Super PACs’ new playground: 2012

Kenneth Vogel, Politico

Sunday, Aug. 14, 2011 | 2 a.m.

First came American Crossroads, Commonsense Ten and their ilk — so-called super PACs set up with unlimited cash that poured millions of dollars into ads benefiting multiple candidates and attacking their opponents.

Now comes the next generation of this breed of fundraising committees — super PACs created to boost individual presidential candidates, and to strip the bark off their rivals.

They’re showing signs that they could reshape the presidential campaign landscape in 2012.

A super PAC created to advance Mitt Romney’s campaign for the GOP nomination raised $12.2 million in the first half of the year. One set up to help President Barack Obama spent $97,000 on ads attacking Romney. Supporters of Texas Rep. Ron Paul’s dark horse Republican bid used a super PAC to pay for $6,000 worth of billboards and print ads leading up to Saturday’s Ames straw poll. And one of the half-dozen super PACs established to bolster Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who made his candidacy official Saturday, is airing ads in Iowa calling him “a better option for president.”

“You can be sure that we haven’t seen the last of these things, whether it’s this cycle or some future cycle, unless the legal climate changes,” said Michael Malbin, executive director of the Campaign Finance Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group that tracks political fundraising data and trends. “You can’t expect candidates not to take advantage of something like this when their opponents are.”

The creation of super PACs as political advertising vehicles is an outgrowth of the Supreme Court’s pivotal 2010 ruling, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which allowed corporations and unions to spend unlimited cash on campaign ads.

The new crop of candidate-specific super PACs allow deep-pocketed individuals, corporations and unions to write checks far exceeding the maximum amount they can give directly to their preferred candidates ($2,500 per person per election) to groups often run by operatives closely allied with the candidates. The super PACs are legally barred from giving directly to — or coordinating their spending with — their favored candidates. That can curb their effectiveness but also frees the operatives running them to air attack ads and deploy other, far more aggressive tactics than candidates would want to use.

But the groups also carry risks for the candidates they aim to help. That’s particularly true if candidates lend their imprimatur to the committees. There’s also potential for friendly fire, which is manifesting itself in a competition to be the super PAC supporting Perry. It could hurt both the operatives behind the groups and their favored candidates if the committees get too aggressive with one another or rival candidates, or if they’re accused of playing fast and loose with campaign rules or accepting controversial donations.

Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, got a taste of super-PAC backlash when NBC News recently reported that a super PAC to which he has close ties, Restore Our Future, accepted $1 million from a company apparently established exclusively to funnel the contribution.

Politico subsequently revealed that the source of the cash was a former business associate and longtime political donor to Romney, who declared Monday that “the whole controversy with regards to his contribution sort of disappears when he came forward and said that he was the contributor … And any issues with regards to his contribution should be directed to him and to the people (running) the PAC.”

“The behavior of super PACs to which presidential candidates are linked will reflect on those candidates, and when that behavior is bad, it should reflect poorly on them,” said Paul Ryan, a lawyer at the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center, which filed complaints over the donation. Although the complaint did not allege wrongdoing by Romney, Ryan added, “Given the seemingly close nexus between Romney, the donor and the political action committee, I don’t think it’s unfair to ask questions to Mr. Romney and to hold him accountable to some extent.”

Restore Our Future is run by a trio of top operatives who worked on Romney’s 2008 campaign — lawyer Charlie Spies, political director Carl Forti and adman Larry McCarthy. Romney has spoken at fundraising events for the group. His appearances — permissible under a June FEC ruling that allows candidates to help super PACs solicit limited donations — bestowed an unofficial blessing on the group, helping it pull in a whopping $12.2 million from some of Romney’s wealthiest career patrons in its first six months of fundraising.

Likewise, Priorities USA Action, a super PAC created to support Obama, appears to have benefited from an unofficial affiliation with the president: It was started by a pair of former top White House operatives and drew heavily from major Democratic donors to raise $3.2 million in the first half of the year.

Super PACs can particularly benefit “candidates who get higher percentages of their money from maximum donations,” Malbin said. His group last month published an analysis showing that Romney’s campaign led the way in that regard in the second quarter, raising 74 percent of its $18.2 million from donors who had maxed out to Romney’s campaign.

In contrast, Obama’s campaign, which is eclipsing those of all his GOP rivals in fundraising, got just 19 percent of its $49 million from donors who have given the maximum contribution.

GOP finance circles have buzzed about the possibility that wealthy supporters of former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who reportedly has struggled to raise money for his Republican presidential campaign, are planning their own outside group.

There’s no evidence that supporters of Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, whose GOP presidential campaign has raised the highest percentage of funds from small donors, have formed a super PAC to support her.

But in the weeks after Restore Our Future’s pro-Romney mission emerged, supporters of both Paul, who has long relied on small donors, and Perry, whose rise has been fueled by megadonors, registered super PACs with the FEC.

In fact, fans of Perry created at least six separate super PACs, and they’re already swiping at one another.

“Many other groups are coming forward to draft and support the governor,” wrote the founders of a new super PAC called Make Us Great Again to would-be donors in a Monday email obtained by the Texas Tribune. “Our advice is to avoid any other group claiming to be ‘the’ pro-Perry independent effort and, when the timing is right, to support Make Us Great Again,” said the email, signed by three Perry loyalists, including Perry’s former chief of staff, Austin lobbyist Mike Toomey.

Because Toomey maintains close ties to Perry and his top political strategist Dave Carney (reportedly co-owning a private island in New Hampshire with Carney) the buzz in Texas GOP circles is that Make Us Great Again, quietly formed late last month, will become the Perry-blessed super PAC.

Bob Schuman, a California strategist who started another of the pro-Perry super PACs, Americans for Rick Perry, said, “We’re not angling to be the blessed or designated super PAC.” But his group has retained fundraisers with ties to some of Perry’s biggest donors, naming as national finance Chairman Nate Crain, a former Dallas County Republican chairman who was a close adviser during Perry’s time as lieutenant governor.

“Romney’s got $12 million he wouldn’t have otherwise, and that’s just so far,” Schuman said. “I think all the major candidates, in order to be able to compete financially, are going to need to do some form of that.”

Paul’s campaign, on the other hand is signaling it intends to keep its distance from all super PACs.

“The expert legal advice I received was that all contact must be avoided, and failing to do so would put Dr. Paul, our campaign and the PAC organizers in jeopardy of civil and criminal penalties,” said Jesse Benton, a Paul campaign spokesman.

But the pro-Paul super PAC Revolution PAC is pushing to raise money from the relatively few donors who have given the maximum to Paul’s campaign. One donor who said he reached his direct contribution limit is tech entrepreneur Scott Banister, who gave the PAC its largest donation — $10,000.