Matthew Moore: This year’s primary election is on March 3, and odds are you’ve seen a campaign flyer in your mailbox, an ad on TV, or even one on social media. Campaigns for the candidates are paying for some of that. But there’s also funding groups who are campaigning independent of the candidates as well.
Karen Sebold is a professor of political science at the University of Arkansas and an expert on political campaign finance. She says there’s a distinction in those outside groups. The first kind is called a political action committee, or PAC. There are either corporate PACs connected to business or a union group, or there are non-connected PACs, which are commonly organized around a single issue. They have limitations around how much an individual can contribute to those groups per election.
The other broad category is independent expenditure-only committees. Those are more commonly referred to as super PACs.
Karen Sebold: And super PACs have been around really since the Citizens United case, as well as a few other federal court cases that really helped to solidify the idea that outside groups are pretty much allowed to do what they want around elections.
These groups were more restricted in the past, but those restrictions have been removed, with Citizens United and other cases, making it to where as long as they don’t coordinate their activities directly with the candidate or party, they can raise and spend as much as they want. And even that restriction has started to reduce.
In fact, there was a case brought on by Ted Cruz against the Federal Election Commission that sued for the right for super PACs to be able to coordinate more of their activities with the candidates. Candidates are now allowed to go and do a fundraiser for a super PAC. And in the past, there was a clear division between those two.
So the lines are getting blurrier in this very loose campaign finance system, and the candidates are certainly relying on those outside groups more. And the outside groups can raise and spend as much as they want, and they have a reason to do so because so many of them are fighting for what they consider to be good public policy. So yeah, you’ve seen the spending by these groups, really, they haven’t outpaced the spending of the candidates or parties, but it’s coming really close.
Another element to the outside groups that really gets people upset is the idea that so many of these groups are raising money, and we don’t know where that money is coming from. What we’re going to refer to as “dark money groups”.
There are groups out there, and most of them are nonprofit groups, 501(c) groups. They’re allowed to keep their donors secret. They don’t have to reveal who their donors are. Now, those groups are not supposed to be heavily involved in politics. Their primary activity cannot be politically driven. It has to be more social welfare, economic welfare issues. But they don’t have to reveal their donors, so those groups will raise a lot of money and then they will pass it off to other groups. And you kind of get a shell game between these 501(c) groups and super PACs, where it does become very difficult to detect the origin of the donation. And that concerns a lot of people.
Moore: One of the things that I hear people talk a lot about, especially when we’re thinking about elections happening, let’s say here in Arkansas, is when we see donations and funding coming from outside of Arkansas to fund Arkansas politicians. Why would an out-of-state person make a donation to a politician running in Arkansas?
Sebold: Well, because those politicians, if they’re in federal office, certainly they affect policy across the board, across the U.S. A lot of those federal politicians, like Tom Cotton, John Boozman, sit on committees that affect policy that affects everyone, so not just the state of Arkansas.
If it’s a race that’s just in the state of Arkansas, a state race, yeah, that does raise more questions, like why would an outside group do that? Well, there may be lots of reasons. It may be that they have, you know, if they’re supporting a judicial race, that they have cases that are pending in the court system, that they would like to affect the outcome of those cases. It may be that they have political ties to the state, donor ties to the state.
You could have someone like Warren Stephens, a big Arkansas financier of campaigns, usually Republican. You could see where he might invite others to come in and try to put some money into some of the races in the state.
So there’s lots of reasons why people spend money in different states. And traditionally, voters in those states do look down on that. They don’t want to be told by people outside of the state how to think about policy, what to do when it comes to an election. We can make up our minds for ourselves. We’re distrustful of outside money. But at the end of the day, all campaign money is trying to achieve the same result, which is to help sway an election, sway the voters before they go in and cast their ballot. So you should always be suspect of anyone trying to spend campaign money, whether it’s outside or inside.
But rather than be upset at those groups that are trying to affect the outcome, you need to question the system that allows for that. And most states do allow for that. They almost have to because the rules at the federal level are so loose. And if they try to challenge those rules, they’re likely going to be overturned.
Now, states have their own sets of campaign finance laws, too. So if you are one of these outside groups, you have to abide by both sets of laws. But traditionally, we see that most states are starting to follow suit with the federal government and loosen their campaign finance laws as well and allow for this outside spending.
Moore: One of the most prominent groups that’s come to recognition here during this election cycle is a group that’s been in support of Senate candidate and incumbent Tom Cotton, and it’s a group called Arkansans for Democracy and Justice.
One of the things that sticks out to me about this group is that in the FEC filing showing the documentation of where it’s being banked, where the people who sit on the board of this group are, none of them are from Arkansas. When we see a group called Arkansans for Democracy and Justice, and nobody is listed as an Arkansan, should voters be concerned about that?
Sebold: Well, certainly that’s a little dubious. And, you know, that is kind of part of the problem with the campaign finance system. You have a plethora of outside groups, and they’re allowed to call themselves whatever they want, whether or not they have ties to the state.
And so certainly that would be something that, you know, most voters would look at and roll their eyes a little bit. But yeah, that’s the dubious nature of campaign finance. And free speech in this country is, you know, you can kind of do that and get away with it. There’s no laws restricting that.
Certainly not surprised to see groups coming in and spending this early in a midterm that is contested as this is going to be. There are some competitive races out there, and the numbers are really tight between the parties in Congress. And so it is an all-out war to win every possible seat and protect every seat that might potentially not be safe.
Not that I don’t think Tom Cotton’s seat is safe. The Cook Report would probably label him as a safe seat, but you never know what’s going to happen between now and November. So everyone is going to put all of their energy into protecting what they can and fighting for those seats that they might be able to take, because it is such tight numbers between the groups.
So yeah, you don’t really know who’s funding this group. This is what you’re going to probably think of as a dark money group, because, yeah, they’re not revealing their donors. I too looked them up on the FEC and found very little information other than they had spent around $75,000 in independent expenditures so far. And that I found them to be based out of West Palm Beach, Florida, even though some people are saying they’re out of Alabama. I didn’t find any trace or information to support that claim, but either way, they’re in a state that’s not Arkansas.
They’re trying to spend their money to change elections in states far flung from where they’re registered. Most likely that address that they’re registered for is probably a P.O. box at a UPS office. That’s what we find for most of these outside groups.
And they might be spending their money to support other candidates, other Republican candidates. Likely part, again, of the network of groups and wealthy donors that are putting all of their money in to support the party of their choice. But yeah, you don’t know much about them. You just know that they do not like the person that is running for the Democratic Senate nomination. And likely that could have an impact because these ads, they wouldn’t run these negative ads if they didn’t work.
Moore: For all of the frustrations and issues we may have around the FEC and how liberal they can be with how money is brought in and taken out, there is at least an element of transparency. There’s an element of being able to follow some receipts. At the state level, it may not be quite as stringent or paper trail as it is at the federal level. We have heard, there have been some primary elections here in northwest Arkansas, where folks have been receiving mailers that are being supported by a dark money group, and there’s really no paper trail of who this group is and how their funding is coming about.
When we think of it on the state level, is there less of a paper trail?
Sebold: Well, it’s certainly problematic. It’s more complicated at the state level because you don’t have the level of support and resources at the state level to trace and track that money. Honestly, the federal government needs to enlarge the size of the FEC. It is about the size of what it was in the ’90s, and it used to be larger, but it got rolled back a little bit, shrunk the number of employees and such.
And we’re seeing astronomical spending in these federal races. And the same is true at the state level. The amount of money being spent at the state level is also growing exponentially, and most states are not keeping up with the oversight and enforcement of the laws because it does require people. It requires a budget. It also requires the will of the elected officials to want to do that.
And if you think about it, why would they want to? Because these laws and increasing the resources for the state election commissions, the Federal Election Commission, could only harm them because the laws and the oversight being done by those agencies are targeting those candidates and the elected officials that would have the power to change the laws and give more resources and require more transparency. So you’re not likely to see that happen.
The state level, the reason why it’s a little more problematic is because, like you mentioned, it’s a little more difficult to trace. They aren’t as sophisticated as the Federal Election Commission at processing these files and publishing them. That’s actually the thing the FEC does best is they usually within two to three days will have the receipts that are reported to them on a monthly or quarterly basis. They will have them published online and states just don’t have the resources to do that.
Moore: For people who are voters, for people who are maybe disillusioned or they’re discouraged by this sort of super PAC, dark money, whatever the case may be, they see all of this negativity and they think, what’s the point?
Sebold: Yeah, that’s always kind of been the situation. We’ve had negative campaigns and elections really going back to the ’60s and ’70s. I always showed my students a series of political ads going back to the ’50s and ’60s, and it shows that campaigns have always kind of been nasty in this country.
So why should I get out and vote? Well, because every vote matters, especially in local and state elections, where it can come down to literally one vote. And if we give up on voting, then we’re losing our power to speak out. We’re losing our power to have any kind of control over what the government does. And democracies require that people are engaged and participating in the government and in the elections.
So, you know, I would say, don’t let the money that’s being spent stop you from having your voice. And it can be very discouraging. But also money is how we speak out politically in this country. And so for every group that you disagree with that’s speaking out politically, there’s a group that you probably agree with. And we are a pluralistic society where we work together in groups. We’re a group-oriented society.
So the idea that these groups are speaking out politically and trying to engage in an election isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I think the problem comes when we allow them to do more than what the candidates and parties are doing.
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