Politics 101: What Is A Super PAC?

Ever since the Citizens United ruling, super PACs have enjoyed the unique position of taking unfettered donations from millionaires in an effort to influence the eventual outcome of both state and national-level races.

And a super PAC is not hard to set up -- it's like a normal political action committee, which has rules in place to limit donations. Except that it requires a simple cover letter to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) stating an intention to be "supersized."

These entities have taken in a whopping amount of donations that have created a millionaire's horse race out of elections, as evidenced by this report on 2016's top donors by the Washington Post that lists the multimillion-dollar donations by hedge fund managers, energy magnates, insurance CEOs, and media moguls.

Here we aim to track exactly what led up to their ability to make an unlimited amount of donations in the face of Citizens United v. FEC:

Q: What is a political action committee?

Regular old political action committees have been around since the 1940s, formed as an organizing effort to help companies or causes create an agenda and take donations to elect leaders who might represent them.

Q: Are their limits to how much they can give?

An organization becomes a PAC when it receives or spends more than $1,000 for the purpose of influencing a federal elections, according to the FEC. This is a regular old political action committee like from the 1940s. They can only take $5,000 from any one individual and are limited to donating $15,000 to national parties, and can only spend $5,000 on any one candidate. Once they're designated a super PAC -- there is no limit on how much money comes in or goes out.

Q: Who runs super PACs?

A candidate cannot directly oversee or contribute and coordinate with a super PAC. However, they are oftentimes set up by a friend, staffer or lawyer dedicated to the candidate. While communication between the two entities cannot be overt, the one is almost always working for the other until the end of campaign season.

Q: Are there any rules on how super PAC money can be spent?

Amazingly, if it's not illegal, the money a super PAC takes in can be spent freely. Most of the time donors are listed publicly, although "dark money" spent by nonprofits (who do not have to disclose their donor lists) influences elections all the same. The FEC has to rule that someone does something wrong, and recent court rulings can make that extremely difficult to do. American subsidiaries of foreign corporations have also been spending money on the elections without retribution.

Q: What happens to super PAC money when a candidate drops out?

Oftentimes a candidate will run up a debt, but his (or her) super PAC will remain debt-free with coffers of cash. And there are really no rules in place on how this money must be stored or spent. As CBS News said, "The leaders of [a super PAC] could legally cash out, buy a yacht, name it The SS Thank You FEC and sail off into the political sunset." But because there's a motivation to stay true to the good will of their donors, super PAC's will be responsible more often than not.

The impact of super PAC's over time in one graph

Super PACs Over Time | InsideGov

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