One of the rules of operating a super PAC is that the group must be independent: Its spending cannot be done in coordination with any candidate or political party.

But a new super PAC, launched last week by GOP super lawyer James Bopp, appears to be challenging the limits of that prohibition. Moreover, Bopp’s group, called the Republican Super PAC, may be designed to allow the Republican National Committee to avoid some of the strict contribution rules that govern it.

Bopp is a member of the RNC, who has made a career out of challenging campaign finance regulations, including representing the conservative organization Citizens United for a portion of the group’s recent legal battles against the Federal Election Commission.

“It appears that all this is is an attempt to create the ability for the national party to raise and spend ‘soft money’ by using the structure of a super PAC to provide cover,” Fred Wertheimer, the founder and president of Democracy 21, a nonprofit organization that supports campaign finance regulations, told OpenSecrets Blog. “On its face, it appears to be an attempt to circumvent and evade the requirements that parties use ‘hard money.'”

Paul Ryan, a lawyer at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan organization that also favors campaign finance regulations, similarly expressed concern about Bopp’s new group.

“Mr. Bopp is entitled to start a PAC, but he must abide by the rules. And the PAC he’s described in press accounts I’ve read is not eligible, in my opinion, for the contribution limit exemption created by the SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission decision,” Ryan told OpenSecrets Blog.

Neither the RNC nor Bopp could immediately be reached for comment. But in a recent interview with the Sunlight Foundation, Bopp maintained his new group wasn’t violating campaign finance law.

“There’s no coordination issue,” Bopp told the Sunlight Foundation, a transparency-oriented organization that is among the funders of the Center for Responsive Politics. “What you can’t coordinate is the expenditure of funds. We don’t coordinate the spending with anyone.”

The Republican Super PAC, the Washington Times reported Sunday, “goes beyond other independent expenditure groups in both parties by empowering mayoral, state legislative, congressional nominees and the GOP’s presidential choice to seek unlimited contributions from donors who might gladly give $100,000 or more but have ‘maxed out,’ having given the federal limit of $2,500 to the presidential campaign, $30,800 to the Republican National Committee and $10,000 to a state GOP.”

The Republican Super PAC, the Washington Times’ article continued, will also “use state parties as fundraisers. State parties are expected to be eager participants because their donors are limited to $10,000 each. For example, a maxed-out Missouri or Ohio donor who wants to give his state party $100,000 on top of the $10,000 already given may write a check out to RSPAC, which can then spend the money on phone banks and direct mail to get out the vote efforts — an effort that the state party would otherwise have to find the money to finance.”

Under the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, also known as McCain-Feingold after its chief sponsors in the U.S. Senate, national party committees such as the RNC are required to use limited contributions to fund their political activities. These dollars are also known as “hard money,” in contrast with unlimited “soft money” donations, which had previously been legal.

In 2010, federal court rulings allowed for the return of “soft money” to politics — but only to independent, outside groups, not party committees or candidates.

Because these independent groups would exclusively be used to fund political advertisements that expressly advocate for or against a candidate — legally known as independent expenditures — these new organizations became known as independent expenditure-only committees. They are frequently called super PACs for short, and they regularly report their donors to the FEC.

Two cases — U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and the SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit — held that super PACs could use unlimited contributions from corporations, unions or individuals to fund political messages, and that corporations and unions could use their general treasuries to fund political messages of their own.

According to the FEC, an independent expenditure is any expenditure for a communication that expressly advocates “the election or defeat of a clearly identified candidate that is not made in cooperation, consultation, or concert with, or at the request or suggestion of, a candidate, a candidate’s authorized committee, or their agents, or a political party or its agents.”

The McCain-Feingold campaign finance law also prohibits federal candidates and officeholders from soliciting contributions in connection with an election unless the contributions are raised subject to certain limits — such as a $5,000 per calendar year limit for traditional political action committees.

While it is true that super PACs are permitted to accept unlimited contributions, Ryan, of the Campaign Legal Center, told OpenSecrets Blog that this exemption arose from these groups’ intentions to “operate wholly independently of candidates, political party committees and any other political committees.”

“Mr. Bopp is wading into dangerous legal waters,” Ryan continued. “Unlimited contributions solicited for his PAC by federal candidates and officeholders could and would give rise to corruption and the appearance of corruption. Therefore, I believe the existing $5,000 PAC contribution limit is constitutional as applied to Mr. Bopp’s PAC and, in particular, as applied to contributions solicited by federal candidates and officeholders for Mr. Bopp’s PAC.”

The news of Bopp’s super PAC was first reported Friday by the Sunlight Foundation.

On Sunday, the Washington Times reported that Bopp “masterminded” the creation of the Republican Super PAC along with two other RNC members: Roger Villere of Louisiana and Solomon Yue or Oregon.

Villere told the Washington Times that the Republican Super PAC could “let us blow away the Democrats on money raising next year, instead of the other way around.”

During the last election cycle, the RNC raised $196 million and was still more than $21 million in debt at the end of 2010. The Democratic National Committee, meanwhile, raised $224 million and reported about $16 million in debts at the end of 2010.

Super PACs, during their first year of existence in 2010, raised a combined $88.7 million and spent $65 million on independent expenditures, according to the Center’s research. Conservative groups accounted for about 54 percent of this spending, while liberal groups accounted for about 44 percent.

Two nonpartisan groups — the National Association of Realtors and the American Dental Association — accounted for the remainder.



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