178 PART Two • ThE PoliTiCs oF AmERiCAn DEmoCRACy
Super PAC
A political organization
that aggregates
unlimited contributions
by individuals and
organizations to be
spent independently of
candidate committees.cannot be coordinated with those of a candidate. No limits exist on how much can be
spent in this fashion. This two-part system is the direct result of the 2010 Citizens United
v. FEC ruling by the United States Supreme Court.
Citizens United v. FEC. In January 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations,
unions, and nonprofits may spend funds to support or oppose candidates, so long as the
expenditures are made independently and are not coordinated with candidate campaigns.
(Political parties may also make independent expenditures on behalf of candidates.) These
rulings overturned campaign-finance laws dating back decades. Democrats, plus many
journalists and bloggers, accused the Court of granting corporations rights that ought to
be exercised only by flesh-and-blood human beings. Republicans and others defended the
ruling as protecting freedom of speech. Two months later, a federal court of appeals held
that it was not possible to limit contributions to independent-expenditure groups based
on the size of the contribution.^8
super PACs. These rulings led directly to a new type of political organization: the super
Pac. Traditional PACs, which continue to exist, are set up to represent a corporation,
labor union, or interest group. The super PAC, in contrast, is established to aggregate
unlimited contributions by individuals and organizations and then funnel these sums into
independent expenditures. By 2011, every major presidential candidate had a super PAC.
It soon became clear that the supposed independence of these organizations is a fiction.
Presidential super PACs are usually chaired by individuals who are closely associated with
the candidate. Frequently, the chair is a former top member of the candidate’s campaign.
A variety of other super PACs were established as well. These groups are often ori-
ented toward a party, rather than a candidate. Such super PACs might seek, for example,
to support Republican or Democratic candidates for the U.S. Senate, or to intervene within
a particular party. The super PAC founded by the Club for Growth, for example, devotes
its considerable resources to supporting strong conservatives in Republican primaries and
to running negative advertisements against more moderate Republicans.
One interesting development in 2011–2012 was the tendency for super PACs to be
supported primarily by very wealthy individuals, rather than by corporations or other orga-
nizations. The funding was still provided by business interests but came from individuals
who owned corporations, not from the corporations themselves. A striking example of
this phenomenon was a $10 million contribution in January 2012 to the super PAC of
Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the U.S. House.
The contribution, supplied by casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife,
amounted to almost half of all the funds that Gingrich had raised throughout the entire
primary season. Without this contribution, Gingrich would have been forced to end
his campaign much earlier than he actually did. How effective were super PACs over-
all in 2012? We address that question in the Politics and Economics feature on the
following page.
The 527 organization. Well before Citizens United, interest groups realized that they
could set up new organizations outside the parties to encourage voter registration and to
run issue ads aimed at energizing supporters. So long as these committees did not endorse
candidates, they faced no limits on fund-raising. These tax-exempt groups, called 527
organizations after the section of the tax code that provides for them, first made a major
impact during the 2003–2004 election cycle. Since then, they have largely been replaced
by super PACs, but a number continue to be active to the present day.- Speechnow v. FEC, 599 F.3d 686 (D.C.Cir. 2010).
www
Helpful Web Sites
To find excellent reports on
where campaign money
comes from and how it
is spent, view the site
maintained by the Center
for Responsive Politics by
typing in “opensecrets.”
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