Transcript Money and Elections - Brookwood High School

Money and Elections
• Running for office costs a lot of money.
• Items spent on campaigning range from radio and
television commercials to office rent.
• Parties and their candidates draw their money from two
main sources: 1)Private contributors and 2)Public
treasury.
• Private sources are:
1. Small Contributors
2. Wealthy Individuals- “fat cats”
3. Candidates- i.e. Ross Perot
4. Nonparty groups- Political action committees.
5. Temporary Organizations
*Fundraisers, such as luncheons, are also very common
sources of money.*
Public Funding of Presidential
Campaigns
-Every person who completes a federal income tax
return can check off three dollars to the Presidential
Election Campaign Fund.
• The monies in the fund are then used every four
years to finance:
1. Preconvention Campaigns
2. National Conventions
3. Presidential Election Campaigns
• These public funds from the government are known
as Subsidies- a grant of money, usually from the
government.
Hard Money vs. Soft Money
-Hard Money- money raised and spent to elect
candidates for Congress and the White House.
*restrictions are made on the amount of hard money
that is able to be used in an election by the Federal
Election Commission (FEC) and federal campaign
finance laws.*
-Soft Money- funds given to party organizations for
“Party building activities”.
*Up until 2002, no restrictions were placed on the
amount of soft money that could be raised in a given
election.*
• “More loophole than Law” -LBJ
Political Action Committees
Political Action Committees (PACs)- the political extensions
of special interest and other organizations with a stake in
electoral politics.
-for example, business associations, labor unions, and
professional organizations.
• PACs can only raise funds from their members
• They cannot seek contributions from the general public.
-The only PACs that can raise money from the public are
“unconnected committees”- each of these is established as
their own entity- not as a unit of a larger organization.
• PACs distribute the money that they raise to candidates
who 1) are sympathetic to the PACs policy goals, and 2)
have a reasonable chance of winning their races.
Super PACs
• A super PAC is a political committee whose
primary purpose is to influence elections, and
which can take unlimited amounts of money,
outside of federal contribution limits, from
rich people, unions and corporations, pool it
all together, and spend it to advocate for a
candidate — as long as they are independent
and not coordinated with the candidate.
Super PACs
• How did the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens
United case change the work of political strategists?
• Why do political strategists prefer to work for super PACs
over campaigns?
• Why is it dramatically easier to raise money for a super PAC
than it is to raise money for a presidential campaign?
• What is your opinion about the increased amount of
outside money in politics?
• What predictions do you have about how the increased
amount of outside money in politics will affect presidential
elections?
• How did the increased amount of outside money affect the
2012 election?