Why Super PACs have more power than ever in elections

Summary

Throughline (NPR) – “Why Super PACs Have More Power Than Ever in Elections”

Episode Date: February 26, 2026
Hosts: Rund Abdelfatah & Ramtin Arablouei
Key Guests: Michael Kang (Northwestern Law), Henrik Schatzinger (Ripon College), Jim Bopp (Attorney for Citizens United)

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Overview

This episode explores the rise of Super PACs, how they have become dominant players in U.S. elections, and the sweeping impact of Supreme Court decisions like Citizens United (2010) and SpeechNow.org v. FEC (2010). Through a deft mix of contemporary anecdotes, legal history, and expert commentary, the episode uncovers why billionaires and ‘dark money’ now shape campaigns more than ever—even as the public widely sees unchecked spending as a danger to democracy.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Modern Money in Politics: Setting the Scene

• Opening Example: Rund Abdelfatah and guests highlight Elon Musk’s $291 million support for Trump’s 2024 campaign, illustrating how billionaires now dominate campaign spending (00:16–01:26).
• Record-Breaking Spending: 2024 saw nearly $15 billion spent on elections, increasingly by a short list of ultra-rich contributors (01:26–01:51).
• Super PACs’ “Superpowers”: Since Citizens United, Super PACs have raised and spent unlimited sums, dramatically outpacing traditional campaign fundraising (05:11–05:19).

Quote:
"Super PACs did not just add money. They rewired the whole campaign ecosystem."
— Henrik Schatzinger (05:44)

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2. The Long War: The History of Campaign Finance Law

[Part 1: Cat and Mouse, 08:20]

• Early 20th Century Limits: The Tillman Act (1907) banned corporate contributions after Roosevelt’s 1904 campaign took large donations in exchange for favors (10:18).
• Nixon, Watergate, and FECA: By the 1970s, scandals pushed Congress to pass the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA), capping donations and mandating disclosure (08:39–11:21).
• 1974 Amendments: Added tight limits and disclosure rules to “put teeth” into campaign finance law (11:02–11:32).
• Buckley v. Valeo (1976): Challenged FECA’s limits; the Supreme Court ruled that donations can be limited but spending is protected as free speech—a major turning point (12:14–14:30).

Quote:
"The greatest campaign reform law ever enacted was the First Amendment. We rely on the proposition that good speech will drive out bad..."
— Jim Bopp (13:05)

• Soft Money Loophole: Despite reform, the appetite for campaign cash kept growing as parties and donors exploited new loopholes (15:14–15:37).
• McCain-Feingold Act (2002): Targeted “soft money” and banned corporate/unions from running certain political ads before elections (17:02–17:39).

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3. Citizens United: The Case that Changed Everything

[Part 2: The Floodgates Open, 20:05]

• The Controversy: Citizens United wanted to air a critical Hillary Clinton documentary before the 2008 primary but was blocked by FEC rules (02:43–04:09).

• Jim Bopp’s Arguments:

  • Free speech should prevail over all finance limits.
  • Groups (not just individuals) need the right to pool money to compete with wealthy candidates.
  • Campaign finance laws are confusing barriers.
  • Enforcement chills democratic participation.
    (20:33–23:02)

• At the Supreme Court: The justices, especially Samuel Alito, pressed whether laws could amount to censorship—would the government ban books paid for by corporations? The government’s answers alarmed the Court and catalyzed a broader ruling (25:02–27:57).

Quote:
"Alito was kind of like a dog with a bone. He just won't let go of this point, so he keeps going after Stewart."
— Michael Kang (26:09)

• The Decision: In 2010, the Court ruled 5–4 that restricting independent political spending by corporations (and, by extension, unions and groups) is unconstitutional (30:53).

Quote:
"Political speech is at the heart of the First Amendment, and the identity of this speaker does not remove that protection."
— Henrik Schatzinger (30:53)

• Immediate Impact:
  • "Floodgates" predicted to open to corporate money, but in reality, it was mega-donors and billionaires who surged in influence (31:32–32:41).
  • Many companies shunned direct political giving to avoid alienating customers.

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4. SpeechNow.org v. FEC and the Birth of Super PACs

• Legal Sequel: A little-noticed D.C. Circuit case held that, post–Citizens United, any group could spend unlimited amounts; this ruling officially created “Super PACs” (33:17–34:45).
• Explosion: By 2010 midterms, 80 Super PACs were active; spending broke all previous records (35:06).

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5. The Super PAC Era: How It Changed Politics

[Part 3: Whispering Through a Megaphone, 36:54]

• Super PACs revive 'Zombie' Campaigns: Candidates once doomed by lack of funds (e.g., Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich in 2012) could now survive indefinitely as long as a single billionaire funded them (38:20–39:27).
• Both Sides Join: After resisting, even Obama’s team embraced Super PACs in 2012. From then on, the money race was fully normalized (39:50–40:59).

Quote:
"This was the moment of normalization. It signaled that Democrats couldn't afford to take the moral high ground. This unilateral disarmament was basically political suicide."
— Henrik Schatzinger (40:43)

• Dark Money and Donor Concealment: Creative channeling through multiple organizations lets donors avoid detection.

  • “Financial pinball” (41:55)
  • Loopholes mean the public often doesn’t know who truly funds ads (41:58–42:01).

• Super PACs Rewrite Campaign Operations: They provide an “uncapped channel” for rich donors to run sophisticated campaign operations outside formal candidate control (42:01–43:08).

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6. Legal Loopholes: “Whispering through a Megaphone”

• Red Boxing: Candidates publicly signal messaging for super PACs via their own websites (43:46–43:59).
• Silent B-roll: Campaigns post unbranded, silent footage for PACs to use (44:09–44:13).
• Public Memos and Coordinated Research: Direct hints via opposition research or policy backgrounders posted online (44:13–44:23).
• Delayed Announcements: Potential candidates build PAC infrastructure first, then formally launch campaigns (44:23–45:03).
• Revolving Door: Former campaign insiders join Super PACs after a “cooling off” period (45:03–45:11).
• Pseudo-fundraisers: Candidates headline events but technically don’t “ask” for money—the PAC collects after they leave (45:23–45:34).

Quote:
"You can frame public coordination as how campaigns whisper through a megaphone by winking in plain sight."
— Henrik Schatzinger (43:27)

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7. The Local Fallout & National Fears

• Super PACs Move Local: Outsized effects in school board, mayoral, and city council races, where a few hundred thousand dollars can swamp candidate fundraising (46:11–47:04).
• Media Vacuum: With local journalism in decline, ads funded by PACs often become the sole narrators of campaigns (46:59–47:18).

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8. The Debate: Upsides and Downsides of Super PACs

• Upside (Theoretical): More “speech” and information for voters; more access for outsider candidates.
• Realities/Downside:
  • Richest donors and candidates gain outsize influence.
  • Most ads are not truly informative.
  • Money may make politics more negative and less representative.
  • Both progressives and conservatives agree: unchecked money decreases trust in democracy (47:25–50:03).

Quote:
"There is this kind of disjunction... between where the law sort of centers in terms of the debate and really kind of the political case for campaign finance reform."
— Michael Kang (49:17)

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9. Can Anything Be Done?

• Entrenched by the Supreme Court: Major change would require a constitutional amendment or new Supreme Court rulings (50:15).
• Local Innovation: Possible remedies:
  • Donor disclosure laws (e.g., “top three donors” on ads in San Francisco).
  • Public financing vouchers (Seattle).
  • Support for local journalism (51:04).

Quote:
"You cannot buy yourself to a win. It just doesn't work that way. Ultimately, voters are not stupid if they have strong convictions."
— Henrik Schatzinger (51:04)

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10. Existential Questions

• Threat to Democracy: Both guests and hosts worry that “money in politics” (and super PACs especially) erodes public trust and the belief that everyone has an equal voice (52:07–53:13).

Quote:
"I think it is corrosive to the confidence Americans have about the way the country works... Money kind of goes in one direction. In campaign finance, it's generally been more and more rather than less."
— Michael Kang (52:14–53:13)

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Memorable Moments & Quotes with Timestamps

• Elon Musk’s $291M campaign spending [00:38]
• “Super PACs did not just add money. They rewired the whole campaign ecosystem.” — Henrik Schatzinger [05:44]
• Alito challenges book bans in Citizens United oral arguments [25:02–26:34]
• Obama rebukes Supreme Court on Citizens United in State of the Union; Alito mouths "not true" [37:20–37:40]
• “Zombie” candidacies funded by a single billionaire—Newt Gingrich’s 2012 campaign [39:06–39:27]
• Dark money and “financial pinball” [41:55]
• Legal loopholes: “whispering through a megaphone” [43:27]
• Local impact: super PACs become "narrators" where local news has died [47:04]

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Conclusion

The episode concludes by noting how deeply the landscape has shifted in just a generation: Super PACs and “dark money” now define American campaigning. Attempts to curb the flood—through Congress or courts—face high hurdles, and meaningful change may depend on local innovations. Meanwhile, faith in equal democracy continues to erode.

Final Reflection:
"We've only opened more doors to more money, certainly for the last 30 years... Money kind of goes in one direction. In campaign finance, it's generally been more and more rather than less."
— Michael Kang (53:13)

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This episode offers a brisk, essential history for anyone curious about how we got to the era of Super PACs—and why the story is far from over.

Transcript

[NPR Host/Announcer]

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[Rand Abdelfattah]

to warbyparker.com you already know the person who spent the most money supporting President Trump's campaign in 2024.

[Jim Bopp]

His name is Elon Musk.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

You might remember him showing up at Trump rallies.

[Jim Bopp]

Come on up here, Elon.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

Jumping awkwardly around on stage.

[Jim Bopp]

Take over, Eli.

[Michael Kang]

Yes, take over.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

But behind the scenes, he'd spend more than $291 million to support President Trump's win.

[Jim Bopp]

And we had one president who couldn't

[Michael Kang]

climb a flight of stairs and another who was fist pumping after getting shot. Fight, fight, fight.

[Jim Bopp]

Blood coming down the face.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

Shortly, Musk was tapped by Trump to lead Doge, which would slash government spending and jobs, which he represented once by pretending to fire up a chainsaw at the conservative CPAC convention.

[Jim Bopp]

This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy. Chainsaw.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

Musk was the biggest spender by far, but he wasn't the only billionaire trying to influence the elections. About $15 billion was spent in 2024, and what raised eyebrows was the relatively short lists of the ultra rich people who spent it.

[Jim Bopp]

Some major donors and billionaires have made

[Michael Kang]

public pushes for candidates this election cycle.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

So when it comes to following the money, there is a whole lot of it to keep track of.

[Henrik Schatzinger]

In this race, several high profile billionaires are dumping massive amounts of money into the presidential race.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

Fast forward to today. The 2026 midterm elections are already shaping up to be the most costly in American history. Part of a trend over the last several decades where the amount of money spent on elections has mostly been going up. So we wanted to look at one moment a big moment that seemed to open the financial floodgates.

[Jim Bopp]

I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration, somehow you're not patriot.

[Michael Kang]

In the lead up to the 2008 presidential election, it looked like at the time that Hillary was the front runner for the Democratic nomination.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

This is Michael King. He's a law professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law.

[Michael Kang]

Citizens United wanted to run a documentary that told all kinds of stories that they felt were important to tell about Hillary Clinton.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

You might have heard of Citizens United, the plaintiff ever since its 2010 Supreme Court case. But Citizens United had for years been a conservative nonprofit that made media supporting Republicans and critical of Democrats and their film. Hillary the Movie had a strong narrative

[Michael Kang]

generally that she was kind of an awful person. She's driven by the power, would be a terrible candidate.

[Jim Bopp]

She does not answer questions.

[Michael Kang]

Disaster in all kinds of ways.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

She is the expert of not saying what she believes.

[Michael Kang]

So they produced this documentary. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Could she become the first female president in the history of the United States? It wasn't designed to, like, make a lot of money.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

It was designed to be seen.

[Michael Kang]

And they wanted to distribute that movie through video on demand. Their goal at the outset was not to change campaign finance law. They just wanted to be able to show their movie.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Citizens United wanted to run their movie on cable TV and air ads for it on broadcast TV close to the 2008 presidential primary election. But the Federal Elections Commission opposed them. Laws banned these kinds of political ads from running 30 days before the primaries.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

Hillary the movie would never air. But when Citizens United took the case to court, they said, why couldn't they show their film when General Electric, National

[Jim Bopp]

Public Radio, or George Soros may freely broadcast?

[Rand Abdelfattah]

The result of that case would completely change the American political system.

[Michael Kang]

Today, the Supreme Court struck down federal

[NPR Host/Announcer]

legislation that restricts how corporations can spend

[Michael Kang]

their money in political campaigns.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

The court's 5:4 decision opened the floodgates for corporate and undisclosed dark money to

[Michael Kang]

pour into the election process.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

Since the Citizens united case in 2010, the amount of money being spent in elections has skyrocketed. But it wasn't the corporations that everyone feared would be spending the money. It has been ultra wealthy billionaires, and they're not spending it on their own. Most of that money has been going to political action committees or PACs that, with the help of the Citizens United decision, have been given superpowers.

[NPR Host/Announcer]

Super PACs can raise and spend unlimited sums, unlike campaigns, which are limited with how much they're able to bring in

[Rand Abdelfattah]

from one specific individual.

[Michael Kang]

In the 2024 election, it was a little over $5 billion raised by super PACs. And there were about 2,500 super PACs total.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

Super PACs can't legally coordinate directly with campaigns they support. But super PACs can control the political messaging they fund, rather than the candidates themselves.

[Henrik Schatzinger]

They change how candidates behave, how parties compete, what donors are doing, and who really speaks to voters during a campaign. Who fears whom, and who sets the story. Voters. Remember, Super PACs did not just add money. They rewired the whole campaign ecosystem.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Money has always played a role in American elections, but for the most part, there were rules that kept the biggest spenders from corrupting the process. Even today, it feels like there are very few things that most Americans agree on. Yet polls have consistently shown that voters from all political parties overwhelmingly see unlimited spending in elections as a threat to American democracy. So if most people don't like all this money in politics, then who does? I'm Ramtin Arablouei.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

And I'm Rand Abdelfattah. On this episode of Throughline. The explosion of money in elections despite America's long history of trying to prevent it.

[NPR Host/Announcer]

Hi, this is Jill McAfee from Atlanta,

[Rand Abdelfattah]

Georgia, and you're listening to Throughline from NPR.

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[Rand Abdelfattah]

Part 1 Cat and Mouse In 1971, there was a rush of money heading to Washington, D.C. literally and infamously. Suitcases full of cash, all going to support the re election campaign of President Richard Nixon.

[Henrik Schatzinger]

For four years, President Nixon has responded to the needs of the people. That's why we need President Nixon now more than ever.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

By the 70s, it had become expensive to run political campaigns. Television had become popular, and running ads on TV cost a lot of money. But getting in front of a mass audience was a must for politicians. At the same time, Congress passed its first major campaign finance bill called the Federal Election Campaign act, or feca. FECA capped campaign contributions and spending for things like ads and also forced candidates to disclose the names of anyone donating over $100 in the weeks before the law took Effect, Nixon's campaign would raise millions of dollars from secret donors. In the end, Nixon's campaign was forced to turn over his donors list. And when they did, volunteers from a group called Common Cause started connecting the dots between corporate donors on his list and political favors that Nixon seemed to be doling out.

[Jim Bopp]

The former head of American Airlines and the current chief of Goodyear Tire and Rubber told the Irvin Committee how they gave $55,000 and $40,000, respectively, to the Nixon reelection committee.

[Michael Kang]

Both contributions were illegal. There's actually not a lot of campaign finance regulation before the 1970s at the federal level. Really very lax enforcement of whatever campaign finance laws we had at the time.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

The first major campaign finance law passed in the United States was the Tillman act in 1907, when Teddy Roosevelt was accused of accepting large corporate donations for his presidential run in exchange for political favors. The Tillman act prevented corporations from making direct contributions to influence federal elections. And for most of the 20th century, corporate spending was seen in both law and culture as a potentially corrupting force in elections. Eventually, unions were also limited from making candidate contributions. But it wouldn't be until after Watergate and amendments to FECA that experts say real reforms were put in place.

[Michael Kang]

It's really 1974amendments that put the teeth into federal campaign finance law, and they do a bunch of different things. One is they apply contribution limits across the board for everyone. So anytime you're exchanging money in the campaign finance system, there's a limit on how much you can give.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

Fika put limits on how much individuals could give to candidates, how much they could give to political parties, and how much parties could also give to candidates.

[Michael Kang]

So if you wanted to give to a candidate, you had a limit of $1,000. If you want to give to a party, it was a limit. If a party wanted to give to a candidate, there was a limit. It also had disclosure rules. So that meant every time a candidate receives money above a certain amount, they have to disclose it. Every time they spend money in a significant way, they have to disclose that. And anyone who's really active in federal campaign finance politics has to register. And then, in addition, there were expenditure limits, which meant that candidates can only spend so much. So as a candidate, you don't have to worry about, you know, your competitor outspending you because you were both capped the next year.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

In 1975, a group of libertarian and conservative politicians filed a lawsuit arguing that fundraising and spending limits made it harder for newcomers to run against favored incumbents.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

The case is known as Buckley versus Valeo.

[Jim Bopp]

Council, you may proceed whenever you're ready.

[Michael Kang]

James Buckley is a conservative politician. He was a former US Senator. He is one of a bunch of politicians that challenges the FICA amendments, the whole campaign finance system under the First Amendment.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Buckley argued that limiting the amount of money campaigns can raise and spend limited what those campaigns could say to potential voters. To Buckley and others, money was speech, and the First Amendment guarantees that right to free speech.

[Jim Bopp]

The greatest campaign reform law ever enacted was the First Amendment. We rely on the proposition that good speech will drive out bad, and all opponents ask is that the court enforce that.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

On the government side, attorneys argued that the caps on spending were justified in order to prevent corruption rather than to censor speech.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

So what is the ruling that comes out of this case and how does it sort of play out over the next several decades?

[Michael Kang]

One is it says campaign finance is First Amendment activity and it's protected by

[Ramtin Arablouei]

the First Amendment, basically because reaching people takes money. Restrictions on spending are effectively restrictions on speech. This was a huge deal and maybe an even bigger deal today. This is the moment when the Supreme

[Michael Kang]

Court decided that the government can regulate how much I can give to your campaign, but it can't stop me from spending a million dollars on what I believe. And if that happens to be saying how great a candidate you are, that's okay. It can't restrict that.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

So free speech. You can spend whatever you want to say whatever you think, but you can't contribute whatever you want directly to a campaign because that could lead to corruption a la Teddy Roosevelt or Richard Nixon.

[Michael Kang]

The court decided in Buckley, that's a big enough worry in a democracy that the government should be able to regulate that. And I think that's really where you see this cat and mouse game start up in earnest.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Kang says it wasn't easy for wealthy people to spend their money on their own megaphone during elections. They needed help from political groups or the parties themselves, and that money was restricted. Yet through the 1980s and into the 1990s, campaign costs were rising and people were finding ways around the FIKA laws. Enter soft money, a loophole that allowed parties to collect big sums of money for generic party building activities, things like

[Michael Kang]

voter registration and get out the vote. And so you had this creep of ultra wealthy people spending more and more money in politics from the 90s into

[Ramtin Arablouei]

the 2000s, which meant that candidates were focusing more and more on the money.

[Michael Kang]

So now you have kind of this unlimited appetite for money because you want to be able to be sure you're not going to get outspent in a dramatic way.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

And advertisements and marketing and media can make up a majority of the campaign costs.

[Michael Kang]

And what we've seen, obviously over the FIKA era, as the money keeps going

[Jim Bopp]

up,

[Rand Abdelfattah]

I don't remember a time where a candidate is not immediately getting elected and then turning around and beginning to fundraise again for their reelection campaign. It's just like a constant fundraising machine. It seems like.

[Michael Kang]

Exactly right. And that has lots of effects on politics. The politicians are spending less time doing their actual job and more time raising money. It distracts them from kind of what we consider, like, what's important about their job, which is making policy and thinking about what's good for the country. There's lots of reasons to think that's not a great development in campaign finance.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

Then came the controversies on the Democrat side. President Bill Clinton got in hot water when his campaign received foreign donations and held fundraising events at the White House. Meanwhile, Republicans had their fair share of scrutiny for contributions they received. And then came a senator from Arizona who used these controversies in his 2000 presidential campaign.

[Jim Bopp]

Until the last breath I draw, I will fight to eliminate this soft money, to give that government back to the people of America who have had it taken away from them. That's what this campaign is all about.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

When John McCain ran for president in 2000, he emphasized campaign finance reform. McCain ended up losing to George W. Bush in the Republican primary and was astoundingly outspent. But in 2002, he introduced the Bipartisan Campaign Reform act, also known as the McCain Feingold Act. It was designed to end soft money contributions, which had soared by this time. And the law forced candidates to stand by their ads with messages like this,

[Jim Bopp]

I'm George W. Bush and I approve this message.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

And the McCain Feingold act also restricted corporations and unions from running ads or media mentioning federal candidates within 30 days of a primary election and 60 days of a general election. This was called electioneering communications and was meant to limit a kind of attack ad close to elections. And it would be this last law that would be at the heart of a case about a movie that would change the way money in American politics works.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

So who is the real Hillary Clinton?

[Michael Kang]

Is she a brilliant trailblazer poised to make history as the first female president? Or is she ruthless, cunning, dishonest, willing to do anything for power?

[Rand Abdelfattah]

Coming up, Hillary the Movie.

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[Rand Abdelfattah]

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me something new and fascinating each time. Thank you.

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[Michael Kang]

Part 2 the Floodgates Open

[Ramtin Arablouei]

in the 2000s, Jim Bop had already made a name for himself in conservative legal circles. Starting in the late 1970s, the Indiana Attorney represented a number of conservative groups, and that led him to fighting for how they used their money to get their messages out. And in the 2000s, he had become the go to guy for campaign finance cases.

[Jim Bopp]

I think the government is just really grabbing for more regulation and more control, more prohibition on speech.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

For Jim Bob, the more speech, the better, meaning the more ads telling you what a candidate believes or what others believe about them.

[Jim Bopp]

One of the questions, you know, people need to ask themselves, you know, is having knowledge about the positions of candidates on issues, what they're for and what they're against. Is that good or bad? I mean, I argue that it's good.

[Henrik Schatzinger]

His arguments boil down to four points.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

This is Henrik Schatzinger, professor of political

[Henrik Schatzinger]

science at Ripon College in Wisconsin, and

[Ramtin Arablouei]

he has a book coming out called Super PACs in the city.

[Henrik Schatzinger]

His first argument is that ordinary people should be able to pool money in groups to really compete. So he frames the decision or the case as one that will level the playing field.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

So in other words, if a super rich person wanted to run for office, under the law, they could spend whatever money they wanted to run Ads. Bop argued that regular people would be forced to pool their money together to equal one rich, rich person's buying power. So groups of people, including corporations, unions, or political action committees, should be able to do just that.

[Jim Bopp]

You can't stop rich people from spending money, but what you can do is have a system that, number one, people of average means can contribute and be effective, and that requires groups.

[Henrik Schatzinger]

His second argument is that the campaign finance laws are really about protecting incumbents.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Incumbents had name recognition in war chests. Challengers often relied on smaller donations.

[Henrik Schatzinger]

His third point, he argues that the laws are so complex and confusing that they then become a deterrent for people to run for office.

[Jim Bopp]

The whole idea behind the First Amendment was to protect political speech and thereby protect the right of average citizens to participate in our democratic process.

[Henrik Schatzinger]

And the last argument he makes is about civic courage. He argues that you should not need a lawyer and a stomach for harassment to really support the cause. He casts enforcement as intimidation, and he says the laws chill political participation.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

And that brings us back to Hillary the movie.

[Michael Kang]

What is the truth about Hillary Rodham Clinton?

[Jim Bopp]

It's a recklessness that's born of arrogance that goes back to her 1960s roots in their narcissism.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

Remember, the Federal Elections Commission rules prohibited the film from being aired. In 2007, Jim Bopp signed on as the lawyer for Citizens United, the organization behind the movie.

[Henrik Schatzinger]

He saw Citizens United as a First Amendment rescue mission, if you will.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

In a way, the case was similar to the other campaign finance cases he'd taken on before. Those four main arguments that show political speech and paying for political speech are protected under the First Amendment.

[Henrik Schatzinger]

In his telling, Citizens United States is about freeing speech, not freeing money.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

When he went before a Federal Court in 2008, he said the film was just like any other News program like 60 Minutes, and so it should be allowed to be broadcast. The judge laughed at him. Citizens United lost the case. But then it went to the Supreme Court, a court that had become more conservative in the 2000s.

[Michael Kang]

So initially, the case is a kind of small case.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

This is Northwestern law professor Michael Kang.

[Michael Kang]

Citizens United was really about this obscure provision in McCain Feingold which prevented corporations

[Rand Abdelfattah]

or unions from funding certain ads that clearly mentioned candidates on broadcast television 30 days before a primary election.

[Michael Kang]

So the really narrow question here is whether video on demand constituted a broadcast communication under McCain Feingold. Very limited, not likely to change campaign finance. But when the case went up to the Supreme Court, something happened.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

It was kicked off by Justice Samuel Alito.

[Jim Bopp]

You think that if a book was Published a campaign biography that was the functional equivalent of express advocacy.

[Michael Kang]

That could be banned. At oral argument, there's a critical moment where the deputy Solicitor General, Malcolm Stewart,

[Rand Abdelfattah]

who represented the US Government and the FEC in this case, gets engaged with

[Michael Kang]

this back and forth with Justice Alito. And Justice Alito starts to wonder if this sort of ban could be justified. In the same way, maybe a federal ban on books could be justified.

[Jim Bopp]

I'm not saying it could be banned. I'm saying that Congress could prohibit the use of corporate treasury funds and could require a corporation to publish it. Using it. Well, most publishers are corporations, and a corporate. A publisher that is a corporation could be prohibited from selling a book. Well, of course, the. The statute contains its own media exemption for media, But I'm not asking what they. The statute says the government's position.

[Michael Kang]

And Alito is kind of like a dog with a bone. He just won't let go of this point, so he keeps going after Stewart.

[Jim Bopp]

The government's position is that the First Amendment allows the banning of a book if it's published by a corporation. Because the First Amendment refers both to freedom of speech and of the press. There would be a potential argument that media corporations, the institutional press, would have a greater First Amendment right.

[Michael Kang]

Tries to say, this is not really what this case is about, which was true. But then Alito says, well, like, what's the answer? Could we ban corporate money from funding a book that engages in political advocacy? And ultimately, Stewart says, we could prohibit

[Jim Bopp]

the publication of the book using the corporate treasury fund.

[Michael Kang]

That seems to be a critical moment for Citizens United. Generally speaking, most people think it's okay for the government to regulate big money in politics and regulate campaign ads, which may influence people's views about the election and is where most of the money is spent. But banning books sounds like something else. And so Alito was kind of connecting the specter of book banning that we're sort of familiar with and has this really ugly connotation with what the government was trying to argue in that case.

[Sponsor/Advertiser Voice]

Case.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

Yeah. It seems like a very intentional and calculated choice of metaphor in this case. Right. Because book bans, book burning. It has a very negative, specifically connotation in most people's minds. It's like the most dramatic form of censorship that we often think of. But it's interesting then, to apply the idea of censorship of free speech to corporate spending.

[Michael Kang]

Yeah. And I think the way that campaign finance reformers would present campaign finance regulation is we're not trying to swing the election one way or the other. We're not trying to censor speech. What we want to do is regulate how much influence people with a lot of money have over the election and equalize to some degree the amount of say we all have as citizens in a democracy. But what Alito was doing was connecting campaign finance regulation with this worry about government making choices about what's acceptable speech and picking sides in the debate, which is much more in the conservative direction. And one of the conservative anxieties about campaign finance regulation is the word that that's what the government is trying to do in some sort of more subtle way. And so instead of deciding Citizens United on this narrow question, instead the court comes back and says, we want you to re argue this case, re brief this case. We're going to do it over. But we're now going to engage this much larger question about whether the federal government constitutionally can prohibit corporate money from funding election speech.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

In other words, the Supreme Court wanted to take on a much bigger question, one that had already been settled by decades of legal precedent. Could the government really ban corporate spending on elections? Did the free speech under the First Amendment right extend to corporations like it did to individual people? Later that year, 2009, the case came back to the Supreme Court. By this time, Barack Obama had become president after massively outspending John McCain with unprecedented help from private donors.

[Michael Kang]

So when Citizens United goes back to the Supreme Court the second time for re argument, it's a pretty momentous oral argument. It's Elena Kagan's first argument as Solicitor General. Everyone knows that basically the future of the campaign finance system is on the line, and we're not surprised when Citizens United wins the case ultimately, because at the argument, Kagan goes in and essentially is trying to limit the loss.

[Jim Bopp]

If you're asking me, Mr. Chief justice, as to whether the government has a preference as to the way in which it loses if it has to lose. What case of ours? What case of ours?

[Michael Kang]

If we lose this case, we do have a preference on how we lose this case, right? We don't want to lose this case so badly that we lose all campaign finance regulations. So it's no surprise when the government loses. But it is pretty dramatic. Today, the Supreme Court struck down federal

[NPR Host/Announcer]

legislation that restricts how corporations can spend their money in political campaigns.

[Henrik Schatzinger]

The 5 to 4 majority, led by Justice Kennedy, said that political speech is at the heart of the First Amendment, and the identity of this speaker does not remove that protection.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Whether it's an individual or a group of individuals, maybe who work for a corporation, if they want to spend their money on getting their message out, they can.

[Henrik Schatzinger]

So they rejected the idea that corporate wealth creates a special corruption risk that justifies a ban.

[Michael Kang]

These restrictions on corporations corporate spending have been around since 1907.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

The Tillman act of 1907, the United States first law to ban corporate spending in elections.

[Michael Kang]

And now we've blown a huge hole in campaign finance law. And the worry along these lines is that the floodgates will open to corporate money. And that's really where all the attention is. The Supreme Court has said like people, corporations have the right to engage in political advocacy and expenditures without restriction. That had always been a critical distinction. We treated people differently than corporations and corporations don't have to be treated like people. So it's not really the reasoning of the case that gets sort of blown up in the reaction to the case, but that's the immediate reaction is like what's this going to do? How much are corporations going to spend? The irony is that Citizens United ultimate importance is really not about corporations because certainly for profit corporations for the most part there are exceptions, but for the most part for profit corporations aren't actually all that thrilled about spending a lot of money in campaigns.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

It could be bad for business.

[Michael Kang]

It's bad for business. I think Michael Jordan at one point is asked like, why didn't he support Democratic causes and candidates more? And he said Republicans buy gym shoes too, right? They buy sneakers. And so by being too publicly engaged in politics, you alienate people. And we've seen lots of examples of that recently. Especially in fact, there are a bunch of corporations that argued against the outcome in Citizens United. They didn't want to be drawn into this.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

All the attention on the Citizens United ruling overshadowed another case happening around the same time in a lower court. One that would build off the ruling from Citizens United and make the case that since corporations could raise and spend whatever money they wanted, any group should be allowed to do this. Even groups that had been restricted under McCain, Feingold and other election laws before.

[Michael Kang]

Within the same week that Citizens United is decided, the DC Circuit heroes oral argument on a case called speech now versus FEC and decides that case two months later.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

SpeechNow was a non profit created by a small group of libertarians to promote the First Amendment. Specifically they wanted to advocate for and against different candidates, but they would have had to organize as a place political committee in order to do that. They went to court to argue that wasn't fair.

[Michael Kang]

And two months later the D.C. circuit cites Citizens United about two dozen times in 20 pages and says essentially, Citizens United ties our hands in this case would have been a different case probably before, but because of Citizens United and what it says about the government's constrained ability to regulate expenditures, it's clear SpeechNow has the ability to be a super PAC, to be able to raise money without contribution limits as long as they're only engaging in this kind of independent speech.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

In March of 2010, SpeechNow won. And now any group that wanted to raise and spend unlimited money on their own messages, their own speech, they could Within a few months, close to 80 new super PACs filed with the fecund in time for the 2010 midterm elections.

[Michael Kang]

2010 ends up being by far the most expensive midterm election in American history,

[Ramtin Arablouei]

but it wouldn't be the most expensive to date. Coming up, super PACs explode.

[NPR Host/Announcer]

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[Rand Abdelfattah]

Part 3 Whispering through a megaphone In January 2010, President Barack Obama gave his State of the Union address. It was just a few days after the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United, opening the door to massive changes to election, fundraising and spending. The nine Supreme Court justices were sitting in the front row for his address

[Michael Kang]

at one point, Obama says, last week

[Jim Bopp]

the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections.

[Michael Kang]

He actually comments on Citizens United in Alito Mals. Not true.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

All nine of the justices, including Samuel Alito, sat unmoved while legislators rose to applause all around them.

[Jim Bopp]

I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people.

[Michael Kang]

I think super PACs really make their impact in the 2012 elections where you have a presidential race.

[Jim Bopp]

The jockeying to be the Republican party's next presidential nominee has begun. And for the first time in more than 50 years, the GOP is without a clear front runner at this stage of the campaign.

[Michael Kang]

If you remember the 2012 race, Mitt Romney emerges eventually as the nominee.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

This is Northwestern law professor Michael Kang.

[Michael Kang]

But he has to kind of fend off challenges from like Rick Santorum, who really relies almost entirely on super PAC money. Who has the best chance to beat Obama? Rick Santorum, a full spectrum conservative.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

Ricky this was known as the zombie candidate moment, where candidates whose campaigns appear to be dead rose from their graves.

[Henrik Schatzinger]

Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign was effectively dead.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

This is Henrik Schatzinger who teaches political science at Ripon College. He's got a book coming out this year called Super PACs in the city.

[Henrik Schatzinger]

He had no money, no staff, no momentum.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

Newt Gingrich's effort at political resurrection is not looking so good today. The top staff for the Republicans presidential campaign resigned on Monday.

[Henrik Schatzinger]

In the old world, he would have just dropped out, end of the campaign.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

But this was the new world where just one wealthy donor could keep a candidate alive.

[Henrik Schatzinger]

And so Gingrich went actually from being dead in the water to winning that South Carolina primary with super PAC money.

[Jim Bopp]

It's not that I am a good debater.

[Henrik Schatzinger]

It is that I articulate the deepest felt values of the American people.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

But it wasn't just Republicans who made the 2012 election significant for super PACs.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

President Obama and his re election team have reversed course.

[NPR Host/Announcer]

They're now encouraging big donors to finance

[Rand Abdelfattah]

a pro Obama super pac.

[Henrik Schatzinger]

So the turning point is when Obama's team gave the green light to a super pac. It was known as Priorities USA Action and it made a big difference. Priorities USA ran some of the most effective ads during the whole election cycle. It had some of the most well known ads about a steel worker who lost his job.

[Jim Bopp]

I don't think Mitt Romney understands what he's done to people's lives by closing the plant.

[Henrik Schatzinger]

I don't think he and his insurance under Bain Capital. Mitt Romney's company are some of the most well known ads.

[Jim Bopp]

Furthermore, I do not think Mitt Romney is concerned. Priorities USA Action is responsible for the content of this advertising.

[Henrik Schatzinger]

So why does all of this matter? This was the moment of normalization. It signaled that Democrats couldn't afford to take the moral high ground. And this unilateral disarmament was basically political suicide.

[Michael Kang]

If you're running against someone who has this unrestricted channel of money supporting them, it's hard to compete with them unless you do it too. Campaign finance is incredibly competitive, national politics, incredibly competitive. So where you put on the table this gigantic weapon, it's not surprising that both sides reach for it and use it right. Like it would be crazy if they didn't.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Since Citizens United States billionaires have spent 160 times more in federal elections. They are the biggest contributors to Super PACs and there are loopholes that allow them if they want to remain anonymous. This is a term you may have heard called dark money. Super PACs by law actually have to disclose their donors. But if a billionaire chooses to donate to a group and that group chooses to donate to a super pack, I

[Henrik Schatzinger]

call this financial pinball.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

The billionaire's name isn't the one that gets disclosed.

[Michael Kang]

It's really, I think, the super PAC era where the wealthy really dive into national politics in this really full throated way. And I think part of what happens is the Citizens United decision and some of these changes, the evolution of the system, kind of give a brighter and brighter green light to the ultra wealthy to do this. And that kind of changes the culture and the wealthier people spend more and more without feeling bad about it or anxious about it. But I also think what's important in all of these changes and certainly culminating in the super PAC era, is that the ultra wealthy, you don't necessarily want to run your own ad. That's not what you're good at and you don't have the infrastructure to do that. So what's really helpful is to have a political professional who's aligned with your views, who comes to you and says, hey, we'll do all the work, just give us the money. And what the super PAC allowed those professionals to do is have this uncapped channel to a few wealthy people who could fund a very sophisticated, very effective ad campaign.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

And here's where things get a little wild. As we've established, Super PACs can't coordinate directly with candidates or specific campaigns. There's too much potential for corruption. But the law says nothing about using information that's floating out there free for anyone to use.

[Henrik Schatzinger]

So you can frame public coordination as how campaigns whisper through a megaphone by winking in plain sight.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

Here are just a few ways super PACs can unofficially and legally get on the same page as the candidates they support.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

First up, red boxing.

[Henrik Schatzinger]

This is when candidates put messages on their website, you often see a box that says voters need to know as followed by certain themes and target audiences.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

But it's actually not for voters exactly those.

[Henrik Schatzinger]

Those messages are directly meant for super PACs to use for their own ads.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

Next up, silent B roll, polished soundless

[Henrik Schatzinger]

video that's posted online on YouTube for example, or Vimeo and other spaces. So outside groups then lift it for ads so everything stays on brand without a single phone call. Public memos, sometimes candidates issue briefs and opposition research posted in public. And then outside groups can recycle the language nearly word for word. You also have what we call slow walked announcements. So once you announce your candidacy as a candidate, you can no longer coordinate with these outside groups. But before you announce it, you can do whatever. So sometimes what you see is that they delay the formal launch while the outside machine raises money and builds the infrastructure first.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

This is why several Super PACs are headed by former campaign leaders, people who have inside knowledge of the election strategy.

[Henrik Schatzinger]

When consultants leave the campaign, the candidate campaign, they have to sit out a cooling off period, 120 days. And then they can then join the super PAC.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

Then there are super PAC fundraisers who ask candidates to be a guest. And you might be asking yourself, but isn't that type of coordination in order to raise money illegal?

[Henrik Schatzinger]

Candidates can headline super PAC events and publicly applaud the group's work, but then they leave the event. And this after that is when the ask takes place for donors to contribute to the super pack.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

These are just some of the loopholes that people like Henrik have seen. And super PACs aren't just working in federal elections. They're in state and local politics too. And this is where they can really have an outsized impact.

[Henrik Schatzinger]

More and more cities are seeing the same experience. And no matter what office, city council, mayoral or school board, where you see outside money pouring in, you know, why are local races more and more targets of super PACs? It's because a few hundred thousand dollars in super PAC money can dwarf what candidates can raise. It can set the agenda. It can define candidates and frame the story. Local elections often have less media coverage and less voter attention. So ads do more of the teaching there and more of the persuading There is of course also a local media vacuum. We have over 200 counties in the US that don't have a local newspaper

[Rand Abdelfattah]

anymore and may soon not have a local radio station and that too, so

[Henrik Schatzinger]

that may have no local source whatsoever. So when local news is thin or non existent, these super PACs become the narrator of the race. They filled the silence with their own script.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

What are the upsides to having these super PACs in our politics? And what are the downsides?

[Michael Kang]

If you have to come up with upsides to super PAC politics, what it means is there's more money for speech, right? So that's the idea that people should be, in theory, more informed and have more information at their disposal, and that more candidates potentially have access to money and don't need to be able to reach many, many donors to be able to give flight to their campaign. So in theory, more money means more possibilities for candidates and more, more discourse for voters to hear and be informed about politics. I think that, I think that's probably the strongest argument for super PACs. I think the worry is it doesn't really work out that way in practice, that you end up still with kind of distributional problems where it just means the richest candidates and the richest people have more influence and the average voter may not be all that informed by more ads, that the ads aren't all that informative, and the money goes for all kinds of things that just make our politics worse. Depending on your point of view about things. I think all of the campaign finance law, there's this kind of irony about it, which is campaign finance law is all about the prevention of corruption. That's really what the constitutional debate is about. To what degree can the government restrict campaign finance activity to prevent corruption? But really what we're worried about in campaign finance reform is about whether the ultra wealthy just have too much influence and they sort of drown out the average people in a democracy where we're all supposed to be equal citizens. So there is this kind of disjunction between where the law sort of centers in terms of the debate and really kind of the political case for campaign finance reform. And that's always been the way that conservatives who want to take down campaign finance regulation sort of aim their firepower is to say, really this isn't about preventing corruption, this is about silencing people with money. And it's about this kind of censorship. And they're not 100% wrong about that, because a lot of campaign finance reform really is about correcting what people see as a kind of distributional problem in American politics and that the wealthy have too much money. Conservatives and progressives, though, have a different view about whether that's okay or not.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

I mean, at this point, is it possible to reverse the amount of money that's being spent by super PACs in American politics, or is this now just a foregone conclusion of every election?

[Michael Kang]

I think it'd be very hard to reverse things given that campaign finance law is constitutionalized. So it's not just a matter of Congress changing the laws. What the Supreme Court really does is lock in kind of the level of constitutional protection and limit what Congress can do. So that's why I think people who are trying to undo Citizens United focus on a constitutional amendment, because that's the way you would have to do it, or have a different court decide overrule Citizens United. But that's not going to happen for a very long time.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

There are some laws that can be passed to strengthen campaign finance regulation. Despite the Citizens United and SpeechNow rulings. Henrik says that many of them would be done at the local level.

[Henrik Schatzinger]

In some cities, we see top donor disclaimers, like in San Francisco, so voters can actually see who the top three donors are to an ad. And the Supreme Court actually has green lighted these types of disclosures. Some cities have small donor public financing. Seattle has democracy vouchers. We can also find ways to perhaps better support local journalism and local information. And so it's to build a better, if you will, infrastructure to uplift candidates so that they don't have to rely on these super PACs. You cannot buy yourself to a win. It just doesn't work that way. Ultimately, voters are not stupid if they have strong convictions. All these ads, they will not necessarily do all that much good. In fact, they can actually hurt you

[Rand Abdelfattah]

at a certain point. Do the super pacs pose a real existential threat to our democracy?

[Michael Kang]

That's a very big question. I think campaign finance issues can pose a real threat to the integrity of our democracy and the way that people feel about it. I think it is corrosive to the confidence Americans have about the way the country works. I think both from the left and the right, you see this lack of confidence in how fair the country works and the way that average people can't get a fair shake. You see that in polling where people feel like the system in America is kind of rigged in all kinds of ways. And I think campaign finance is certainly one part of that. We've only opened more doors to more money, certainly for the last 30 years and generally speaking. Money kind of goes in one direction. In campaign finance, it's generally been more and more rather than less.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

That's it for this week's show. I'm Rund Abdelfatah.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

I'm Ramtin Arablouei and you've been listening to Throughline from npr.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

This episode was produced by me and me and Julie Kane, Anya Steinberg, Casey

[NPR Host/Announcer]

Miner, Christina Kim, Devin Kadayama, Irene Noguchi,

[Rand Abdelfattah]

Kiana Mojattam, Thomas Coltrane. Fact checking for this episode was done by Andrea Lopez Crusado.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Thanks to Johannes Durgi, Beth Donovan and Tommy Evans. This episode was mixed by Jimmy Keeley.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

Music for this episode was composed by Ramtin and his band Drop Electric, which

[Michael Kang]

includes Naveed Marvi, Sho Fujiwara, Anya Mizani

[Ramtin Arablouei]

and finally, if you have an idea or like something you heard on the show, please write [e-mail] and make sure to give us a rating or review on Apple and Spotify. Helps other people find the show and we love hearing from you.

[Rand Abdelfattah]

Thanks for listening.

[NPR Host/Announcer]

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