Super PACs Becoming Shadow Campaigns

January 30, 2012

Super PACs Becoming Shadow Campaigns

As Super PACs raise larger and larger sums of money to put towards operations supporting specific candidates, Politico reports that these organizations are evolving to become more like shadow campaigns, "including phone banking, field organizing, direct mail, polling, state-of-the-race memos and even surrogate operations."

"The ambitious expansion is another example of a shift in political power away from the major parties and their candidates to deep-pocketed outsiders. But it's left campaign operatives and even candidates grumbling about whether the super PACs are actually helping their favored candidates... With advertising, campaigns and outside groups can figure out what one another are doing by consulting spending reports with details of buys that each is required to disclose in close to real time. With on-the-ground organizing, it's tougher to determine quickly who's doing what, while staying within the bounds of the rules."

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Taegan D. Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Christian Science Monitor.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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January 30, 2012