What is a 'Super PAC'?

A super PAC is a political organization that can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money, and spend it in unlimited sums, on political advertising to elect or defeat a candidate.

Super PACs can accept limitless donations from any U.S. citizen and just about any group—including for-profit corporations, nonprofit corporations, labor unions, and trade groups.

Super PACs are independent groups, and they’re not supposed to coordinate their fundraising, spending, or communications with a candidate’s campaign. The other main restriction on super PACs is that they can’t give money to a candidate’s campaign.

The technical term for super PACs is an “independent-expenditure only committee.”

Read on to learn the ins and outs of super PACs and why they’re so controversial.

What’s the difference between a PAC and a super PAC?

“PACs”—short for political action committees—are political groups organized for the purpose of raising and spending money to elect or defeat candidates.

Traditional PACs produce political advertising, known as “electioneering communications,” and can also make donations to a candidate’s campaign.

Super PACs didn’t enter the scene until recently, a result of the 2010 Supreme Court case Citizens United v. Federal Election Committee and a lower court case following closely on its heels, SpeechNOW v. FEC.

Traditional PACs have limits on the amount of money they can accept—no more than $5,000 from any one source—and they can not accept money from corporations or labor unions.

Super PACs, on the other hand, can raise an unlimited amount of money from corporations, unions, trade associations, and individuals, and then spend unlimited sums to advocate for or against political candidates. The catch is that, unlike traditional PACs, super PACs can’t donate money directly to political candidates, and they’re not supposed to coordinate their spending with the campaign of the candidate they benefit.

	Contribution Limits	Can accept money from corporations, unions, and other associations	Can donate to candidate’s campaign	Can coordinate with campaign
Candidate campaigns	$2,700 per election, or $5,400 counting primaries and the general election.	No	N/A	N/A
PACs	$5,000 per year	No	No	Yes
Super PACs	None	Yes	No	No

Where did super PACs come from?

Super PACs are the product of two court cases: the Supreme Court case Citizens United v. FEC, and the subsequent lower court case SpeechNow v. FEC, both in 2010.¹

In Citizens United, the Supreme Court Justices voted to overturn the laws prohibiting corporate political spending in elections. The majority justices in the case, led by Justice Kennedy, argued that prohibiting corporations from spending money on political speech is a violation of the First Amendment.²

Citizens United allowed corporations, nonprofits, and unions to spend money of political communications—including TV ads and other media—during elections.³

But that wasn’t the end of the story. Just two months later, a case called SpeechNow v. FEC ruled that limits on individual contributions to PACs were unconstitutional if the PAC were to make only independent expenditures and not give to or coordinate with campaigns at all.

Since Citizens United had just held that corporations have the same rights to political speech as individuals, corporations could now give to PACs that remained independent too.⁴

This was the birth of independent-only expenditure committees, which soon became known as super PACs.

What’s the big deal about super PACs?

Super PACs are all over the media these days. You can hardly turn on the radio, watch the news, or pick up the paper without hearing about political candidates’ super PACs. So what’s the big deal?

In just a few short years since this new breed of PAC was born, super PACs flooded elections with money,⁵ and many say they’ve become more important than candidate’s real campaigns.⁶ Remember: campaigns have contribution limits, traditional PACs have contribution limits—but super PACs don’t. And neither campaigns nor traditional PACs can take any money from corporations, nonprofits, or unions – but super PACs can, with no limits on the amount.

Whereas maximum contributions for individuals are $2,700 to campaigns and $5,000 to traditional PACs, 2016 has seen wealthy donors cutting checks to super PACs in the tens of millions.

Super PACs raised over $800 million in the 2012 elections, and that number was surpassed in 2016.⁷ All told, Super PACs have spent upwards of $1 billion in the two previous election cycles, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.⁸

In 2016, some candidates had more money in the super PACs supporting them than in their actual campaign fund.⁹

Super PACs are highly controversial, and not just for the sheer amounts of money they spend in elections or their corporate donors.

Do super PACs and candidates coordinate?

In a word, yes. They’re not supposed to—that was one of the conditions for super PACs being permitted as political groups. But the laws about disclosure are weak, and super PACs and their candidate’s are finding more and more ways to work together.¹⁰

Some even say the distinction between super PACs and campaigns has “just about vanished.”¹¹

In addition, super PACs are taking on many of the jobs of a traditional campaign, like mailings, phone banking, and organizing voters.¹²

This is why many have started referring to super PACs as “shadow campaigns”—albeit "campaigns" with unlimited funds who can take money from corporations.¹³

Can we get rid of super PACs?

Getting rid of super PACs would require overturning Citizens United, something that Congress would need to do. But we can get rid of the loopholes allowing super PACs to coordinate with candidates and flood dark money into elections. The American Anti-Corruption Act would crack down on super PACs, mandates full transparency of all political money, and strengthens anti-corruption enforcement.

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