So far, super PACs not worth the money

It wasn't so long ago that the watchdogs of politics barked a warning: Unaccountable "super PACs" funded by the unlimited donations of billionaires and other special interests would warp democracy as we know it in the 2016 presidential election.

So far it turns out the story is a little more complicated.

Consider that the landslide winners of the Republican and Democratic New Hampshire primaries, insurgents Donald Trump and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, had no affiliated super PACs (political action committees) helping them. Indeed, both have made opposition to the corrupting influence of big money part of their populist appeals.

Campaign-finance reform has emerged "as a defining issue in the race for president," Common Cause president Miles Rapoport said in a statement. The winners, he said, won by "asserting their independence from the power structures and the big-dollar donors that dominate their respective parties."

And Hillary Clinton, though she has affiliated super PACs, is now emphasizing the need to restrain campaign cash.

At his rallies, Trump, a billionaire real estate developer, lamented the flood of cash for TV ads and boasted he could not be bought because he largely funds his own effort.

"These are special interests, folks," Trump said in his victory speech Tuesday. "These are lobbyists. These are people that don't necessarily love our country. They don't have the best interests of our country at heart. . . . We have to do something."

Exulting on election night, Sanders said his super PAC-free win had sent a message to the political and economic elites that the people would not surrender their democracy to the rich.

"I'm going to hold a fund-raiser right here, right now, across America," Sanders said in Concord, N.H. "Please help us raise the funds we need, whether it's 10 bucks, 20 bucks, or 50 bucks."

Response was so strong that his website slowed to a crawl. Within 24 hours of the polls' closing, Sanders had raised $6.5 million, his campaign said, its largest one-day haul.

Sanders and Trump are the only candidates in the race with no affiliated super PAC.

With a low-cost online operation and an army of small contributors, Sanders' campaign came out of the first primary financially competitive with Clinton's campaign.

As she conceded New Hampshire, Clinton was not conceding moral high ground to Sanders.

Both, she said, "want to get secret, unaccountable money out of politics." After all, "let's remember, Citizens United, one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in our country's history, was actually a case about a right-wing attack on me and my [2008] campaign," Clinton said. "A right-wing organization took aim at me and ended up damaging our entire democracy."

That 2010 Supreme Court decision equated political spending with speech, protected by the First Amendment, and allowed unions and corporations to donate. From it flowed an array of new vehicles for political spending.

The decision supercharged super PACs.

They give Clinton a major advantage over Sanders. One pro-Hillary super PAC, Priorities USA Action, had $45 million in the bank at the end of last month.

Though Sanders does not have one associated directly with his campaign, a super PAC run by National Nurses United has already spent $1.2 million on bus tours, digital ads, and billboards supporting him. The group says it will operate in Nevada and South Carolina.

Right to Rise USA, the biggest super PAC, has raised $118 million in the last year to support Jeb Bush. It has spent lavishly, but so far that has not helped the former Florida governor much.

Clinton allies also announced Thursday the formation of a so-called dark money group with a $25 million budget to work on increasing the turnout of Hispanic and African American voters. Such groups, organized under a clause in the federal tax code, do not need to reveal their donors.

Sixty-four percent of Iowa Democratic caucus attendees said that money in politics was among the top three issues on their minds, according to a survey conducted afterward by Public Policy Polling for Every Voice, a national organization that advocates restrictions on political spending.

It found that 57 percent trusted Sanders more to attack the problem.

"For Democrats, money in politics is a rallying cry, part of the antiestablishment/change outsider message," said Stuart Rothenberg, an independent Washington political analyst. "It has a kind of populist appeal."

Trump's emphasis on the issue is intriguing, he said, but it does not usually resonate as much among GOP voters.

"Republicans are more conflicted," Rothenberg said. "There are blue-collar Republicans who are receptive to an attack on special interests, but in general the Republican view has always been, 'Let the marketplace decide.' There's a belief that we shouldn't regulate free expression."

For her campaign itself, Clinton has been more reliant on wealthy backers, according to analysis by the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute.

Through the end of 2015, Sanders had brought in nearly $47 million from 1.3 million donors who gave $200 or less - 64 percent of his total and more than twice as much as Clinton. The average contribution to Sanders: $27.

Clinton raised 58 percent of her money in 2015 from contributors who gave the $2,700 maximum, according to the Campaign Finance Institute. She cannot turn to them again for support during the primary, while Sanders can tap his small-dollar donors as long as they are willing, up to that maximum.

Political strategists say that Sanders, with a lower campaign overhead, will be able to compete deep into the primary season, though many of the states coming up are more diverse than Iowa and New Hampshire, demographically more favorable to Clinton, who has large margins of support among black and Latino voters.

It also will be more expensive competing on a broader playing field.

tfitzgerald@phillynews.com

215-854-2718@tomfitzgerald

www.inquirer.com/bigtent

This article includes information from Inquirer wire services.