Throughline - Why Super PACs have more power than ever in elections

Episode Date: February 26, 2026

What’s one thing people across the U.S. can agree on? Hint – it’s about money. Voters from all political parties overwhelmingly see unlimited spending in elections as a threat to our democracy. So if most people don’t like all this money in politics, then who does? The answer, on this episode of Throughline.Guests:Michael Kang, Class of 1940 Professor of Law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law.Henrik Schatzinger, professor of political science at Ripon College and author of forthcoming book Super PACs in the City: How Outside Money is Reshaping Local ElectionsTo access bonus episodes and listen to Throughline sponsor-free, subscribe to Throughline+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/throughline.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from MS Now. On their new podcast, MS Now presents Clockit. Washington Power Players, Simone Sanders Towns, and Eugene Daniels discuss how the latest political news and the catchiest cultural moments converge. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. You already know the person who spent the most money supporting President Trump's campaign in 2024. His name is Elon Musk. You might remember him showing up at Trump rallies. Come on up here, Elon.

Jumping awkwardly around on stage. Take over, Elijah, yes, take over. But behind the scenes, he'd spend more than $291 million to support President Trump's win. And we had one president who couldn't climb a flight of stairs. And another who was fist pumping after getting shot. Fight, fight, fight. Blood coming down the face. Shortly after the election, Musk was tapped by Trump to lead Doge, which would slash government spending and jobs,

which he represented once by pretending to fire up a chainsaw at the conservative CPAC convention. This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy. Chainsaw! Musk was the biggest spender by far. But he wasn't the only billionaire trying to influence the elections. about $15 billion was spent in 2024. And what raised eyebrows was the relatively short lists of the ultra-rich people who spent it.

Some major donors and billionaires have made public pushes for candidates this election cycle. So when it comes to following the money, there is a whole lot of it to keep track of in this race. Several high-profile billionaires are dumping massive amounts of money into the presidential race. Fast forward to today. The 26 midterm elections are already shaping up to be the most costly in American history. Part of a trend over the last several decades where the amount of money spent on elections has mostly been going up.

So we wanted to look at one moment, a big moment, that seemed to open the financial floodgates. I am sick that if you debate and you disagree with this administration, somehow you're not patriotic. In the lead up to the 2008 presidential election, it looked like at the time that Hillary was the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. This is Michael King. He's a law professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. Citizens United wanted to run a documentary that told all kinds of stories that they felt were important to tell about Hillary Clinton. You might have heard of Citizens United, the plaintiff, ever since its 2010 Supreme Court case. But Citizens United had for years been a conservative. nonprofit that made media supporting Republicans and critical of Democrats.

And their film, Hillary, the movie, had a strong narrative. Generally, that she was kind of an awful person. She's driven by the power. She would be a terrible candidate. She does not answer questions. Disaster in all kinds of ways. She is the expert of not saying what she believes. So they produced this documentary.

Hillary Rodham Clinton. Could she become the first female president? in the history of the United States. It wasn't designed to, like, make a lot of money. It was designed to be seen. And they wanted to distribute that movie through video on demand. Their goal at the outset was not to change campaign finance law. They just wanted to be able to show their movie.

Citizens United wanted to run their movie on cable TV and air ads for it on broadcast TV close to the 2008 presidential prime election. But the Federal Elections Commission oppose them. Laws ban these kinds of political ads from running 30 days before the primaries. Hillary the movie would never air. But when Citizens United took the case to court, they said, why couldn't they show their film when General Electric National Public Radio or George Sorrows may freely broadcast? The result of that case would completely change the American political system. Today, the Supreme Court struck down federal legislation that restricts how corporations can spend their money in political campaigns.

The court's five-four decision opened the floodgates for corporate and undisclosed dark money to pour into the election process. Since the Citizens United case in 2010, the amount of money being spent in elections has skyrocketed. But it wasn't the corporations that everyone feared would be spending the money. It has been ultra-wealthy billionaires. and they're not spending it on their own. Most of that money has been going to political action committees, or PACs, that with the help of the Citizens United decision, have been given superpowers.

Super PACs can raise and spend unlimited sums, unlike campaigns which are limited with how much they're able to bring in from one specific individual. In the 2024 election, it was a little over $5 billion raised by Super PACs, And there were about 2,500 super PACs total. Super PACs can't legally coordinate directly with campaigns they support. But Super PACs can control the political messaging they fund, rather than the candidates themselves. They changed how candidates behave, how parties compete, what donors are doing, and who really speaks to voters during a campaign.

Who fears whom? and who sets the story voters remember. Super PACs did not just add money. They rewired the whole campaign ecosystem. Money has always played a role in American elections. But for the most part, there were rules that kept the biggest spenders from corrupting the process. Even today, it feels like there are very few things

that most Americans agree on. Yet, polls have consistently shown that voters from all political parties overwhelmingly see unlimited spending in elections as a threat to American democracy. So if most people don't like all this money in politics, then who does? I'm Ramtin Arablui. And I'm Randab Abdir Fattah. On this episode of ThruLine, the explosion of money in elections, despite America's long history of trying to prevent it.

Hi, this is Jill McAfee from Atlanta, Georgia. And you're listening to Thurie. line from NPR. This message comes from Wise, the app for international people using money around the globe. You can send, spend, and receive in up to 40 currencies with only a few simple taps. Be smart, get Wise. Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com. T's and Cs apply. This message comes from 48 hours with the 48 hours post-mortem podcast. Host Anne Marie Green joins producers and correspondents to discuss key.

evidence, dead ends, and stranger than fiction twists they faced in the field. Listen on your favorite podcast app. This message is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. In 1998, L.A. County Sheriff's Deputy and decorated SWAT officer John O.J. set out for a run in California's Devil's Punch Bowl and never came back. Family and fellow deputies insist the story doesn't add up. The Valley of Shadows podcast explores one of Southern California's most mysterious missing person cases. Available wherever you get podcasts.

This is Ira Glass. On this American life, we look for stories that are surprising. And you won't hear anywhere else. Like, for example, this one astronaut who went to the moon, you know what he's not into? Space. Was it cool to float around weightless? No, no, no.

This American Life, unexpected stories, wherever you get your podcast. In 1971, cat and mouse. In 1971, there was a rush of money heading to Washington, D.C. Literally, and infamously, suitcases full of cash all going to support the re-election campaign of President Richard Nixon. For four years, President Nixon has responded to the needs of the people. That's why we need President Nixon, now more than ever. By the 70s, it had become expensive to, to run political campaigns. Television had become popular and running ads on TV cost a lot of money.

But getting in front of a mass audience was a must for politicians. At the same time, Congress passed its first major campaign finance bill called the Federal Election Campaign Act, or FICA. FICA capped campaign contributions and spending for things like ads and also forced candidates to disclose the names of anyone donating over $100. In the weeks before the law took effect, Nixon's campaign would raise millions of dollars from secret donors. In the end, Nixon's campaign was forced to turn over his donors' list. And when they did, volunteers from a group called Common Cause started connecting the dots

between corporate donors on his list and political favors that Nixon seemed to be doling out. The former head of American Airlines and the current chief of Goodyear Tire and Rubber told the Irvin Committee how they gave $55,000 and $40,000 respectively to the Nixon re-election committee. Both contributions were illegal. There's actually not a lot of campaign finance regulation before the 1970s at the federal level. Really very lax enforcement of whatever campaign finance laws we had at the time. The first major campaign finance law passed in the United States was the Tillman Act in 1907, when Teddy Roosevelt was accused of accepting large corporate donations for his presidential run in exchange for political favors. The Tillman Act prevented corporations for making direct contributions to influence federal elections.

And for most of the 20th century, corporate spending was seen in both law and culture as a potentially corrupting force. in elections. Eventually, unions were also limited for making candidate contributions, but it wouldn't be until after Watergate and amendments to FICA that experts say real reforms were put in place. It's really 1974 amendments that put the teeth into federal campaign finance law. And they do a bunch of different things. One is they apply contribution limits across the board for everyone. So anytime you're exchanging money in the campaign finance system, there's a limit on how much you can give. FICA put limits on how much individuals could give to candidates, how much they could give to political parties, and how much parties could also give to candidates.

So if you wanted to give it to a candidate, you had a limit of $1,000. If you want to give it to a party, it was a limit. If a party wanted to give a candidate, there was a limit. It also had disclosure rules. So that meant every time a candidate receives money above a certain amount, they have to disclose it. Every time they spend money in a significant way, they have to disclose that. And anyone who's really active in federal campaign finance politics has to register. And then, in addition, there were expenditure limits, which meant that candidates can only spend so much. So as a candidate, you don't have to worry about your competitor out spending you because you were both capped.

The next year, in 1975, a group of libertarian and conservative politicians filed a lawsuit, arguing that fundraising and spending limits made it harder for newcomers to run against favored incumbents. The case is known as Buckley v. Vallejo. So you may proceed whenever you are ready. James Buckley is a conservative politician. He was a former U.S. senator. He is one of a bunch of politicians that, challenges the FICA amendments, the whole campaign finance system under the First Amendment.

Buckley argued that limiting the amount of money campaigns can raise and spend limited what those campaigns could say to potential voters. To Buckley and others, money was speech, and the First Amendment guarantees that right to free speech. The greatest campaign reform law ever enacted was the First Amendment. We rely on the proposition that good speech will drive out bad. And all opponents ask, is that the court enforce that? On the government side, attorneys argued that the caps on spending were justified in order to prevent corruption rather than to censor speech. So what is the ruling that comes out of this case and how does it sort of play out over the next several decades?

One is, it says, campaign finance, is First Amendment activity, and it's protected by the First Amendment. Basically, because reaching people takes money, restrictions on spending are effectively restrictions on speech. This was a huge deal, and maybe an even bigger deal today. This is the moment when the Supreme Court decided that. The government can regulate how much I can give to your campaign, but it can't stop me from spending a million dollars on what I believe.

And if that happens to be saying how great, a candidate you are, that's okay. It can't restrict that. So free speech. You can spend whatever you want to say whatever you think, but you can't contribute whatever you want directly to a campaign because that could lead to corruption, a la Teddy Roosevelt or Richard Nixon. The court decided in Buckley, that's a big enough worry in a democracy that the government should be able to regulate that. And I think that's really where you see this cat and mouse game start up in earnest.

Kang says it wasn't easy for wealthy people to spend their money on their own megaphone during elections. They needed help from political groups or the parties themselves, and that money was restricted. Yet through the 1980s and into the 1990s, campaign costs were rising, and people were finding ways around the FECA laws. Enter soft money, a loophole that allowed parties to collect big sums of money for generic party building activity. things like voter registration and get out the vote.

And so you had this creep of ultra wealthy people spending more and more money in politics from the 90s into the 2000s. Which meant that candidates were focusing more and more on the money. So now you have kind of this unlimited appetite for money because you want to be able to be sure you're not going to get out spent in a dramatic way. And advertisements and marketing and media can make up a majority of the campaign

costs. And what we've seen, obviously, over the FICA era, as the money keeps going up. I don't remember a time where a candidate is not immediately getting elected and then turning around and beginning to fundraise again for their re-election campaign. It's just like a concept fundraising machine, it seems like. Exactly. Right. And that has lots of effects on politics. The politicians are spending less time doing their actual job and more time raising money. It distracts them from kind of what we consider, like, what's important about their job, which is making policy and thinking about what's good for the country. There's lots of reasons to think that's not a great development in campaign finance.

Then came the controversies. On the Democrat side, President Bill Clinton got in hot water when his campaign received foreign donations and held fundraising events at the White House. Meanwhile, Republicans had their fair share of scrutiny for contributions they received. And then came a senator from Arizona, who used these controversies in his 2000 presidential campaign.

Until the last breath I draw, I will fight to eliminate this soft money to give that government back to the people of America who have had it taken away from them. That's what this campaign is all about. When John McCain ran for president in 2000, he emphasized campaign finance reform.

McCain ended up losing to George W. Bush in the Republican primary, and was astoundingly outspent. But in 2002, he introduced the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, also known as the McCain-Feingold Act. It was designed to end soft-money contributions, which had soared by this time. And the law forced candidates to stand by their ads with messages like this.

I'm George W. Bush, and I approve this message. And the McCain-Fine-Findgold Act. also restricted corporations and unions from running ads or media mentioning federal candidates within 30 days of a primary election and 60 days of a general election. This was called electioneering communications and was meant to limit a kind of attack ad close to elections. And it would be this last law that would be at the heart of a case about a movie that would change the way money in American politics works. So who is the real Hillary Clinton? Is she a brilliant trailblazer poised to make history as the first female president?

Or is she ruthless, cunning, dishonest, willing to do anything for power? Coming up, Hillary, the movie. Hi, I'm Carolyn from Tallahassee, Florida, and you're listening to ThruLine from NPR. Throughline keeps me captivated with every episode unraveling in a way that teaches me something new and fascinating each time. Thank you. Greenland has said it is not for sale. Denmark has said it can't even legally sell Greenland.

And whether Trump can or will or should try to control or purchase a territory that does not want to be sold is one question. But on Planet Money, we are more interested in how we even got to this moment and how we might gracefully get out of it. Listen to Planet Money on the NPR app or wherever you get your pocket. Part 2. The Floodgates Open. In the 2000s, Jim Bob had already made a name for himself in conservative legal circles. Starting in the late 1970s, the Indiana attorney represented a number of conservative groups, and that led him to fighting for how they use their money to get their messages out.

And in the 2000s, he had become the go-to guy for campaign finance cases. I think the government is just really grabbing for more regulation and more control, more prohibition on speech. For Jim Bob, the more speech, the better, meaning the more ads telling you what a candidate believes or what others believe about them, the better. One of the questions, you know, people need to ask themselves, you know, is having knowledge about the positions of candidates on issues, what they're for and what they're against? Is that good or bad? I mean, I argue that it's good. His arguments boil down to four points. This is Henrik Schatzinger.

Professor of Political Science at Repent College in Wisconsin. And he has a book coming out called Super PACs in the city. His first argument is that ordinary people should be able to pool money in groups to really compete. So he frames the decision or the case as one that will level the playing field. So in other words, if a super-rich person wanted to run for office, under the law, they could spend whatever money they wanted to run ads. Bob argued that regular people would be forced to pull their money together to equal one rich person's buying power.

So groups of people, including corporations, unions, or political action committees, should be able to do just that. You can't stop rich people from spending money. But what you can do is have a system that, number one, people have averaged. means can contribute and be effective, and that requires groups. His second argument is that the campaign finance laws are really about protecting incumbents. Incumbents had name recognition in war chests. Challengers often relied on smaller donations.

His third point, he argues that the laws are so complex and confusing that they can become a deterrent for people to run for office. The whole idea behind the First Amendment was was to protect political speech and thereby protect the right of average citizens to participate in our democratic process. And the last argument he makes

is about civic courage. He argues that you should not need a lawyer and his stomach for harassment to really support the cause. He casts enforcement as intimidation. And he says the laws chill political participation. And that brings me.

brings us back to Hillary the movie. What is the truth about Hillary Rodham Clinton? It's a recklessness that's born of arrogance that goes back to her 1960s roots in their narcissism. Remember, the Federal Elections Commission rules prohibited the film from being aired. In 2007, Jim Bob signed on as the lawyer for Citizens United, the organization behind the movie.

He saw Citizens United as a First Amendment rescue mission, if you will. In a way, the case was similar to the other campaign finance cases he'd taken on before. Those four main arguments that show political speech and paying for political speech are protected under the First Amendment. In his telling, Citizens United is about freeing speech, not freeing money. When he went before a federal court in 2008, he said the film was just like any other news program, like 60 minutes. And so it should be allowed to be broadcast. The judge laughed at him. Citizens United lost the case.

But then it went to the Supreme Court, a court that had become more conservative in the 2000s. So initially, the case is a kind of small case. This is Northwestern Law Professor Michael Kemp. Citizens United is really about this obscure provision in McCain-Feingold. Which prevented corporations or unions from funding certain ads that clearly mentioned candidates on broadcast television 30 days before a primary election. So the really narrow question here is whether video on demand constituted a broadcast communication under McCain-Feingold. Very limited, not likely to change campaign finance. But when the case went up to the Supreme Court, something happened.

It was kicked off by Justice Samuel Alito. You think that if a book was published, a campaign biography that was the functional equivalent of express advocacy, that could be banned? At oral argument, there's a critical moment where the deputy solicitor general Malcolm Stewart, who represented the U.S. government and the FEC in this case. gets engaged with this back and forth with Justice Alito. And Justice Alito starts to wonder if this sort of ban could be justified in the same way, maybe a federal ban on books could be justified. I'm not saying it could be banned.

I'm saying that Congress could prohibit the use of corporate treasury funds and could require a corporation to publish it using its... Well, most publishers are corporations. a publisher that is a corporation could be prohibited from selling a book. Well, of course, the statute contains its own media exemption for media. But I'm not asking what the statute says. The government's position is... And Alito is kind of like a dog with a bone.

He just won't let go of this point. So he keeps going after Stewart. The government's position is that the First Amendment allows the banning of a book if it's published by a corporation. Because the First Amendment refers both to freedom of speech and of the press, there would be a potential argument that media corporations, the institutional press, would have a greater First Amendment right. He tries to say, this is not really what this case is about, which was true.

But then Alito says, well, like, what's the answer? Could we ban corporate money from funding a book that engages in political advocacy? And ultimately, Stewart says, We could prohibit the publication of the book using the corporate treasury fund. That seems to be a critical moment for Citizens United. Generally speaking, most people think it's okay for the government to regulate big money in politics and regulate campaign ads, which may influence people's views about the election and is where most of the money is spent. But banning books sounds like something else. And so Alito is kind of connecting the specter of book banning that we're sort of familiar with and have.

this really ugly connotation with what the government was trying to argue in that case. Yeah, it seems like a very intentional and calculated choice of metaphor in this case, right? Because book bans, book burning, it has a very negative, specifically, connotation in most people's minds. It's like the most dramatic form of censorship that we often think of. But it's interesting then to apply the idea of censorship. of free speech to corporate spending? Yeah, I think the way that campaign finance reformers would present campaign finance regulation is we're not trying to swing the election one way or the other.

We're not trying to censor speech. What we want to do is regulate how much influence people with a lot of money have over the election and equalize to some degree the amount of, say, we all have as citizens in a democracy. But what Alito was doing was connecting campaign finance regulation with this worry about government making choices about what's acceptable speech and picking sides in the debate, which is much more in the conservative direction. And one of the conservative anxieties about campaign finance regulation is the worry that that's what the government is trying to do in some sort of more subtle way. And so instead of deciding Citizens United on this narrow question, instead the court comes back and says, we want you to re-argue this case. re-brief this case. We're going to do it over, but we're now going to engage this much larger question about whether the federal government constitutionally can prohibit corporate money from funding election speech.

In other words, the Supreme Court wanted to take on a much bigger question, one that had already been settled by decades of legal precedent. Could the government really ban corporate spending on elections? Did the free speech under the First Amendment right extend to corporations like it did to individual people. Later that year, 2009, the case came back to the Supreme Court. By this time, Barack Obama had become president after massively outspending John McCain with unprecedented help from private donors. So when Citizens United goes back to the Supreme Court the second time for re-argument,

it's a pretty momentous oral argument. It's Elena Kagan's first argument as Solicitor General. Everyone knows that basically the future of the campaign finance systems on the line. And we're not surprised when Citizens United wins the case ultimately. Because at the argument, Kagan goes in and essentially is trying to limit the loss. If you're asking me, Mr. Chief Justice, as to whether the government has a preference as to the way in which it loses if it has to lose, what case of ours, what case of ours? lose this case, we do have a preference on how we lose this case. We don't want to lose this case

so badly that we lose all campaign finance regulation. So it's no surprise when the government loses, but it is pretty dramatic. Today, the Supreme Court struck down federal legislation that restricts how corporations can spend their money in political campaigns. The five to four majority led by Justice Kennedy said that political speech, speech is at the heart of the First Amendment. And the identity of this speaker does not remove that protection. Whether it's an individual or a group of individuals, maybe who work for a corporation, if they want to spend their money on getting their message out, they can't.

So they rejected the idea that corporate wealth creates a special corruption risk that justifies a ban. these restrictions on corporate spending have been around since 1907. The Tillman Act of 1907, the United States' first law to ban corporate spending in elections. And now we've blown a huge hole in campaign finance law. And the worry along these lines is that the floodgates will open to corporate money. And that's really where all the attention is. The Supreme Court has said, like people,

corporations have the right to engage in political advocacy, in expenditures without restriction. That had always been a critical distinction. We treated people differently than corporations, and corporations don't have to be treated like people. So it's not really the reasoning of the case. That gets sort of blown up in the reaction to the case. But that's the immediate reaction. It's like, what's this going to do? How much are corporations going to spend?

The irony is that Citizens United Ultimate Importance is really not about corporations because certainly for-profit corporations, for the most part, there are exceptions, but for the most part, for-profit corporations aren't actually all that thrilled about spending a lot of money in campaigns. It could be bad for business. It's bad for business. You know, I think Michael Jordan at one point has asked, like, why didn't he support Democratic causes and candidates more? And he said, Republicans buy gym shoes too, right? They buy sneakers. And so by being too publicly engaged in politics, you alienate people. And we've seen lots of examples of that recently, especially.

In fact, there are a bunch of corporations that argued against the outcome in Citizens United. They didn't want to be drawn into this. All the attention on the Citizens United ruling overshadowed another case happening around the same time in a lower court, one that would build off the ruling from Citizens United and make the case that since corporations could raise and spend whatever money they wanted, any group should be allowed to do this, even groups that had been restricted under McCain-Feingold and other election laws before. Within the same week that Citizens United is decided, the D.C. Circuit hero's oral argument

on a case called Speech Now versus FEC. and decides that case two months later. Speech Now was a nonprofit created by a small group of libertarians to promote the First Amendment. Specifically, they wanted to advocate for and against different candidates, but they would have had to organize as a political committee in order to do that. They went to court to argue that wasn't fair. And two months later, the D.C. Circuit cites Citizens United about two dozen times in 20 pages and says essentially Citizens United ties our hands in this case.

It would have been a different case probably before. But because of Citizens United and what it says about the government's constrained ability to regulate expenditures, it's clear speech now has the ability to be a super PAC, to be able to raise money without contribution limits, as long as they're only engaging in this kind of independent speech. In March of 2010, Speech Now won. And now any group that wanted to raise and spend unlimited money on their own messages, their own speech, they could. Within a few months, close to 80 new Super PACs filed with the FEC in time for the 2010 midterm elections.

2010 ends up being by far the most expensive midterm election in American history. But it wouldn't be the most expensive to date. Coming up, Super PACs explode. Hi, this is Susanna Callahan. I'm calling from Brooklyn to New York. You're listening to Thurline on NPR. Part 3. Whispering Through a Megaphone.

In January 2010, President Barack Obama gave his State of the Union address. It was just a few days after the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United, opening the door to massive changes to election fundraising and spending. The nine Supreme Court Justice. were sitting in the front row for his address. At one point, Obama says, Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations,

to spend without limit in our election. He actually comments on Citizens United in Alito Mowles not true. All nine of the justices, including Samuel Alito, sat unmoved, while legislators rose to applause all around them. I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests or worse by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people.

I think Super PACs really make their impact in the 2012 elections, where you have a presidential race. The jockeying to be the Republican Party's next presidential nominee has begun, and for the first time in more than 50 years, The GOP is without a clear frontrunner at this stage of the campaign. If you remember the 2012 race, Mitt Romney emerges eventually as the nominee. This is Northwestern Law Professor Michael Kang. But he has to kind of fend off challenges from like Rick Santorum,

who really relies almost entirely on Super PAC money. Who has the best chance to beat Obama? Rick Santorum. A full-spectrum conservative. This was known as the zombie candidate moment, where candidates whose campaigns appear to be dead rose from their graves. Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign was effectively dead. This is Henrik Shatzinger, who teaches political science at Ripon College. He's got a book coming out this year called Super PACs in the city.

He had no money, no staff, no momentum. Newt Gingrich's effort at political resurrection is not looking so good. today, the top staff for the Republican's presidential campaign resigned on mass. In the old world, he would have just dropped out end of the campaign. But this was the new world, where just one wealthy donor could keep a candidate alive. And so Gingrich went actually from being dead in the water to winning that South Carolina primary with super PAC money. It's not that I am a good debater.

It is that I articulate the deepest felt values of the American people. But it wasn't just Republicans who made the 2012 elections significant for super PACs. President Obama and his re-election team have reversed course. They're now encouraging big donors to finance a pro-Obama super PAC. So the turning point is when Obama's team gave the green light to a super PAC. It was known as Priorities USA Action. And it made a big difference. Priorities USA ran some of the most effective ads during the whole election cycle.

It had some of the most well-known ads about a steel worker who lost his job. I don't think Mitt Romney understands what he's done to people's lives by closing the plan. And his insurance under Bain Capital, Mid Romney's company, some of the most well-known ads. Furthermore, I do not think Mid-Romney is concerned. Priorities USA Action is responsible for the content of this act. advertising. So why does all of this matter? This was the moment of normalization. It signaled that Democrats couldn't afford to take the moral high ground. And this unilateral disarmament was basically political suicide. If you're running against someone who has this unrestricted channel of

money supporting them, it's hard to compete with them unless you do it too. Campaign finance is incredibly competitive. National politics is incredibly competitive. So where you, where you put on the table, this gigantic weapon, it's not surprising that both sides reach for it and use it. Like, it would be crazy if they didn't. Since Citizens United, billionaires have spent 160 times more in federal elections. They are the biggest contributors to super PACs. And there are loopholes that allow them, if they want, to remain anonymous. This is a term you may have heard. called dark money. Super PACs by law actually have to disclose their donors. But if a billionaire chooses to donate to a group and that group chooses to donate to a super PAC, I call this financial

pinball. The billionaire's name isn't the one that gets disclosed. It's really, I think, the super PAC era where the wealthy really dive into national politics in this really full-throated way. And I think part of what happens is the Citizens United decision and some of these changes, the evolution of the system, kind of give a brighter and brighter green light to the ultra wealthy to do this. And that kind of changes the culture and the wealthier people spend more and more without feeling bad about it or anxious about it. But I also think what's important in all of these changes and certainly culminating in the super peck era is that the ultra wealthy, you don't necessarily want to run your own end. That's not what you're good at, and you don't have the infrastructure to do that. So what's really helpful is to have a political professional who's aligned with your views, who comes to you and says, hey, we'll do all the work, just give us the money.

And what the Super PAC allowed those professionals to do is have this uncapped channel to a few wealthy people who could fund a very sophisticated, very effective ad campaign. And here's where things get a little wild. As we've established, SuperPax can't coordinate directly with candidates or specific campaigns. There's too much potential for corruption. But the law says nothing about using information that's floating out there, free for anyone to use. So you can frame public coordination as how campaigns whisper through a megaphone by winking in plain sight. Here are just a few ways super PACs can.

can unofficially and legally get on the same page as the candidates they support. First up, red boxing. This is when candidates put messages on their website. You often see a box that says voters need to know as followed by certain themes and target audiences. But it's actually not for voters. Exactly. Those messages are directly meant for super PACs to use for their own ads.

Next up, Silent. B-roll. Polished soundless video that's posted online. On YouTube, for example, or Vimeo in other spaces. So outside groups then lift it for ads so everything stays on brand without a single phone call. Public memos. Sometimes candidates issue briefs in opposition research posted in public, and then outside groups can recycle the language nearly word for word. You also have what we call slow walk-de-one.

announcements. So once you announce your candidacy as a candidate, we can no longer coordinate with these outside groups. But before you announce it, you can do whatever. So sometimes what you see is that they delay the formal launch while the outside machine raises money and builds the infrastructure first. This is why several super PACs are headed by former campaign leaders, people who have inside knowledge of the election strategy. When consultants leave the campaign, the candidate campaign, they have to sit out a cooling off period, 120 days, and then they can then join the SuperPack. Then there are Super PAC fundraisers who ask candidates to be a guest. And you might be asking yourself, but isn't that type of coordination in order to raise money illegal?

Candidates can headline SuperPack events and publicly. applaud the group's work. But then they leave the event. And this after that is when they ask text plays for donors to contribute to the SuperPack. These are just some of the loopholes that people like Henrik have seen. And SuperPacks aren't just working in federal elections. They're in state and local politics too. And this is where they can really have an outsized impact.

more and more cities are seeing the same experience. And no matter what office, city council, mayoral or school board, where you see outside money pouring in, you know, why are local races more and more targets of super PACs? It's because a few hundred thousand dollars in super PAC money can dwarf what candidates can raise. It can set the agenda. It can define candidates and frame the story. Local elections often have less media coverage and less voter attention. So ads do more of the teaching there and more of the persuading. There is, of course, also a local media vacuum. We have over 200 counties in the U.S. They don't have a local newspaper anymore. And may soon not have a local radio station. And that too. So that may have no local

source whatsoever. So when local news is thin or non-existent, these super PACs become the narrator of the race. They fill the silence with their own script. What are the upsides to having these super PACs in our politics? And what are the downsides? If you have to come up with upsides to super PAC politics, what it means is there's more money for speech. Right. So that's the idea that people should be, in theory, more informed and have more information at their disposal, and that more candidates potentially have access to money and don't need to be able to reach many, many donors to be able to give flight to their campaign. So in theory, more money means more possibilities for candidates and more discourse for voters to hear and be informed about politics. I think

I think that's probably the strongest argument for Superpex. I think the worry is it doesn't really work out that way in practice, that you end up still with kind of distributional problems where it just means the richest candidates and the richest people have more influence. And the average voter may not be all that informed by more ads, that the ads aren't all that informative. And the money goes for all kinds of things that just make our politics worse, depending on your point of view about things.

I think all of the campaign finance law, there's this kind of irony about it, which is campaign finance law is all about the prevention of corruption. That's really what the constitutional debate is about. To what degree can the government restrict campaign finance activity to prevent corruption? But really, what we're worried about in campaign finance reform is about whether the ultra wealthy just have too much influence. and they sort of drown out the average people in a democracy where we're all supposed to be equal citizens. So there is this kind of disjunction between where the law sort of centers in terms of the debate and really kind of the political case for campaign finance reform. And that's always been a way that conservatives who want to take down campaign finance regulation sort of

aim their firepower is to say really this isn't about preventing corruption. This is about silencing people with money. And it's about this kind of censorship. And they're not 100% wrong about that. Because a lot of campaign finance reform really is about correcting what people see as a kind of distributional problem in American politics and that wealthy have too much money. Conservatives and progressives, though, have a different view about whether that's is okay or not. I mean, at this point, is it possible to reverse the amount of money that's being spent by super PACs in American politics? Or is this now just a foregone conclusion of every election? I think it would be very hard to reverse things, given that campaign finance law is constitutionalized.

So it's not just a matter of Congress changing the laws. What the Supreme Court really does is lock in kind of the level of constitutional protection and limit what Congress can do. So that's why I think people who are trying to undo Citizens United focus on a constitutional amendment because that's the way you would have to do it or have a different court decide, you know, overrule Citizens United, but that's not going to happen for a very long time. There are some laws that can be passed to strengthen campaign finance regulation, despite the Citizens United in speech now rulings. Henrik says that many of them would be done at the local level.

In some cities, we see top donor disclaimers like in San Francisco. So voters can actually see who the top three donors are to an ad. And the Supreme Court actually has green lighted these types of disclosures. Some cities have small donor public financing. Seattle has democracy vouchers. We can also find ways to perhaps better support local journalism and local information. And so it's to build a better, if you will, infrastructure to uplift candidates so that they don't have to rely on these super PACs. You cannot buy yourself to a win. It just doesn't work that way.

Ultimately, voters are not stupid. strong convictions, all these ads, they will not necessarily do all that much good. In fact, they can actually hurt you. At a certain point, do the Super PACs pose a real existential threat to our democracy? That's a very big question. I think campaign finance issues can pose a real threat to the integrity of our democracy and the way that people feel about it. I think it is corrosive to the confidence Americans have. about the way the country works.

I think both from the left and the right, you see this lack of confidence in how fair the country works and the way that average people can't get a fair shake. You see that in polling where people feel like the system in America is kind of rigged in all kinds of ways. And I think campaign finance is certainly one part of that. We've only opened more doors to more money, certainly for the last 30 years.

And generally speaking, money kind of goes in one direction in campaign finance. It's generally been more and more rather than less. That's it for this week's show. I'm Randa del Fattah. I'm Ramtin Arablui, and you've been listening to ThruLine from NPR. This episode was produced by me. And me and... Julie Kane.

Anya Steinberg. Casey Minor. Gristina Kim. Devin Katayama. Irene Noguchi. Kiana Mohatem. Thomas Coltrane. Fact-checking for this episode was done by Andrea Lopez-Gruzado.

Thanks to Johannes Durgy, Beth Donovan, and Tommy Evans. This episode was mixed by Jimmy Keeley. Music for this episode was composed by Ramteen and his band, Drop Electric, which includes... Navid Marvi, show Fujiwara, Anya Mizani. And finally, if you have an idea or like something you heard on the show, please write us at ThruLine at NPR.org. And make sure to give us a rating or review on Apple and Spotify.

Helps other people find the show. And we love hearing from you. Thanks for listening.