The 2020 Democratic presidential candidates condemn big money in politics and earn applause at campaign events when they say they will refuse corporate PAC money, but their pledges leave plenty of room for big PAC spending in the race.
Nearly all the candidates boast that they refuse contributions to their campaigns from corporate PACs. A banner on Sen. Kamala Harris’ website says that she “refuses to accept donations from corporate PACs.” Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s site says: “We aren’t taking any corporate PAC or federal lobbyist money. This is a campaign powered by you.”
Pledges against corporate PAC donations, however, leave room for contributions from labor union PACs, which overwhelmingly support Democrats over Republicans, and other ideological interest PACs like that of Planned Parenthood.
Refusal of corporate PAC money “is, shall we say, a feel-good pledge that no one is going to have worry about the consequences of adhering to,” Walter Shapiro, a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice and columnist at Roll Call, told the Washington Examiner.
A few candidates have sworn off all PAC donations. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s website says that she “doesn’t accept contributions from PACs of any kind” and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke’s reads: “All People. No PACs.”
But even refusing any type of PAC donations does not harm presidential candidate fundraising because traditional PACs are limited in the amount of money they can contribute to campaigns. Less than a third of a percent of contributions to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign were from PACs of any kind, according to the Center of Responsive Politics’ OpenSecrets.com.
The Democratic presidential candidates vary in their attitude toward the biggest bogeyman in the campaign finance world: super PACs, which cannot donate to or coordinate with campaigns but can independently can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to advocate for or oppose candidates through ads, phone-banking, or other means. The top super PAC in support of Clinton’s 2016 presidential bid raised $192 million.
Several candidates have said that they will discourage support from super PACs in the primary.
Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro’s campaign has said he “discourages the creation of a super PAC to support his candidacy” and Sen. Kamala Harris’ campaign has said she “rejects super PAC activity.”
Yet Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who flaunted that he did not have a super PAC when he ran for president in 2016 presidential bid, said he was appreciative of support from a nurses’ union super PAC. National Nurses United funded a super PAC that spent nearly $4.8 million in support of Sanders in the 2016 cycle and only around $200,000 in support of other candidates.
Progressives condemn super PACs, seeing them as a way to evade federal limits on campaign donations and undermine campaign finance rules.
In March, End Citizens United and eight other progressive grassroots organizations signed an open letter urging the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates to “oppose single candidate super PACs in the Democratic presidential primary.”
But what counts as a single-candidate super PAC, though, is open to interpretation. A single-candidate super PAC is not a technical designation by the Federal Election Commission, but rather a term for a Jeb Bush-style super PAC created with the sole purpose of supporting one candidate.
“I wonder exactly how they will define it, and if anyone takes this pledge, how it could possibly be enforced,” Andrew Mayersohn, committees researcher at CRP, told the Washington Examiner.
Like Sanders with the nurses’ union PAC in 2016, under the right circumstances, candidates could welcome support from super PACs that overwhelmingly support them.
Yet even if candidates don’t want super PAC support, they are essentially powerless to stop it. One Democratic donor created a super PAC in support of Sen. Cory Booker and plans to raise $10 million for the super PAC, even though Booker said he does not want the support.
O’Rourke’s campaign said it is “not interested in the help of any super PACs or special interest groups” and doesn’t “want their involvement in this race.” But a super PAC called Texas Forever benefited O’Rourke late in his 2018 Senate race, spending $2.3 million to oppose Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. After the election, FEC filings revealed that Texas Forever was almost entirely funded by the Senate Majority PAC, which has ties to Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
And of course, candidates can claim they don’t want PAC support and pretend to throw their hands up in frustration while benefiting royally from the “unwanted” spending.
In the 2016 Republican presidential primary, candidates were aided by megadonor super PACs run by close allies which benefited only one candidate and ran ads against other Republican primary candidates. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s super PAC, for instance, raised over $100 million, while his presidential campaign committee raised just $34 million.
Unlike the 2016 Republican presidential field, in which many candidates had dedicated super PACs, Democratic presidential primary candidates are in largely uncharted waters when it comes to their relationships with super PACs and how they can be used against other primary candidates, if at all.
“The establishment support was so thoroughly behind Hillary Clinton that it wasn’t the same as an open field. In 2012, there wasn’t a Democratic primary, and in 2008, there were no super PACs,” Mayersohn said.
As the primary race heats up and the competition becomes more fierce, candidates could be more accepting of super PACs that predominantly support their candidacy.
“No matter what people say, come November or December, there’s going to be this real, ‘oh God, can we wiggle out of our pledge somehow’ temptation,” Shapiro said of the anti-super PAC pledges.
One candidate has already broken the super PAC taboo: Washington Gov. Jay Inslee welcomes support from the Act Now on Climate super PAC, which was created to support his candidacy and has already spent $1.3 million. Inslee has said that his campaign won’t accept money from corporate PACs.
“They want to defeat climate change, and this is something I’ve been very passionate about for decades. So, no, I won’t be condemning any organization that’s trying to defeat climate change,” Inslee said at an Iowa campaign stop last month.
When it comes to the general election, it is even more likely that candidates will fully accept super PAC support.
“I would be surprised if any pledge to reject single-candidate super PAC support in the general election,” Mayersohn said. When there are only two major candidates left at the general election stage, all of the super PACs are essentially single-candidate, Mayersohn said.
“Democrats are a bit stuck in a tough position,” Rick Hasen, professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine, told the Washington Examiner.
“On the one hand, much of the Democratic base is opposed to big money in politics and wants the money raised by Democratic candidates to be from small dollars because that is seen as more democratizing,” Hasen said. “On the other hand, when it comes to running against Republicans who do not oppose big money in politics, refusing the help of a [single-candidate] super PAC can be like unilateral disarmament.”
