously lost a challenge to the state’s political action committee laws and laws governing independent expenditures and advertising attribution and disclaimers. [63] [64] This court decision incorporated the “reasonable person in the circumstances,” which is generally deemed an objective test. If a reasonable person receiving a solicitation would construe the funds they contributed to be for the purpose of funding a campaign to pass or defeat a ballot measure, then they clearly come within the reporting and disclosure requirements. Thus, the court found that the statute is not sufficiently ambiguous to raise constitutional concerns.[65]
On May 16, 2011, the US Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals panel upheld Minnesota’s disclosure laws and ban on corporate contributions.[66]
Attorney James Bopp Jr. who argued on the behalf of all three groups against the state is attempting appeals in the US Supreme Court.
State spending limits are also under attack in Montana, where James Bopp Jr stepped in January 2012 to press at a Federal level claims for a group fighting Montana’s law that lost in Montana’s Supreme Court.[69] North Carolina Right to Life’s independent expenditures committees filed suit against the State of North Carolina in September 2011 claiming their spending limitations were unlawful with representation by James Bopp Jr. An October 2011 lawsuit challenged spending limitations in New Mexico.
Long term, at least one analyst has interpreted court decisions, and in particular Speechnow.org versus FEC, to mean super PAC spending was legal “as long as they’re not in cahoots with campaigns”.[72][73]
Then President and 2012 candidate Obama, who stated in 2007: “I don’t take PAC money and I don’t take lobbyists’ money”,[76] came out with an endorsement of super PACs via his campaign manager Jim Messina in his statement: “With so much at stake, we can’t allow for two sets of rules in this election whereby the Republican nominee is the beneficiary of unlimited spending and Democrats unilaterally disarm”. [77] According to press reports, in asking his top fundraisers to steer money to the main super PAC backing his reelection, Obama embraced a campaign vehicle he previously denounced.[78]
The 2012 figures don’t include funds raised by State level PACs nor funds raised by national level non-profit groups that pool “soft-funds”. Spending by non-profits, also called 527 organizations, exceeded $500 million in the 2010 election cycle with the two largest organizations being the Republican Governors Association $131,873,954 and the Democratic Governors Association $64,708,253 [82] Spending by the 527 organizations for the 2012 is expected to be double and much will be derived from donors kept hidden from voters.[83]
[edit] History of PACs
In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt called for campaign finance reform. This led to laws called Acts of Congress intended to:- Limit the influence of wealthy individuals and special interest groups;
- Regulate campaign spending; and
- Deter abuses by mandating public disclosure.
In the 1972 presidential election abuses still occurred. However, there was no regulatory group to enforce the Act.[3] Congress in 1974 set limits on contributions to PACs and established the Federal Election Commission (FEC). In brief, FEC rules include:
- A limit for individuals to $5,000 per year for Federal PACs;
- Corporations and unions may not contribute directly to federal PACs, but can for the administrative costs of a PAC affiliated with the specific corporation or union;
- Corporate-affiliated PACs may only solicit contributions from executives, shareholders, and their families;
- Contributions from corporate or labor union treasuries are illegal, though they may sponsor a PAC and provide financial support for its administration and fundraising;
- Union-affiliated PACs may only solicit contributions from members; and
- Independent PACs may solicit contributions from the general public and pay their own costs.
- $5,000 per candidate for each election and primary;
- $15,000 per political party per year; and
- $5,000 per PAC per year.
In the 2004 presidential election, campaign donations were via a 527 organization. One organization, Swift Boat “torpedoed” Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry presidential campaign, 2004 and George W. Bush was elected to a second term.[5] A reported $9.45 million came from three private individuals.[6][7][8][unreliable source?]
Swift Boat’s was cited as a front group for Republican interests.[9][10][11]
Details of the influence of wealthy individuals to control the course of elections became more clear in reports like one that documented the Wyly Brothers of Texas alone had made millions in campaign contributions to 200 Republican Candidates.[5]
In the 2010 case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled PACs may accept unlimited contributions from individuals, unions, and corporations (both for profit and not-for-profit) for the purpose of making independent expenditures.
The 2010 ruling made it legal for corporations and unions to spend from their general treasuries to finance independent expenditures. Because direct corporate or union contributions to federal campaigns are still prohibited,[12][unreliable source?] such organizations seeking to contribute to federal candidate campaigns must still rely on traditional PACs for that purpose. However, they may spend money independently of campaigns without forming a PAC.
During the 2012 election cycle, the exact boundary that defines when a campaign contribution is truly independent versus a coordinated one was lampooned on comedy shows, debated publicly and became the subject of additional Federal Court cases.
See section Super PAC backlash
[edit] Categorization of PACs
Further information: List of political action committees
Federal law allows for two types of PACs, connected and non-connected.[edit] Connected PACs
Most of the 4,600 active, registered PACs are “connected PACs” established by businesses, labor unions, trade groups, or health organizations. These PACs receive and raise money from a “restricted class,” generally consisting of managers and shareholders in the case of a corporation and members in the case of a union or other interest group. As of January 2009, there were 1,598 registered corporate PACs, 272 related to labor unions and 995 to trade organizations.[13][edit] Non-connected PACs
Groups with an ideological mission, single-issue groups, and members of Congress and other political leaders may form “non-connected PACs”. These organizations may accept funds from any individual, business PAC or organization. As of January 2009, there were 1,594 non-connected PACs, the fastest-growing category.[13][edit] Super PACs
The 2010 election marked the rise of a new political committee, dubbed the “super PAC”. They are officially known as “independent-expenditure only committees”. They can also raise unlimited sums from individuals, corporations, unions and other groups.[14] The super PACs were made possible by two judicial decisions. Firstly, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that government may not prohibit unions and corporations from making independent expenditures about politics. Secondly, in Speechnow.org v. FEC, the Federal Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit held that contributions to groups that only make independent expenditures could not be limited.[15]Super PACs are not allowed to coordinate directly with candidates or political parties since they are “independent”. However, many people held a view early in the 2012 campaign that a candidate may “talk to his associated super PAC via the media. And the super PAC can listen, like everybody else.” Individuals making claims like this included: Peter Grier (journalist); Rick Hasen (an attorney and contributor to the Election Law Journal who was described as being an election law expert),[16]; and Trevor Potter (a former chairman of the United States Federal Election Commission who acted as a consulting attorney for TV satirists Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert).[17]
Even absent a formal connection to a campaign, super PACs openly supported particular candidacies. Typically, they did so by pouring tens of millions of dollars into negative ads.[18] The New York Times described in February 2012 several super PACs that were run or advised by a candidate’s former staff or associates.[19] Some PACs attracted large donations from a candidate’s associates. For example, by January 2012, Romney‘s associates contributed nearly $5 million dollars for his 2008 and 2012 runs.[20] In 2011, one Super PAC supporting President Barack Obama raised $4.4 million.[21]
[edit] Leadership PAC
Currently elected officials and political parties cannot give more than the Federal limit directly to candidates. However, they can setup a Leadership PAC that makes independent expenditures. Provided the expenditure is not coordinated with the other candidate this type of spending is not limited.[22]Under the FEC rules, leadership PACs are non-connected PACs, and can accept donations from an individual or other PACs. Since currently elected officials have an easier time attracting contributions, Leadership PACs are a way a more dominate parties can capture more seats from another party. The currently elected official that sponsors a leadership PAC cannot use funds contained within it to support his own campaign. However, it may fund travel, administrative expenses, consultants, polling, and other non-campaign expenses. [23][24][25]
Between 2008 and 2009, leadership PACs raised and spent more than $47 million.[26]
[edit] Controversial use of leadership PACs
- Former Rep. John Doolittle‘s (R) leadership PAC paid 15% of all the money it raised to a firm that only had one employee. That sole employee was his wife. Contributions which ultimately ended up with her firm were $68,630 in 2003 and 2004, and $224,000 in 2005 and 2006. A campaign committee report said Doolittle’s campaign still owed Julie Doolittle $137,000. The Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the Doolittle home in 2007.[27]
- One Leadership PAC purchased $2,139 in gifts from Bose Corporation.[28]
- Former Rep. Richard Pombo (R) used his leadership PAC to pay hotel bills ($22,896) and buy baseball tickets ($320) for donors.[29]
- Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi‘s (D) leadership PAC, Team Majority, was fined $21,000 by federal election officials “for improperly accepting donations over federal limits.”[30]
[edit] Keeping donor lists hidden from voters
By January 2010, at least 38 states and the federal government required disclosure for all or some independent expenditures or electioneering communications, regardless of whether the speaker is a corporation.[31] These disclosures were intended to deter potentially or seemingly corrupting donations,[32] and to allow voters to determine to whom a candidate may hold obligations after taking office.[33]During the 2012 election season, some news sources described money hidden from voters as “dark money”. An apparent spin on the term dark matter and keeping voters in the dark. One vivid remark attributed to editors at Mother Jones magazine, described “dark money” as originating from a “secretive coterie” of donors that powers a “Lovecraftian monster that moves from State to State, dissolving the foundations of the Republic that originates.”[34] The Boston Globe repeated the same term “dark money” and described money flowing from tax-exempt non-profits in the form of interest advocacy groups as “social welfare”.[35] A related term, “dark election” appears to have first been used regarding the 2010 mid-term election season owing to the amount of “dark money” present. [36]
According to US Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens “in a functioning democracy the public must have faith that its representatives owe their positions to the people, not to the corporations with the deepest pockets.” [37]
Yet despite disclosure rules, and importance of knowing who paid for multimillion dollar mostly negative ad campaigns, voters in the United States still went to the polls not knowing who paid.[38] Critics of PACs claimed they on occasion may have intentionally exploited a technicality in the filing requirements to postpone disclosure.[39] In federal elections, PACs have the option to choose to file reports on a “monthly” or “quarterly” filing schedule.[40][41]This means monies may be collected and spent long before the required filing date of a disclosure. Alternately, donors may list an LLC instead of their personal name.[42] One super PAC, that originally listed a $250,000 donation from an LLC that no one could find, led to a subsequent filing where the previously “secret donors” were revealed.[43]
In the case of PACs, the source of donations is eventually disclosed, however, depending on timing of disclosure reports, disclosure in some cases didn’t occur until after the election was held.[44] The eventual disclosure often lent credibility to a debate that some PACs were not truly independent.[45] Reports have disclosed instances where PACs were managed by close associates, former staff, or a candidates family member, and/or that those making the donations were individuals like these.[46] This in turn has led the press to determine voter intent to support the efforts of a specific candidate according to which PAC a contribution is made.[47] For example the press referred to a filing by Restore Our Future, Inc, that listed 3 large donations by coworkers of 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney, as being “Mitt Romney’s FEC filing”. [48]
An alternate route to fund a PAC has helped some special interest organizations keep the names of it’s donors secret years after an election. This route involves forming one firm, that is usually a 501 (c) non-profit, or 527 organization so the donation can be tax deductible, and then the PAC to receive them. The scheme, commonly known as a “money loop” or “money trail”, was detailed in the New York Times, and attracted the attention of the IRS in 2010, and the IRS subsequently advised big donors their tax deductions were questionable.[49]
One organization, the National Organization for Marriage, operated two non-profiit arms that received millions in donations from just a few donors. It in turn funded several different PACs and contested the release of names that gave to the non-profit.[50] One former 2012 Presidential candidate, Fred Karger, maintained that the National Organization for Marriage was set up by the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) as a front group to funnel anonymous money to candidates that are against the legalization of same-sex marriage.[51] In Washington State in February 2012, the organization vowed to follow through on a commitment spend $250,000 to help defeat the Republican state senators who voted for a bill to give same-sex couples the right to marry should they seek office again.[52]
[edit] The PAC backlash
 | This section may stray from the topic of the article. Please help improve this section or discuss this issue on the talk page. (February 2012) |
World-wide news organizations began asking in February 2012 if US democracy itself was being bought and sold. [56]
Voter backlash, legal backlash, and congressional backlash are all occurring.[57] Contrary to many opinions that voter backlash would occur, research early in the 2012 campaign indicated most voters found negative advertising informative and candidates benefited from negative advertising sponsored by PACs. [58]
[edit] Federal level backlash
Three Federal rulings defending State election laws were apparent setbacks for PACs trying to keep donor names secret. On December 29th, 2011 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Family PAC, an organization that describes itself as “the leading pro-family, anti-tax” PAC.[59] According to one scholarly article that reviewed the decision, the Court confirmed that PACs must conform with State of Washington election laws and were required to disclose the names and addresses for anyone contributing over $25.[60][61] Within the ruling, the Court stated:“The compelling State interest here is providing access to voters to information relevant to voting decision[s]….we do not agree with Family PAC’s contention that disclosure of small contributors does not provide information that enables the electorate to evaluate campaign messages and make informed decisions.”[62]
On January 31, 2012, the US First Circuit Court of Appeals rule against the National Organization for Marriage‘s attempts to continue to keep their donor list secret. The group had also previously lost a challenge to the state’s political action committee laws and laws governing independent expenditures and advertising attribution and disclaimers. [63] [64] This court decision incorporated the “reasonable person in the circumstances,” which is generally deemed an objective test. If a reasonable person receiving a solicitation would construe the funds they contributed to be for the purpose of funding a campaign to pass or defeat a ballot measure, then they clearly come within the reporting and disclosure requirements. Thus, the court found that the statute is not sufficiently ambiguous to raise constitutional concerns.[65]
On May 16, 2011, the US Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals panel upheld Minnesota’s disclosure laws and ban on corporate contributions.[66]
Attorney James Bopp Jr. who argued on the behalf of all three groups against the state is attempting appeals in the US Supreme Court.
[edit] State level advisory requests pending
Despite losses such as these, PACs in some instances, were contesting previous rulings, and current state election law in the midst of the 2012 election. In Minnesota, Human Rights Campaign pressed for an advisory ruling regarding anonymous PAC spending from the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Commission. The group claimed the National Organization for Marriage was systematically attempting across the country to oppose public disclosure. [67][edit] Legal backlash at State level
The second legal front in the challenges to PAC spending was occurring largely at the State level where States like Hawaii were attempting to defend the limitations they had imposed on giving to candidates. In February 2012 a Federal Court took under advisement final motions.[68]State spending limits are also under attack in Montana, where James Bopp Jr stepped in January 2012 to press at a Federal level claims for a group fighting Montana’s law that lost in Montana’s Supreme Court.[69] North Carolina Right to Life’s independent expenditures committees filed suit against the State of North Carolina in September 2011 claiming their spending limitations were unlawful with representation by James Bopp Jr. An October 2011 lawsuit challenged spending limitations in New Mexico.
[edit] Super PAC backlash
It was generally agreed in the 2012 campaign that the formation of a super PAC and the acceptance of large contributions was legal. However, a lingering question was are super PACs legal when examined on the basis of how they act. Two agreed upon illegal actions a super PAC could not make were to accept foreign funds and coordinate directly with a candidate. Super PACs were seen in the press as a ready vehicle to allow the easy disguise of illegal foreign donations from both individuals and overseas companies.[70] The concept of actions being illegal, when coordinated with a candidate, came out, in part, after a super PAC named American Crossroads requested permission to communicate to their favored candidate on an above-board basis. Federal Election Commission Program Director Paul S. Ryan response was “The Supreme Court has long recognized the importance of contribution limits to preventing corruption, and that expenditures coordinated with candidates must be treated as contributions in order to prevent easy circumvention of the limits.”[71]Long term, at least one analyst has interpreted court decisions, and in particular Speechnow.org versus FEC, to mean super PAC spending was legal “as long as they’re not in cahoots with campaigns”.[72][73]
[edit] Congressional backlash
The third type of backlash is a congressional investigation. On February 2, 2012, U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer, Chairman of the Rules Committee, promised hearings on this issue and that “overwhelmingly” the bulk of contributions are going to support Republican candidates, owing in part to Democratic positions against continuing tax breaks to the wealthy. [74][edit] Defending super PAC contributions
Presidential candidate Mitt Romney stated in August 2011 that his ability to benefit from large contributions via PACs from individual donors helps him to equalize the influence of corporations and unions that can pool small contributions from many employees or union members. Romney stated “My own view is I don’t like all the influence of money in politics, but I don’t have a solution that’s a lot better than saying let people contribute what they will, then report it, let people know who gave what to who.”[75]Then President and 2012 candidate Obama, who stated in 2007: “I don’t take PAC money and I don’t take lobbyists’ money”,[76] came out with an endorsement of super PACs via his campaign manager Jim Messina in his statement: “With so much at stake, we can’t allow for two sets of rules in this election whereby the Republican nominee is the beneficiary of unlimited spending and Democrats unilaterally disarm”. [77] According to press reports, in asking his top fundraisers to steer money to the main super PAC backing his reelection, Obama embraced a campaign vehicle he previously denounced.[78]
[edit] James Bopp
Much of the credit for the legal framework for PACs and 527 organizations to accept unlimited amounts of money is given to Republican attorney James Bopp, Jr. He fought 30 years and filed 21 cases to eliminate limits on campaign spending, and to keep donor lists private. According to the Center for Responsive Politics. “It’s safe to say that groups on the left and right have Jim Bopp to thank for their new-found freedom.”[79][80][edit] International comparison and response
The leading democracies have different systems of campaign finance, and several have no institutions analogous to American PACs, in that there are no private contributions of large sums of money to individual candidates. This is true, for example in Germany, in France, and in Britain. In these countries, concerns about the influence of campaign contributions on political decisions are less prominent in public discussion.[citation needed][edit] 2008 Election
In the 2008 elections, the top nine PACs by money spent by themselves, a total of $25,794,807 via their affiliates and subsidiaries as follows:- International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers PAC $3,344,650
- AT&T Federal PAC $3,108,200
- American Bankers Association (BANK PAC) $2,918,140
- National Beer Wholesalers Association PAC $2,869,000
- Dealers Election Action Committee of the National Automobile Dealers Association $2,860,000
- International Association of Fire Fighters $2,734,900
- International Union of Operating Engineers PAC $2,704,067
- American Association for Justice PAC $2,700,500
- Laborers’ International Union of North America PAC $2,555,350
[edit] 2012 Election (estimates)
As of February 2012, according to Center for Responsive Politics, 313 groups organized as Super PACs had received $98,650,993 and spent $46,191,479. This means early in the 2012 election cycle, PACs had already greatly exceeded total receipts of 2008. The leading Super PAC on its own raised more money than the combined total spent by the top 9 PACS in the 2008 cycle. [81]The 2012 figures don’t include funds raised by State level PACs nor funds raised by national level non-profit groups that pool “soft-funds”. Spending by non-profits, also called 527 organizations, exceeded $500 million in the 2010 election cycle with the two largest organizations being the Republican Governors Association $131,873,954 and the Democratic Governors Association $64,708,253 [82] Spending by the 527 organizations for the 2012 is expected to be double and much will be derived from donors kept hidden from voters.[83]
[edit] See also
- 527 group
- Issue advocacy ads
- Lobbying in the United States
- Money loop
- Politics of the United States
- Soft money
[edit] References
- ^ “Kentucky: Secretary of State – Civics Glossary”. Sos.ky.gov. 2010-12-20. Retrieved 2012-01-04.
- ^ “Federal Campaign Finance Laws” (PDF). Federal Election Commission. April, 2008. p. 1: §431. Definitions (4). Retrieved 2012-01-04.
- ^ “The Federal Election Campaign Laws: A Short History”, Federal Election Commission, Retrieved February 13, 2012
- ^ “McCain Fundraiser Once Part Of 527 Attack Ad Against Him, The Huffington Post, Sam Stein, June 25, 2008, updated May 25, 2011
- ^ a b “Wyly Brothers Gave Millions To Over 200 Republican Candidates”, The Huffington Post, Marcus Baram, July 30, 2010
- ^ “Swift Vets Top Contributors, 2004 Cycle”. opensecrets. Retrieved 2007-04-01.
- ^ Frank, John (2004-10-05). “2 Texans dig deep for boat vet ads / Pair from Dallas kick in $3 million for group’s coffers”. Houston Chronicle: p. A8. Retrieved 2012-02-12.
- ^ “Bob Perry – The Man Behind Swift Boat Veterans for Truth”. Texans for Public Justice. Retrieved 2007-04-01.
- ^ Conason, Joe (2004-08-28). “Sailing buddies”. Salon. Retrieved 2007-04-01.
- ^ Conason, Joe (2004-08-06). “Republicans’ Dishonorable Charge”. Salon. Retrieved 2007-04-01.
- ^ Clift, Eleanor (2004-08-27). “Fighting a Phony War”. Newsweek. Archived from the original on 2007-02-05. Retrieved 2007-04-01.
- ^ 2 U.S.C. § 441b
- ^ a b “News Release: Number of Federal PACs Increases”, March 9, 2009, Federal Election Commission
- ^ “Outside Spending (2010)”. Center for Responsive Politics.
- ^ Cordes, Nancy (June 30, 2011). “Colbert gets a Super PAC; So what are they?”. CBS News. Retrieved 2011-08-11.
- ^ “Will Jon Stewart go to jail for running Stephen Colbert’s super PAC?”, The Christian Science Monitor, Peter Grier, January 18, 2012
- ^ “Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert Expose More Super PAC Loopholes Without ‘Coordinating’”, The Huffington Post, Katla McGlynn, January 18, 2012
- ^ Super PACs fueling GOP attack ads “Eventual nominee could pay a price”, The Boston Globe, Brian C. Mooney, February 2, 2012
- ^ “Who’s Financing the ‘Super PACs’”, The New York Times, February 1, 2012
- ^ “Bain executives spend nearly $5 million on Romney’s White House runs”, Kansas City Star, Anne Farris Rosen, February 7, 2012
- ^ “Battle of the billionaires – Super PACs offer chance for high rollers to sway 2012 race”, Fox News, February 11, 2012
- ^ U.S. News and World Report, 9/27/10 http://politics.usnews.com/news/articles/2010/09/27/demints-pac-spends-15-million-in-independent-expenditures.html
- ^ Marcus Stern, and Jennifer LaFleur (September 26, 2009), Leadership PACs: Let the Good Times Roll, Pro Publica, retrieved December 10, 2009
- ^ “Leadership PACs and Sponsors”, Federal Election Commission
- ^ “Congress 101: Political Action Committees”, Congressional Quarterly
- ^ Leadership PACs, Center for Responsive Politics
- ^ FBI raids Abramoff-linked congressman’s home, NBC News, Joel Seidman April 19, 2007
- ^ “Political Action Committees”. Opensecrets.org. Retrieved 2012-01-04.
- ^ Weisman, Jonathan; Birnbaum, Jeffrey H. (July 11, 2006). “Lawmaker Criticized for PAC Fees Paid to Wife”. The Washington Post. Retrieved 2010-05-22.
- ^ “Pelosi PAC fined $21,000 by federal elections officials”. USA Today. February 11, 2004. Retrieved May 22, 2010.
- ^ Citizens Informed: Broader Disclosure and Disclaimer for Corporate Electoral Advocacy in the Wake of Citizens United, Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository, Page 625 footnote 13, by Daniel Winik Yale Law School, January 1, 2010
- ^ Campaign finance disclosure 2.0, Election Law Journal, by Richard Briffault, Page 14 of 31, November 4, 2010
- ^ Towards a Madisonian, interest-group-based, approach to lobbying regulation, University of Alabama School of Law, by Anita S. Krishnakumar, Page 10 of 61, February 18, 2007
- ^ No, super PACs are not good for Democracy, by Elias Isquith, February 21, 2012
- ^ Ruling allows major political donors to hide identities, Boston Globe, February 15, 2012, by Brian C. Mooney
- ^ Hiding Behind the Tax Code, the Dark Election of 2010 and Why Tax-Exempt Entities Should Be Subject to Robust Federal Campaign Finance Disclosure Laws,Chapman’s Journal of Law & Policy, Vol. 16, p. 59, 2011, by Ciara Torres-Spelliscy Stetson University College of Law, posted May 7, 2011, revised September 22, 2011
- ^ Opinion of Stevens, J., Supreme Court of the United States, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, Cornell University Cornell Law School, by John Paul Stevens, January 21, 2010
- ^ Who funds Super PAC? FEC looks into powerful influence, By Gail Russell Chaddock, The Christian Science Monitor, Feb 02, 2012
- ^ Levinthal, Dave; Vogel, Kenneth P. (December 30, 2011). “Super PACs go stealth through first contests”. Politico.com. Retrieved January 12, 2012.
- ^ Federal Election Commission web site, Sourced: February 5, 2012
- ^ Forgetting a lesson from Watergate, CNN, By John Blake, February 4, 2012
- ^ In D.C., a mockery of campaign finance laws, Washington Post, By Colbert I. King, Published: January 14, 2012
- ^ A secret donor revealed, New York Times, By Michael Luo, February 7, 2010
- ^ “Super PACs” in Federal Elections: Overview and Issues for Congress, Congressional Research Service, by R. Sam Garrett, December 2, 2011
- ^ Calls Rival Gingrich ‘Lobbyist Writ Large’, Bloomberg, November 25, 2011
- ^ What is a ‘Super PAC (Political Action Committee)’?, By Brett Williams, Feb 03 2012
- ^ Indiana businesses giving big money to presidential super PACs, Indianapolis Star 2012-02-06
- ^ Filing by Restore Our Future, Inc., January 2012
- ^ I.R.S. Moves to Tax Gifts to Groups Active in Politics, New York Times, By Stephanie Strom, May 12, 2011
- ^ National Organization for Marriage appeals ruling requiring release of donor list, The Associated Press, March 02, 2011
- ^ National Organization for Marriage’s 2010 financial records raise questions, Washington Independent, by Sofia Resnick, December 12, 2011
- ^ Gay marriage foes to fight expected Washington state law, Reuters, By Nicole Neroulias, February 2, 2012
- ^ Amick, John (2010-01-24). “McCain skeptical Supreme Court decision can be countered”. The Washington Post.
- ^ Is New Republican ‘Super PAC’ Legal?, TPM Muckracker, By Ryan J. Reilly, May 18, 2011
- ^ The Daily Beast, February 1, 2012
- ^ http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/us-democracy-being-bought-and-sold-0022021 Is US democracy being bought and sold?, Aljazeera, February 2, 2012]
- ^ Growing backlash against ‘Citizens United’, The National Law Journal, By Mimi Marziani, January 23, 2012
- ^ Do negative campaign ads work?, ThisNation.com, February 5, 2012
- ^ Family PAC website, Sourced February 5, 2012
- ^ Court invalidates Washington state cap on PAC donations, Reuters, by Terry Baynes December 29, 2011
- ^ Campaign Finance After Two Years of Citizens United, Josh Douglas of the University of Kentucky College of Law, January 21, 2012
- ^ US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling against Family PAC, US Courts web site, December 29th, 2011
- ^ Anti-gay-marriage group loses Maine list appeal, By David Sharp Associated Press, January 31, 2012
- ^ Maine Gay Marriage Law Repealed, ABC News, by Devin Dwyer, Nov. 4, 2009
- ^ Repeat Performance: 1st Circuit Rejects NOM Challenge to Maine Disclosure Law, New York Law School, by New York Law School Professor Arthur S. Leonard, February 1, 2012
- ^ Eighth Circuit muffs it in Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life v. Swanson, Center for Competitive Politics, by Brad Smith, May 16, 2011.
- ^ http://www.twincities.com/news/ci_19873464 Gay rights group challenges funding disclosure reports filed over marriage amendment, Associated Press by Steve Karnowski, February 1, 2012
- ^ Campaign spending lawsuit in judge’s hands, by Star-Advertiser staff, February 06, 2012
- ^ Citizens United Lawyer Retained by Groups in Montana Campaign Finance Case For High Court Appeal, The National Law Journal, January 13, 2012
- ^ Foreign donations at risk in super PAC landscape, Associated Press, Stephen Braun, February 10, 2012
- ^ FEC Urged to reject Super PAC American Crossroads’ Request for permission to coordinate ads with candidates, The Campaign Legal Center, by Emmy, June 15, 2010
- ^ The Darkest Day in the History of American Super PACs, The Atlantic, by Nancy Scola, January 30, 2012
- ^ Speechnow.org v. FEC, Federal Election Commission web site, Referenced on February 9, 2012
- ^ Morning Joe: Sen. Schumer: superPACs ‘damaging’ and ‘evil’, Interview Chuck Schumer, MSN, February 2, 2012
- ^ Conservative lawyer in Citizens United case endorses Mitt Romney for president, Boston Globe, By Shira Schoenberg, February 7, 2012
- ^ | Fourth Democratic Debate
- ^ Obama campaign reverses stance, urging donations to super PAC, MSNBC, By Michael O’Brien, February 7 2012
- ^ Obama’s embrace of ‘super PAC’ will test his base of donors, The Nation, By Matea Gold and Melanie Mason, February 7, 2012
- ^ “Election Spending to Exceed $6 Billion Thanks Partly to Jim Bopp”, Bloomberg, Jonathan D. Salant, Sep 21, 2011
- ^ “Citizens United Lawyer: I Hate Super PACs Too”, TPM Muckracker, Ryan J. Reilly, February 1, 2012
- ^ Super PACs, Center for Responsive Politics, Open Secrets website, February 04, 2012
- ^ State-Focused 527 Organizations Only, The Center for Responsive Politics, Website Open Secrets.org, Referenced February 5, 2012
- ^ Enter the era of the super PACs, by Josh Boak, September 8, 2011
[edit] External links
- Federal Election Commission
- Federal Judicial Branch
- OpenSecrets.org
- PoliticalMoneyLine
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I mean, other than thier position which results.
Just asking.