Super PACs play a huge and growing role in federal elections. In 2016, these groups—which are unconstrained in their ability to raise and spend money—raised just under $1.8 billion, according to OpenSecrets. In 2020, that number had jumped to $3.4 billion. Much of that money comes from organizations or very deep-pocketed donors who give hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time.
Super PACs are sometimes decried for the growth of “gray money,” donations that are routed through other PACs to conceal the names of the original donor, but there’s another problem with super PACS: they aren’t particularly efficient ways for donors to sway elections. In general, giving to candidates rather than gargantuan PACs (and party committees) is a better way to make sure you’re maximizing your impact.
Here’s why:
Campaigns get better rates on TV spending
By law, political candidates get the “lowest unit rate” when buying radio and TV advertising time up to 60 days before a general election and 45 days before a primary. PACs have no such advantage, and as a result spend several times as much to buy the same number of television ads. This is a very important point, because billions in spending in the 2020 cycle went to TV and radio ads. So campaigns get a preferential rate on the bulk of the dollars that they spend.
What’s particularly relevant here is that many of the big PACs (like the Senate Majority PAC) spent a majority of their money buying media. So when you donate to these groups, a big chunk of your money goes to ad-buying operations that are a disadvantage compared to similar operations run by campaigns. That’s a fairly big inefficiency you can avoid by giving directly to campaigns.
Campaigns know what they need
Another disadvantage PACs have is that they aren’t allowed to coordinate with campaigns. Now, there is a lot of stretching and even breaking of this rule, but PACs still have to work around it, and likely don’t know the district or the state as well as the campaign. PACs and other outside groups also aren’t laser-focused on winning individual races; they are spending some amount of money on their own staffing and overhead costs, and may also be pursuing other objectives in addition to winning elections in the short term. If you want to make sure your money is going toward winning an election, donate to the campaign that exists solely for that purpose before turning to outside groups.
Why donors give to super PACs
There are occasions when giving to a super PAC makes sense, at least on the surface. These include:
You’re giving a lot of money. What makes Super PACs desirable for some givers is that there are no limits to how much you can contribute to them. For donors who give millions each cycle and routinely run into FEC-imposed donation limits to candidates, super PACs and party committees (which have higher contribution limits than candidates) are a way to give large sums. But this is a really small universe of people; if you maxed out your donations to competitive Senate and House candidates for 2022, you’d be looking at a bill in the six figures. If you find yourself wanting to give more than that, there are lots of opportunities to give to state-level races as well as grassroots organizations that (unlike super PACs) need the money.
You don't have time to research candidates. It takes a lot of time and work to figure out which candidates are in competitive races and which align with your politics. If you are a big donor and trying to allocate large amounts of money, it’s easier to just write a check to a super PAC, the same way it’s easier to invest in mutual funds instead of picking individual stocks. There's nothing wrong with this one-stop-shopping approach, but at least be sure to do your homework on whatever super PAC you're supporting. As Blue Tent has been documenting, many of these organizations have mixed track records and may have ideological agendas that you don’t agree with.
The super PAC has unique strengths. A lot of things go into winning elections, including turning out key groups of voters and engaging in effective opposition research. It can make sense to give to a super PAC that has capabilities that individual campaigns can't easily field. A good example is BlackPAC, one of the few super PACs that Blue Tent recommends to donors as a priority. The organization says that it has trained thousands of organizers and engaged millions of Black voters. While it is hard to independently verify these claims, there are good reasons to believe that BlackPAC has been effective since its founding in 2016, especially in the Georgia senate races. (See our research brief: BlackPac: What Donors Need to Know.)
A candidate already has a huge war chest. The major downside of giving to campaigns is that sometimes, they end up with more money than they can spend. This is especially true of close-to-Election-Day donations, which arrive in a campaign’s coffers when there aren’t many opportunities to use that money effectively. As a result, big campaigns that get a lot of media attention wind up with millions in unspent funds. In Georgia, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock ended up with $4.3 million and $22.7 million in unspent cash on hand, respectively. That money isn’t “wasted,” exactly (Warnock has to run for reelection in 2022 and can use it then), but it’s a sign that those donations could probably have been put to better use elsewhere. So when you see a candidate breaking fundraising records, it’s more than likely that they don’t need your money. Meanwhile, a super PAC may have ideas for deploying it to a candidate who does need extra cash.