If Ben Carson maintains his perch atop national polls of Republican voters he will likely owe a debt of gratitude that he can never repay to Carson-aligned super political action committees.
Super PACs have a bad reputation. Activists who are critical of the influence of money in politics view the groups as the shadowy foundations behind long-established candidates that collect big bucks from wealthy donors. But they can have a profound impact on races involving lesser-known candidates who subsist on grassroots support.
The National Draft Ben Carson for President Committee helped successfully make the retired neurosurgeon the first candidate successfully drafted for president since 1964, when Republican Barry Goldwater, an early leader of the modern American conservative movement, won the GOP nomination.
John Philip Sousa IV, great grandson of the legendary American composer, chaired the committee and changed its name to “The 2016 Committee” to abide by FEC rules in advance of Carson’s campaign announcement.
Sousa told the Washington Examiner conversations about drafting Ben Carson started in June 2013, after Carson criticized President Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast. Earlier this month, The 2016 Committee brought in Sam Pimm as its executive director.
Pimm met with the Washington Examiner at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Washington, D.C., and detailed an unusual strategy underway to raise Carson’s name ID: He plans to distribute at least 150,000 copies of Sousa’s book “Ben Carson Rx for America” at events around the country and holds screenings of “Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story,” which features Cuba Gooding Jr. as Dr. Carson.
Pimm, a former director of field operations in New Hampshire for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s 2012 presidential campaign, said he thinks the upside is much higher for Carson than Gingrich and that he wants Carson to put together a coalition of voters who typically do not vote.
“We’re talking about what’s going to win New Hampshire and I think if anybody gets 20 percent out of New Hampshire, they’re probably walking away with it,” Pimm said. “But if you made me bet on where we’re going to break through I would either say Iowa or South Carolina.”
He said his volunteer base is growing exponentially and currently tops 30,000 individuals who knock on doors and canvass political gatherings. The super PAC raised more than $13.5 million in 2014 — and spent almost all of it — but has decided not to purchase any television or radio advertising spots thus far for 2016.
“The most important thing for us to do is make sure we’re expanding the base for Dr. Carson, and I’m not sure that running television in Iowa or New Hampshire, for example, really helps us do that,” Sousa said. “We think direct mail, we think knocking on the door, we think handing out my books to those folks … is today much more cost effective and beneficial for Dr. Carson’s nomination.”
Fortunately for The 2016 Committee, another Carson-aligned super PAC just so happens to have decided to focus primarily on advertising. A Carson campaign spokesman reportedly referred to One Vote, a super PAC led by Republican strategist Andy Yates, as the “unofficially sanctioned” group that donors should give contributions to if they choose to look beyond the campaign.
“We’re the super PAC that the campaign is most happy about and where I think they’re sending their donors who want to be able to do more to support the campaign,” Yates told the Washington Examiner. “I think that puts us in a very good position to be the — for lack of a better word — ‘blessed’ super PAC by the campaign. Our focus is going to be on … aggressive paid media advertising.”
Yates said One Vote had no intention of having any grassroots operation and would not recruit any volunteers. He noted that The 2016 Committee does these things and it would seek out smaller-dollar donors.
While the super PACs say they do not work together, they may combine into one larger super PAC soon. Former Carson campaign chairman Terry Giles resigned from the campaign to reportedly form a third super PAC that would seek to combine both The 2016 Committee and One Voice into one operation. Under federal election law, Giles must wait 120 days before getting involved in the world of super PACs.
“I imagine at 120 days and one second my phone’s going to ring and it’s going to be Terry saying let’s get together and talk about this,” Sousa said. “I’m not going to get rid of my organization, but I’m certainly happy to work with other organizations to make sure that we’re not duplicating efforts and throwing money away, and it’s all well coordinated — or as well-coordinated as the law allows it to be.”
After selling its donor list to the Carson team, Sousa said his group saw a 20 percent dip in donations, but that it has since rebounded. Sousa said it’s important that his group not take money away from the Carson campaign, so he often tells people who feel torn between the two groups to split their intended donation in half.
With Carson’s former campaign chair moving to form a super PAC, and The 2016 Committee having sold its donor list to Carson’s campaign, Carson supporters may reasonably wonder which entity actually runs the campaign. Pimm said some of the Carson supporters that The 2016 Committee recruits also choose to volunteer for Carson’s campaign.
Such infrastructure helped Carson win the Southern Republican Leadership Conference’s straw poll in Oklahoma City, which featured only a few members of Carson’s official campaign: Ben Carson and two staffers. Where one organization ends and the other begins seems difficult for even Carson’s biggest fans to discern.
“I think when Dr. Carson was in South Carolina a couple of weeks ago, several Carson supporters took my book over to Dr. Carson to autograph, and when I was in Colorado on the same weekend, several people gave me a copy of “One Nation,” to autograph,” Sousa said with a laugh. “So he was autographing my book and I was autographing his book.”
