The Super Obvious Ways to Get Around Campaign Finance Laws #Finance

Forbidden love: an iconic love, up there with unrequited, unconditional, and Courtney. And today, we’re talking about one of the most forbidden loves: the love between an American political candidate and their super PAC. Prohibited by law to even speak to each other, they rendezvous in

the shadows—wait, no. That’s not right. They rendezvous extremely in public, which is totally illegal yet totally allowed, because in federal elections, as in life, true love finds a way… and that way is through offensively brazen loopholing. And where there’s offensively brazen loopholing,

there’s HAI. The first thing you need to know is that there are limits on how much money campaigns, traditional PACs, individuals, and party committees can give each other. The caps force candidates to earn popular support to fund their campaigns—so in theory, one mega-rich jabroni with

terrible taste in senators can’t just prop someone up single handedly… unless he’s got a super PAC. Super PACs, by their mere existence, are what I’m gonna call “level-one sneaky:” they’re a loophole in campaign color: #1a73e8; text-decoration: none;">Finance law that lets in bigger donations. See, in 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that political groups can collect and spend as much money as they want from whoever they want, as long as they’re doing “independent expenditure,” i.e. not

directly collaborating with campaigns. In the 2022 midterm elections, super PACs spent 1.3 billion dollars, outspending every candidate and political party because it’s so easy for them to do it. Basically, if I’m running for president, my campaign—Sam 4 Prez—is subject to all these limits.

But the super PAC supporting me—Half As President—isn’t, as long as they’re not in cahoots with the campaign. But here’s the thing: we at Sam 4 Prez really want to be in cahoots. We want HAP to spend their infinite money in a way strategically aligned with us, and we want to help them

raise more. So now, it’s time to get level-two sneaky. Super PACs want donors to know that supporting them supports their candidate, but they can’t have the candidates’ name in their name; hence why Joe Biden’s was called “Unite the Country” instead of “Joe Money, Joe Problems.” But

Carly Fiorina’s in 2016 was called “CARLY for America” because, they insisted, “CARLY” stood for “Conservative, Authentic, Responsive Leadership for You.” But what did “America” stand for? As a presidential candidate, I cannot solicit donations for Half As President. But I can

appear at their fundraisers as a “special guest,” only suggest people donate up to $3,300, and get outta there before the money moves. I can’t work with HAP on ad buys, but we can both hire the same political consulting firm to produce our totally separate ads, as long as that firm

pinky-promises the Federal Election Commission that there’s a firewall between us. What does that mean? Legally, nothing. As long as the consultant says there’s a firewall, as far as the FEC is concerned, there’s a firewall. Here’s how blatantly shared vendors coordinate campaign and super

PAC activities: in 2016, the Trump campaign and the NRA’s super PAC each hired one of the Slaters Lane media strategy firms—so named because these quote-unquote distinct firms are all located on the same street and are definitely one thing. The Trump campaign placed 52 ad spots targeting adults

aged 35-64 in Virginia. That same week, the NRA super PAC bought 33 ads on the same station, the same week, targeting the same demographics, with the same messaging. Somehow, that’s “independent expenditure.” But here’s my favorite loophole: The FEC forbids any private communication between

campaigns and super PACs. Did you hear it? PRIVATE communication. That’s right: political campaigns and super PACs can collude… as long as they do it in public. And they’ve got some bold methods. Like, obviously, you can’t film an ad for your super PAC… but if you randomly post a bunch of

b-roll of you “getting stuff done,” and your super PAC happens to use it for ads, that’s their business! That’s why Ted Cruz posted a full 15 hours of himself wandering around, and also why I made Jet Lag: the Game: footage for the super PAC. There’s also a trick called “red boxing,”

where, in peak campaign season, candidates hide totally unsubtle messages to super PACs on obscure corners of their websites. For example, Sam 4 Prez would have a red box saying something like “Voters age 18-24 need to hear that Sam is a total legend with a pristine track record on transit

policy,” which the folks at HAP would turn into a bunch of radio ads saying exactly that—train pun included. And these instructions aren’t just on candidate’s websites, the major party committees each run their own sites that give thinly veiled instructions on what messaging to use for each

candidate. These are—legally speaking—”publicly available internet materials,” so it’s allowed. Like, if you tweet your strategy and a super PAC happens to read it, that’s just a happy coincidence! And when I say tweet your strategy, I mean it literally. An advisor to the Buttigieg

campaign tweeted this during the 2020 race, and within a week, a PAC ran an ad in Nevada following his instructions. The FEC let it slide. In 2014, two follower-less Twitter accounts started tweeting seemingly nonsensical strings like this, and when CNN found them and reached out to the Republican

party with questions, the accounts were deleted within three minutes. Why? Because most likely, these tweets contained data from polls super PACs had conducted, and this was a public, coded way to let campaigns see the results. They’re not actually that nonsensical. The letters at the front are

state postal codes, the last number is reliably an existing congressional district in that state, that looks like a date—presumably the date of the poll—and the other numbers look like polling results. That’s as far as I got, but better nerds than me looked across the tweets and figured out

the code, which is this. Say it with me: publicly available internet materials. So, yes, political campaigns and super PACs are forbidden from communicating. But not in the Romeo-and-Juliet way where there are consequences. It’s more in the Charles-and-Camilla way where they do whatever they want

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