The Campaign Jungle

NYT editorial

A series of television ads began running a few days ago supporting Gov. Rick Perry’s presidential bid. They were the usual fare — “conservative leadership that works” — and they featured old photos of him in the Air Force and video from the trail. A casual viewer might assume they were run by his campaign, but they were run by a new phenomenon this year: the candidate “super PAC” — by far the most noxious weed yet to emerge in the lawless new jungle of campaign finance.

For the first time, this campaign will be dominated by political action committees that exist solely to promote specific candidates. While a candidate’s campaign is limited to $2,500 per election from each donor, the PACs can collect unlimited amounts, and they plan to. Mr. Perry’s super PAC, “Make Us Great Again,” plans to collect $55 million. Mitt Romney’s, “Restore Our Future,” already has $12.3 million. President Obama’s group of PACs, “Priorities USA,” hopes to raise more than $100 million. (Many of the PACs also have affiliates designed to collect secret contributions.)

Since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision nearly two years ago, the campaign finance system has become polluted with ideological groups collecting unlimited donations from corporations, unions and wealthy individuals. Up to now, most of those groups have run attack ads or supported groups of party candidates, a major factor in the 2010 midterms. A PAC created solely for a single candidate had been seen as violating the federal law requiring that the PAC be independent from the candidate’s campaign.

(More here.)