The quote above is taken from
Steve Benen's piece highlighting the emerging threat of
Jeb Bush's intention to let his campaign be run by a Super PAC. Some other important and good reporting on this new development is linked below (and a great Mitch McConnell video at the end to add some needed humor to the admittedly dull topic of campaign finance law.)
Richard Hasen at Slate helpfully sums up the implications of Jeb Bush's new strategy:
[The Citizens United] theory is thin to begin with—super PACs are valuable because they have already proven adept at following a candidate’s lead without formal coordination—but Bush’s campaign strategy has completely undermined it. Because Bush claims he is neither a candidate nor even seriously considering a presidential run, the anti-coordination rules don’t apply to him. He can talk about future campaign strategy all he wants and set the Right to Rise robot to work once he declares his candidacy.
More importantly, by participating in literally dozens of fundraisers for Right to Rise during a period when donors know he can fully direct what it does, donors know the best way of gaining influence over Bush (and the chances for influence with a future Bush administration) is by giving money to the group—lots of it. . . .
By signaling that Right to Rise is his campaign arm, Jeb Bush has broken down the wall between his super PAC and his campaign committee in the eyes of donors. Preventing coordination and preserving independence was one of the last walls that were left.
The next step will be simply handing $1 million checks to candidates. . . .
Bush is more than lying about his intentions to become a presidential candidate. He’s undermining what little law we have left to stop the super wealthy from having even greater influence over our elections and politics.
And this
Washington Post piece by Philip Bump provides a good primer on the issues, including:
1. The PAC can raise much more money than the candidate. Federal campaign contribution limits apply only to Bush, not Right to Rise. Donors can only give Bush $2,700, maximum per primary and general election. They can give Right to Rise as much as their little hearts desire.
2. The PAC can coordinate with other PACs. Right to Rise can share information and strategy with any other PAC that might want to weigh in on behalf of Bush. Let's say he gets the endorsement of the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity. Once we clear the skies of flying pigs, AFP and Right to Rise could work together to figure out where to send AFP's battalions of grass-roots volunteers or how to divvy up spending on mail. They can do this now, of course, but usually PACs are working to compliment a campaign structure, not to compose it.
3. Right to Rise can have Bush help fundraise. In March, the Post's Matea Gold wrote about the rise of PACs in political campaigns, noting that candidates can still appear at fundraisers for affiliated PACs, although they can't ask for more than $5,000.
4. It frees up Bush to spend a lot less time on the exhausting process of raising money. That said, Bush will have to spend far less time trying to raise money into his own campaign. He'll need some, of course -- he needs to travel and so on -- but far less than if he were also buying TV spots and running scores of field offices and so on.
But I promised a little Mitch McConnell levity. Philip Bump goes on to describe how the prohibition against "coordination" between the candidate and the Super PAC is absurdly unenforced, referring to a famous McConnell YouTube video:
The boundaries of what counts as coordination are constantly being tested by campaigns and by PACs. You might remember Mitch McConnell releasing that weird footage of himself in various campaign-friendly locales; that was so PACs had B-roll footage of him for their ads. Or maybe you remember the Republican strategy to share poll numbers by posting cryptic tweets -- an effort to get around the stipulation that poll numbers not be shared between campaign organizations and PACs unless the numbers are made public.
Have you seen that McConnell video? It is a creepy, silent and seemingly inexplicable video montage of Mitch McConnell smiling, sitting at his desk and awkwardly interacting not only with his wife but "average Americans" - posted only to allow his PACs to use his campaign's hand selected video in TV commercials while pretending no coordination exists. It is worth a watch in an odd Jon Stewart moment-of-zen kind of way: