A group is asking the FEC to allow for the creation of a new kind of super PAC. | REUTERS Group pushes new super PAC breed

Corporate- or union-sponsored political action committees should be free to raise and spend unlimited sums of money, a conservative nonprofit corporation tells the Federal Election Commission in a new advisory opinion request.

In it, attorney Dan Backer asks the FEC to consider allowing PACs connected to corporations, unions and trade associations to create super PACs within their structure – effectively creating hybrid PACs.


“Non-connected PACs” – those not affiliated with a corporation, trade association or union — already have this definition-bending ability, thanks in large part to Backer’s advocacy in last year’s the Carey v. Federal Election Commission federal court case, the decision in which paved the way for hybrid PACs to come into existence.

Several PACs, including one supporting anti-cancer legislation and another supporting cigar smokers’ rights, have since last summer taken advantage of the Carey v. FEC ruling, FEC records indicate.

If the FEC approves this latest advisory opinion request, a corporate PAC “could solicit up and down its entire supply chain of vendor and vendee companies, and their executives … plus their own non-restricted, and even union, employees” to support a super PAC account, Backer told POLITICO.

“That gives generally policy-oriented PACs new electoral-oriented muscle,” said Backer, who filed the advisory opinion request on behalf of the Stop This Insanity Employee Leadership Fund, which is connected to conservative, tea party-backing nonprofit Stop This Insanity.

The FEC, which has not yet formally acknowledged the advisory opinion request, typically takes two- to three months from the time such a request is submitted to deliver a ruling on it.

“The law here is pretty clearly in our favor, though it’s not yet been tested or made clear,” Backer said. “The biggest hurdle with the FEC approving our request will be if certain of the commissioners can’t bring themselves to properly apply the ruling of the courts from this string of cases to the statutes as previously written to properly interpret the law.”