The Coordination Problem Between Jeb Bush and super PACs

In what was already a grim week for the Jeb Bush campaign, a bit more bad news late last Thursday night.

After a meeting in Houston on Oct. 26th, the campaign sent parts of a presentation to reporters detailing how they saw the race moving forward. But the day after Bush's debate performance, U.S. News and World Report obtained the whole document, including detailed plans for what the campaign had, or, really, hadn't, done so far in Iowa.

The Iowa Starting Line blog was stunned by what it saw. "[A] brief look at their Iowa numbers show extremely troubling signs for Bush’s viability in the caucus," wrote Pat Rynard, assessing a spreadsheet full of single-digit numbers that represented the campaign's outreach in the state. Rynard summarizes: "[Y]ou don’t even have to be a former caucus or Iowa campaign staffer to realize how troubling their internal Iowa metrics look."

But there may be a silver lining, a silver lining of which the campaign was very aware. Former Ted Cruz staffer Amanda Carpenter: The "leak," like so many "leaks," may have been an intentional move to pass information to a pro-Bush super PAC.

Bush's campaign got a lot of credit for its massive fundraising push at the beginning of the campaign. The largest figure, though, was money that flowed into Right to Rise, the super PAC supporting the former Florida Governor. In the first half of this year, Right to Rise raised over $100 million, money that it can spend on Bush's behalf.

The problem for the PAC is that it can't coordinate legally with Bush on where to spend that fortune. It has to do its own thing, making educated guesses about where and how to advertise or otherwise contact voters.

Unless, that is, there's public information it can act on. Bush's campaign can't call Right to Rise and say, "Hey, we need help in Iowa." It can however, make an internal document public for the world, and the PAC, to see.

CLICK HERE to read Philip Bump's article in the Washington Post.











NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker

5 Years After Citizens United and SuperPACs Continue To Grow

Prospective Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush is moving to get his share via a new political committee.  The way he did it could blaze a new trail for candidates seeking out million-dollar donors.

Bush's action comes just before the fifth anniversary, next Wednesday, of Citizens United, the 2010 Supreme Court ruling that restructured the campaign finance landscape.  In the five years since, there's been an explosion of political money.

The organization around former Florida Governor Bush, has created a superPAC, a species of political committee that wasn't possible before Citizens United.  It can take contributions of any amount.

The Bush organization also set up another political action committee at the same time, an old-fashioned PAC operating with contribution limits.  The PACs have the same name, Right To Rise, similar logos and the same lawyer.

Bush announced one of them, the old-fashioned one, in a smartphone video last week.  "Everybody, today we're setting up the Right To Rise PAC, which is a PAC to support candidates that believe in conservative principles to allow all Americans to rise up.  If you're interested, go to righttorisepac.org."

But for wealthy donors who are deeply interested in Jeb Bush's political future, Right to Rise SuperPAC seems the better option.  At the superPAC, donors can give hundreds of thousands of dollars, even millions of dollars.  Bush can even solicit the big contributions himself, something he couldn't do as a declared candidate.

It's a new twist in post-Citizens United politics.

The heart of Citizens United is the notion that superPACs, and other outside groups, are completely independent of candidates.  That underpins the Court's conclusion that unregulated money from big donors wouldn't be corrupting to lawmakers.

Federal law says federal candidates and officeholders can't coordinate with superPACs.  But until Bush becomes a candidate, that restriction doesn't apply.

"So long as you do not take steps to actively and publicly campaign, then a superPAC is permissible," said campaign finance lawyer Craig Engle, who represented candidate Jon Huntsman in the 2012 Republican contest.  "If you have a superPAC and there isn't a candidate, there's no worry of coordination because there aren't two entities that could be coordinating."

SuperPACs were mandatory accessories for presidential candidates in 2012, often running devastating attack ads that the candidate's campaign preferred to avoid.  Some of the superPACs were funded by these wealthy donors, Winning Our Future, supporting Republican Newt Gingrich and underwritten by casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife; and Red, White and Blue Fund, backed by investor Foster Freiss to promote Republican Rick Santorum.

Now, as Bush is demonstrating, there's nothing to stop not-yet candidates from having superPACs too – Mitt Romney, Chris Christie, Hillary Clinton, anyone who isn't an announced candidate or federal officeholder.

"What Citizens United and related cases from the Roberts court have given us is a system that is pretty close to no holds barred," said Daniel Tokaji, a law professor at Moritz College of Law in Ohio, and co-author of The New Soft Money, a book examining the outside spending in politics.

He notes that many of the Watergate-era regulatory standards are still in effect.  "But they're increasingly ineffective at stopping people from spending massive amounts of money to influence campaigns," he said.  "So we're not quite to a completely deregulated system, but we are pretty darn close to that now."

This year, a well-financed pee-candidacy could be especially important.  The 2016 primary season starts later than normal, with the Iowa caucuses in early February.  Tokaji says White House hopefuls might follow Bush's lead, and "you could have what is in effect a wealth primary before the primaries and caucuses even begin."

It would be just another product of campaign finance law after Citizens United.











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