Walter Shapiro is a veteran political columnist who teaches political science at Yale and is looking forward to covering his tenth presidential race. He is also finishing a book on his con-man great uncle called Hustling Hitler: How a Jewish Vaudevillian Fooled the Fuhrer for Blue Rider Press.

Tuesday’s Democratic House primary in Arizona’s Seventh District is what the local weekly Phoenix New Times calls “a battle between Latino royalty in Phoenix.” The leading contenders for the safe Democratic seat of retiring Ed Pastor are long-time Maricopa County supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox and former state representative Ruben Gallego, who is that rare twofer—a Harvard graduate who served with the Marines in Iraq.

Like most congressional primaries in this dreary election year, the battle in Arizona 7 is mired in small-bore squabbles. Wilcox, who has been endorsed by EMILY’s List, the powerful pro-choice PAC, has been attacking Gallego over his high ratings from the NRA on gun-related issues. Gallego, in turn, has been slamming Wilcox over her personal finances. Small wonder that a local TV station dismissed the race as “a battle of personalities.”


The only thing distinctive about this campaign is a modest $81,000 online ad buy by a Super PAC designed to boost Gallego. The spot, with a male voiceover and cartoon imagery, describes Gallego as “committed to fixing a corrupt system for funding campaigns, making sure that politicians are responsive to us—not the billionaires.” According to the liberal Democratic website Daily Kos, the Super PAC has spent another $34,000 on direct mail with a similar Gallego-is-a-reformer theme. In contrast, Gallego and Wilcox have each raised about $500,000 for their primary campaigns.

Oddly enough, Gallego’s website does not highlight campaign reform as one of his major issues, although if you stare hard enough you can find a small link to his support for a federal matching-fund program for small donations. And Wilcox also responded to a questionnaire from the Arizona Republic by stating, “I support public financing of campaigns, which my opponent has voted against here in Arizona.”

The Gallego-Wilcox primary will be the first test case of the potency of Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig’s Mayday PAC, which has been ballyhooed on the front page of the New York Times as a novel way to crusade for campaign finance reform. Lessig, the co-founder of the group, explained in an interview with Bloomberg TV that the goal was to prove to Washington that voters care “about the corruption they see their government suffering under.” In his view, the Super PAC’s spending would demonstrate “why people will vote on the basis of this issue and why they’ll kick people out on the basis of this issue.” It’s a Super PAC, in other words, that aims to end Super PACs. (Lessig could not be reached for comment.)

It all sounds laudable and plausible until you come back to the messy realities of the contest in Arizona 7. Mayday PAC only announced its support for Gallego two weeks before the primary, so their ad and mailings failed to reach those who took advantage of Arizona’s early-voting option. Little of the local media coverage of the race mentions campaign finance . Moreover, a victory by Gallego is likely to be regarded as a symbol of generational change in the Phoenix Latino community and a referendum on Wilcox’s combative tenure on the board of supervisors—and not the catalyst for a national movement to enact public financing.

OK, Lessig and his supporters might say—but this is just one race amounting to a small investment by a Super PAC that has raised nearly $8 million from big-money contributors and 55,000 online donors. But where on the political map of 2014, if not in Arizona, will Lessig and his Super PAC prove to skeptics that campaign reform is a potent voting issue?

Maybe New Hampshire? In advance of the state’s Sept. 9 Senate primary, Mayday PAC is on the air with radio ads boosting long-shot GOP contender Jim Rubens, a former state senator. Rubens comes from the unicorn wing of the Republican Party, as just about the only GOP candidate in the nation who supports public financing of elections. Moreover, he is up against carpet-bagging former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, who refuses to disown outside Super PAC spending, as he did during his losing 2010 race against Elizabeth Warren.

There is only one problem with Rubens: No one, with the possible exception of his immediate family, thinks he can win the primary, which also features former U.S. Sen. Bob Smith. Part of the theory behind Mayday PAC’s heavy investment in New Hampshire (they have also endorsed Democratic House incumbent Carol Shea-Porter) is the belief that the first presidential primary state provides uniquely fertile territory for an uprising against big-money politics.

But much of the evidence for the New Hampshire-is-different argument comes from musty stereotypes about flinty New Hampshire presidential primary voters and gauzy memories of John McCain’s 2000 primary win over George W. Bush. As pollster Andy Smith, the director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, put it in an interview, “I don’t think New Hampshire is any more sensitive to campaign finance issues than anywhere else in the country.”

Even though Mayday PAC has not yet started advertising on behalf of Shea-Porter, she unquestionably measures up to Lessig’s criteria. Her campaign website, for example, lists “Campaign Finance Reform” as her top issue as she details her backing for measures ranging from full disclosure of Super PAC donors to public financing of campaigns.

Representing a district (NH-1) evenly split along party lines, Shea-Porter is a canary-in-the-coal-mine incumbent hypersensitive to political winds. Elected in the 2006 Democratic sweep, she lost her seat in the 2010 Republican wave only to regain it in 2012 on Barack Obama’s coat-tails. Her likely GOP opponent is former Manchester mayor Frank Guinta, who ran against her in 2010 and 2012. “Neither Shea-Porter nor Guinta are terribly impressive on the stump,” Smith told me. “If it’s a good Republican year, Guinta wins. And right now, it’s looking like a good Republican year.”

How about North Carolina? In an effort to underscore its bipartisanship, Mayday PAC has also endorsed GOP incumbent Walter Jones (he backs public financing) in the state’s safely Republican third district. But the threat to Jones’ reelection has already passed since he survived a bitter primary against a Tea Party challenger. In fact, had Mayday PAC been around to advertise on his behalf in the May primary, Jones probably would have lost votes because of his association with Lessig, a liberal Harvard professor.

The last congressional race where Mayday PAC has so far made an endorsement is the battle for a Republican-held open seat in Iowa’s third district. Their anointed candidate is former Democratic state senator Staci Appel, who supports a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United.

But unlike Shea-Porter in New Hampshire, Appel is not running on campaign reform. Her website does not even mention the subject in its rundown of issue positions. And her first television ad flicks at a wide range of issues (creating jobs, balancing the budget, pre-kindergarten, raising the minimum and pay equity for women) without devoting three seconds to the words “campaign finance reform.”

What Appel’s campaign illustrates is not cynicism about fighting big money in politics, but rather that candidates and their consultants know what issues work for them politically—and which don’t. A Super PAC, even a well-intentioned one, is guilty of arrogance when it tries to impose its issues on a candidate stressing different campaign themes.

Maybe the best way to look at Lessig’s Mayday PAC is not as an $8-million electoral juggernaut, but rather as a piece of political performance art. It is more likely to demonstrate the limited power of Super PAC political spending than it is to galvanize a national crusade for campaign finance reform.

Billionaires running amok in politics are a terrible outgrowth of Citizens United. But without a massive grassroots political movement or an ongoing scandal that wipes everything else off Facebook and Twitter, it seems impossible for a Super PAC (even one with $80 million rather than $8 million) to make voters care about the rise of Super PACs.