The One-Person Funded Super PAC: How Wealthy Donors Can Skirt Campaign Finance Restrictions

Amanda Terkel
HuffPost

With many outside political groups able to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money in the wake of the Supreme Court's Citizen United decision, a new type of independent expenditure has popped up: ones bankrolled completely by just one donor. These funds allow wealthy contributors to dump large amounts of money into whichever races they choose -- often with very little transparency -- essentially rendering the old rules limiting individual political contributions a joke.

Take the Concerned Citizens for a Working America. The Virginia-based political action committee (PAC) has thrown $250,000 into South Carolina's fifth congressional district on behalf of the Republican candidate. But who are these "concerned citizens"? It turns out that the sole citizen is a Virginia nonprofit called New Models, which is not required to disclose its donors.

There's also Taxpayers Against Earmarks (TAE), a new nonprofit "dedicated to educating and engaging American taxpayers about wasteful government spending and the misguided practice of earmarks." While its mission is educational, it has an affiliated political arm -- what's known as a "super PAC" for its ability to raise and spend any amount it wants -- called the Ending Spending Fund, which just put nearly $600,000 into the Nevada Senate race against Majority Leader Harry Reid (D). The "taxpayers" against earmarks is actually just one man named Joe Ricketts, founder of Ameritrade and owner of the Chicago Cubs, who is also the sole financier of the Ending Spending Fund.

(More here.)