THE US presidential election is nearly 10 months away, but the 2012 campaign theme already seems set: it is the Year of the Pac Attacks.
Political action committees (Pacs) – groups with great clout in US politics that are legally separate from candidates – have spent more than $25 million (€19 million) this campaign season, with more to come. Nearly half of that amount has bought messages, typically TV and radio adverts, criticising candidates.
A 2010 US Supreme Court ruling that the government cannot restrict political speech and spending by corporations, unions and other outside groups allowed action committees to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money in campaigns, creating “Super Pacs”.
Various Pacs now are pouring money into an advertising war in South Carolina, whose primary on Saturday is the next contest in the state-by-state battle for the Republican presidential nomination to face US president Barack Obama in the November 6th US election.
The action committees generally support a particular candidate or political cause. Although legally separate from the campaign they support, Pacs are intimately familiar with a candidate’s strategy. And this campaign season, the action committees have taken over from candidates’ official campaigns much of the dirty work of running negative adverts.
In South Carolina, Pacs backing individual candidates already have spent $4.6 million on negative adverts attacking other candidates, according to a Reuters analysis of Federal Election Commission filings.
Another $1.7 million has been spent in the state on “positive” adverts promoting a candidate.
Actual spending numbers for both categories are likely to be higher because it can take a few days for expenditures to show up in commission reports.
Voters in South Carolina, like those earlier in Iowa and New Hampshire, have been hit by mostly negative adverts on radio, TV and the internet.
There are controversial adverts placed by Winning Our Future, a Pac supporting former House of Representatives speaker Newt Gingrich, that blast Mitt Romney’s record as a private equity executive, calling him a corporate raider and a job killer who laid off thousands of workers.
And adverts are being run by Restore Our Future, the pro-Romney group that accused Gingrich of being a Washington insider with questionable ethics.
The group is continuing those attacks in South Carolina and has found a new target: former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, who has become more of a threat to Romney after doing well in the Iowa caucuses and being endorsed by influential evangelical Christian ministers.
A Restore Our Future advert attacks Santorum for voting to allow convicted felons to vote after completing their sentences.
The advert wars are intense in South Carolina because the stakes in Saturday’s primary are the highest they have been in the Republican campaign.
Like his campaign, the action committee supporting Romney has far outdistanced its rivals in spending. Restore our Future has reported spending $8.1 million during the overall campaign.
Much of that money has gone towards attacks on Gingrich, who during the campaign has been the subject of $7.8 million in attack spending by the pro- Romney Pac and other groups, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission reports.
Gingrich, by far, is the most attacked Republican candidate in campaign adverts. Romney is next, having been the subject of advertising costing $3.2 million.
The pro-Gingrich Pac has vowed to spend $3.4 million in South Carolina. To date, it has spent just $3.7 million in the entire campaign and is investing heavily in anti-Romney spots.
The pro-Romney group says it has spent about $2.5 million in South Carolina.
Make Us Great Again, the pro-Perry Pac, is second only to the pro-Romney group in overall spending. It has spent $4 million in the campaign overall.
The pro-Santorum Red White and Blue Fund has spent $800,000 on adverts in South Carolina. – (Reuters)