Huntsman, Ruderman, Cardon, Holding and Steelman have super PAC family ties. | AP Photos Dawn of the Mommy and Daddy PACs

The first TV ad from Laura Ruderman’s congressional campaign featured her mother, a cancer survivor, and the candidate’s pledge to protect President Barack Obama’s health care law.

“I approved this message for her,” Ruderman says in the spot, which started airing last week.


The next day, a super PAC started with at least $115,000 from her mother, Margaret Rothschild, began airing an ad attacking one of her daughter’s opponents.

Talk about helicopter parents: Candidates’ rich mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters increasingly are pouring cash into super PACs that support their loved ones’ campaigns — a phenomenon that critics say tests the bounds of both contribution limits and rules barring coordination between candidates and super PACs. But those who’ve taken advantage of the super PAC family plan say it’s better to get cash from mommy and daddy than from Big Oil or organized labor, with some suggesting it’s simply a natural extension of self-funded campaigns.

And most say they’ve found a way to keep their family politics separate from their family life, while some candidates even insist they had no clue their relatives were behind ads tearing down their opponents.

“So, here’s the deal: Every parent in the history of the world has kept secrets from their children,” said Ruderman, who’s seeking the Democratic nomination to the Seattle-area House seat vacated by Democratic Rep. Jay Inslee. Ruderman indicated she “had no idea” that her mother was paying for attack ads until Progress for Washington, the super PAC behind the ads, filed a report this month revealing that Rothschild was the sole donor through at least the end of June.

Her mother is a therapist and “knows how to keep a secret,” Ruderman explained, telling POLITICO that “if she had not kept it a secret, it would not have been legal. I would bet every other family member that you’re talking to will tell you the same thing. There is an intention to keep this secret from the candidate.”

Nodding to the coordination prohibition, Ruderman wrote a “ To Whom It May Concern” letter asking Progress for Washington — which one veteran Seattle columnist dubbed “ MamaPAC” — to stop future attacks on her Democratic opponents. “I love my mother very much, but I cannot condone the path this independent expenditure has taken,” she wrote.

That wasn’t good enough for Jim Baum, a supporter of Ruderman primary opponent Suzan DelBene, who was the first target of Progress for Washington’s ads. Baum on Saturday mailed a complaint to the Federal Election Commission, alleging illegal coordination between Ruderman and her mother and asserting it is “unfathomable that a mother and daughter that share a spiritual attachment so publicly promoted by the Ruderman campaign would somehow have withheld comparatively trivial yet material information about the campaign’s strategies or plans.”

But relatives don’t have to hide their super PAC donations or even stay away from the beneficiaries’ campaigns as long as they don’t talk strategy, said Eric Johnson, campaign manager for Patrick Murphy, the leading contender for the Democratic nomination to take on Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.).

Johnson said Murphy was “pleasantly surprised” when he learned from FEC filings this month that his father, Tom Murphy, Jr., donated $250,000 to a super PAC called American Sunrise, which supports his campaign.

The younger Murphy had an inkling that his father might contribute, said Johnson, adding that his client nonetheless “talks to his dad all the time, but he’s very careful not to talk to him about any super PAC-related activities. And his dad is equally as careful.”

Tom Murphy even held a fundraiser for his son’s campaign before the super PAC donation became public, while Johnson said candidate Murphy hasn’t ruled out appearing at an American Sunrise event.

Expect such arrangements to become more common and accepted in the big money era spawned by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision and a lower-court ruling that led to the creation of super PACs, Johnson predicted.

“Especially now, with Citizens United and the money free-for-all, I think we’re one cycle away from family giving to someone’s super PAC being a dog-bites-man story,” he said. “If you ask the average voter whether they think it’s more problematic for someone to be getting outside campaign support from Big Oil or outside support from their aunt, I think most people would not be all that worried about their aunt.”

But beneficiaries of family-backed super PACs also have opened themselves up to allegations they’re trying to buy elections.

Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) blamed the $240,000 in attack ads against him — supplemented by $38,000 from a company owned by the father-in-law of victorious challenger Beto O’Rourke — for helping thwart his bid for a ninth term in Congress when he lost a May primary. It’s evidence “of how special-interest money and family wealth is being used to undermine the vote and will of the people,” charged Reyes.

In 2010, Stephen Fincher took offense when the brother of one of his opponents for the GOP nomination to a Tennessee congressional seat dropped about $1 million on independent expenditures.

“One of the richest families in Tennessee is trying to buy our congressional candidates, spending millions falsely attacking Stephen Fincher,” warned a narrator in a response ad from Fincher’s campaign. Fincher eventually won the primary and later the seat.

Former U.S. attorney George Holding faced charges he would be “beholden” to the “massive and possibly unaccountable special-interest money” behind a family-funded super PAC, alleged Paul Coble, who Holding defeated in a May primary for the GOP nomination to a North Carolina congressional seat.

The pro-Holding super PAC, The American Foundations Committee, took in $578,000 almost entirely from members of the Holding clan, which made its money in banking.

“The fact is that there’s no family member that gave money to that super PAC that George owes anything to. They all did it because they thought that George is the right candidate,” said Frank Holding, a first cousin to the nominee who donated $120,000 to the pro-Holding super PAC , and said he would give more “if I thought he needed it.”

Holding disagreed with the suggestion that family-funded super PACs advantage candidates from wealthy broods, saying, “It’s conceivable that if somebody doesn’t come from a family that has means, they could still use a super PAC and just use it to collect money from other parties.”

The Now or Never PAC, a super PAC supporting Sarah Steelman’s campaign for the GOP Senate nomination in Missouri, had raised $452,000 through the end of last month, mostly from folks outside the family. But it reported receiving $50,000 last month from her mother-in-law, Maxine Steelman.

Family cash can be used to level the playing field against establishment candidates, suggested Tyler Harber, a spokesman for Secure Arizona PAC, a super PAC supporting self-funding candidate Wil Cardon’s long-shot GOP primary campaign against Rep. Jeff Flake for an Arizona Senate seat.

Secure Arizona PAC, which has aired ads attacking Flake, this month reported accepting $100,000 from Cardon’s younger brother, Patrick Cardon. The Cardon brothers weren’t especially close “because Wil is seven years older than Patrick, so they’re like a full generation apart,” Harber said. “The campaign and the PAC clearly [have] created a new dynamic in their relationship, but it’s not something they talk about.”

The younger Cardon “was concerned that Wil wasn’t being given a fair opportunity by the local media to tell his story,” Harber said, explaining that “helped fuel Patrick’s desire to fund the PAC project.”

Patrick Cardon said “it baffles” him why anyone would be interested in his contribution. “I understand the curiosity, but, I mean, it’s a race; cover the race,” he urged POLITICO.

Allies of former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman also thought he was getting an establishment cold shoulder during his bid for the GOP presidential nomination. His father, Jon Huntsman, Sr., who made a fortune at the helm of an eponymous chemical company, invested $2.1 million in a super PAC called Our Destiny PAC that supported his namesake’s presidential bid, and he was a presence throughout his son’s campaign, appearing onstage at a party celebrating his son’s third-place finish in the New Hampshire primary.

Our Destiny PAC aired more than $2 million worth of ads in New Hampshire praising him and ripping the eventual winner, Mitt Romney. And while Huntsman, Jr., declared himself “mighty thankful” for the “air cover,” he also said he and his father did not discuss Our Destiny PAC or campaign strategy.

Fred Davis, a veteran GOP ad man who was a key adviser to the super PAC, told POLITICO during the primary that Huntsman, Sr., “ communicates daily with his son.” But he had “no official role” and “no unofficial role” with the super PAC, Davis said at the time, adding that neither Huntsman the elder nor any of the other donors had any input in the PAC’s decisions. Still, his comments prompted a letter to the Justice Department from campaign finance watchdog Fred Wertheimer alleging the Huntsmans had run afoul of the coordination rules.

At the same time, Huntsman, Jr., loaned his campaign $5.1 million, which is allowed under self-financing rules that enable candidates to invest an unlimited amount of their personal cash in their campaigns.

Some campaign finance pros see family-backed super PACs as merely self-financing 2.0. But Ruderman — whose opponent DelBene is self-financing — cast her mother’s super PAC donations as driven by “frustration at multimillionaire candidates being able to self-fund while candidates with experience and great ideas spend hours on the phone.”

Still, Ruderman said she and her mother “have not talked much — at all — since all of this broke,” though she declined to say whether that resulted from frustration or an effort to comply with the coordination rules.