John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi and Eric Cantor have all recently embraced super PACs. | AP Photos A new way to buy real influence

Good news for rich people, corporate power players and labor bosses who want to buy some real influence with members of Congress: It just got a lot easier.

Many voters assume it’s always been easy to buy influence with lawmakers: Send a few contributions their way and suddenly, you get special treatment.


But the fact is, that’s pretty rare. Up until recently, individuals could give a couple thousand bucks to candidates or $5,000 to political action committees each election, while companies and labor unions could give $5,000 — but only through their PACs. For members raising millions of dollars each election cycle, it’s usually not enough to buy influence.

Now, meet the super PAC, which allows for super giving: unlimited amounts, some that can be delivered in secret. Operatives from both parties have aligned these new groups with nonprofits that allow big checks to be taken in and then spent on any campaign in secret.

So now, if you want to get the attention of a member of Congress, you can kick in major dollars to one of these super PACs — and people who follow money in politics worry that’s when bad things can happen. A single, secret $1 million check — which could become common in the world of super PACs — can really get someone’s attention, especially if they’re a member of Congress on the fundraising treadmill.

“People who don’t want to disclose have an agenda and that is probably not a good agenda,” former DCCC Chairman Tony Coehlo (Calif.) said. “If they did have an agenda that was good, why not disclose it and that’s what I think gets us in trouble.”

Former Democratic Rep. Artur Davis agreed.

“The fact [is] that people are going to move from things that were borderline illegal that are now just disclosable,” said Davis, a prolific fundraiser for party leaders when he was in Congress. “What you have now is a wide open door for political money to be pumped into the process. The nature of the money is money that cares about one narrow set of issues.”

And there’s reason to believe super PACs are about to become the norm. Leaders are usually out in front on fundraising innovation. Leadership PACs started at the top and now even freshmen have them.

In the past few weeks, Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor have endorsed new super PACs, while House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have been aggressively fundraising for their favored super PACs — likely the start of a practice about to explode.

Former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), who helped set up the House Republican super PAC, Congressional Leadership Fund, said in an interview with POLITICO that he sat down with Democratic operative John Podesta, founder of Center for American Progress, before forming the Congressional Leadership Fund.

“The path was already laid out for us,” Coleman said. “We saw what Pelosi did with hers and then we began to move forward.”

There are limits to how much lawmakers can coordinate with these super PACs. But, as Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) explained, the distance between outside groups and candidates is mostly on paper.

“When your old consultants and your best buddies are setting them up, you can pretty much suspect there’s been a lot of discussion beforehand,” Cole said of the involvement senior leaders will have with the committees.

The former National Republican Congressional Campaign Chairman is no stranger to fundraising — and doesn’t see super PACs as a good thing.

“It’s really putting a candidate out there and tying at least one arm behind their back, if not more, because they have no mechanism to respond,” Cole said. “They have to hope that another super PAC by another anonymous group comes in and so you are the littlest guy on the playground and you are looking for one bully to save you from another bully.”

Third party so-called bullies can make or break a campaign.

Just ask former Rep. Earl Pomeroy. The North Dakota Democrat blames outside third-party groups — funded largely by insurance money — for his loss in 2010.

“The super PAC represents the double-barrel assault on the public’s right to know who's paying for massive amounts of political advertising,” said Pomeroy, now at Alston & Bird. “Big money had a lot of influence before with the advent of super PAC with Citizens United; they now have a great deal more.”

While lawmakers can solicit only up to $5,000 from contributors for super PACs, their allies can follow-up with requests for unlimited amounts — including to super PAC-affiliated nonprofits that do not have to publicly disclose their contributors.

The limit on coordination is unlikely to dissuade companies or unions from contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars to earmark funds for specific races.

Some experts believe the rise of leadership super PACs is the return of soft money.

Ethics lawyer Ken Gross said that privately held entities, hedge funds and others with ideological leanings will get into the newest political money game of super PACs like the Congressional Leadership Fund, which is supported by House GOP leaders.

“This entity will do well and it will attract maybe corporate dollars that have not entered this universe before,” Gross said. “I think this probably is a way in which corporations can be again attracted to the world of soft money.”

Oklahoma Republican Cole said that super PACs will “have more influence in being able to select who members are. It’s actually much worse than lobbying, much more dangerous.”

Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.) agreed, saying that super PACs are an outgrowth of people trying to find ways around McCain-Feingold.

“When that legislation passed, people started that day trying to figure out how to get around it and I think they’ve been very successful,” Westmoreland said.

While contributing to super PACs doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll get more access or influence in the legislative process, Westmoreland said: “It definitely would probably give you some influence, you know, over some of the candidates and whoever that you want to support.”