Watch out: The FEC just invited more special interest influence on elections
What was once patently unlawful may soon be commonplace.
When Donald Trump’s presidential campaign recently invited “external organizations” to “attend an ‘entirely off-the-record, private,’ and ‘invite-only’ meeting with senior campaign officials,” many may have missed the significance of that invitation.
These external organizations, including super PACs like “Make America Great Again, Inc.” and politically active 501(c)(4) groups like Heritage Action and Turning Point Action — both of which were reportedly invited to the meeting with Trump campaign officials — play an increasingly dominant role in our elections, facilitating the big-ticket, and often secret, political spending of corporations and ultra-high-net-worth individuals.
Special interests’ prominent role in our democracy is no accident; it’s the direct result of a long-running failure by the Federal Election Commission (FEC), the agency charged with regulating money in politics, to conduct robust oversight and enforce federal campaign finance laws, including laws that prohibit super PACs and 501(c)(4) groups — sometimes called “dark money” groups because they don’t disclose their donors and thus leave voters in the dark — from coordinating with candidates or political parties.
The FEC’s most recent blunder is an advisory opinion that could lead to everyday voters’ voices being further drowned out by special interests.
Since the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. FEC, “independent” spending on elections, much of it by super PACs and 501(c)(4) groups, has skyrocketed. According to OpenSecrets, during the 2008 election (before Citizens United), such spending totaled just over $338 million; by the 2020 election, it had topped $2.9 billion — more than an eight-fold increase. The 2024 election is on pace to be the most expensive in history, with more “independent” spending than ever.
Under the law, super PACs and 501(c)(4) groups are required to remain independent from candidates and political parties; they are legally prohibited from coordinating their spending on elections, including by sharing strategic information. But the FEC isn’t actually policing coordination: In the 14 years since Citizens United was decided, the FEC has never updated its coordination regulations, and it has all but never fined anyone for breaking them — despite abundant examples of illegal coordination. Unsurprisingly, the agency’s lack of oversight has only encouraged candidates to work closely with allied super PACs.
For example, during the 2024 presidential primaries, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s main super PAC, Never Back Down — which raised over $144 million, including dozens of six- or seven-figure contributions from wealthy special interests — took coordination to unprecedented levels. In Iowa, where DeSantis campaigned heavily, reports indicated that Never Back Down paid for the overwhelming majority of DeSantis’s events.
Ironically, although this setup appeared to violate federal law, it might pale in comparison to the coordinated, super PAC-sponsored door-knocking operations bolstering 2024 candidates in November’s general election.
With its new advisory opinion, the FEC has exacerbated the existing coordination problem. Essentially, the commission said the independence requirement doesn’t apply when outside groups coordinate with federal candidates on printed election materials and paid canvassing. That would permit super PACs and 501(c)(4)s — along with their special interest backers — to coordinate with federal candidates with respect to on-the-ground campaign activity.
Super PACs and 501(c)(4) groups are poised to run with the permission this advisory opinion grants them, allowing their deep-pocketed donors to finance an unprecedented amount of coordinated grassroots campaign activity that candidates would typically have to pay for. It’s no surprise that Trump’s campaign immediately invited supportive outside groups to “discuss new opportunities (in light of a recent FEC ruling) for our organizations to collaborate more effectively than we have been able to in the past.”
Trump and the GOP won’t be the only ones taking advantage, of course. Another recent report indicates that a super PAC called “Battleground California” plans to spend upwards of $15 million to “lift swing district Democratic candidates through an extensive field operation, including marathon door-knocking campaigns aimed at driving turnout among minority groups.” Under the new FEC opinion, operations like this can coordinate directly with candidates.
What was once patently unlawful may soon be commonplace. The FEC appears to have opened the door to millions of dollars in coordinated campaign expenditures, allowing outside groups — and their wealthy donors, who might not even be disclosed to the public — to pay for candidates’ ground game. This not only runs counter to federal law; it’s terrible policy.
In the midst of likely the most expensive election in history to date, giving candidates and parties permission to engage in more coordination with special interests — which really means more influence and access — is foolhardy and myopic. The harm will fall on voters, who as a result are likely to be increasingly marginalized in our democracy.
Because the FEC is unlikely, after 14 years of inaction and dysfunction, to suddenly change course, Congress needs to reform the federal laws prohibiting coordination and take measures to ensure they get enforced, such as implementing structural change at the FEC.
That will only happen if voters demand action and send Congress a clear message in 2024: that campaign finance reforms are important. The unsettling alternative is that voters will see corporations and billionaires become even more influential than they already are in the democratic process.
Saurav Ghosh serves as director for Federal Campaign Finance Reform at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. Previously, he served in the Office of General Counsel at the Federal Election Commission, investigating alleged violations in dozens of campaign finance matters. Follow him @SGhoshCLC.