The 2022 Money Game

Axios's Lachlan Markay gives us the GOP Super PAC plan for 2022, and it's all about very, very rich people buying targeted digital advertising for the candidates they want to win.

Republicans are increasingly rethinking how to use one of the most potent political tools of the modern era, the super PAC, GOP operatives tell Axios.

Why it matters: Super PACs are generally thought of as vehicles for massive political ad buys. But Republicans are employing them in more targeted efforts to build the party and its candidates a more robust grassroots fundraising operation.

What's happening: The trend is evident in Ohio, where Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance enjoys the backing of super PAC Protect Ohio Values. It's largely financed with $10 million from billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel. 

POV hasn't spent a dime of that massive war chest on TV or radio advertising, even as groups backing Vance's primary rivals spend huge sums on broadcast ads attacking him. Instead, POV's direct pro-Vance advocacy has come in the form of digital ads and text messages. It's spent hundreds of thousands more on data modeling, polling and research — activities traditionally housed in a campaign itself.

The result is a primed list of donors and supporters that Vance's campaign itself can tap for financial backing.  It started doing so last week, when the campaign began sending fundraising emails to the Protect Ohio Values email list — a perfectly legal maneuver, as long as the campaign paid fair market value to rent it.

What they're saying: “Having substantial early support lets us do innovative things we wouldn’t otherwise have the time to do, and helps us act as a force-multiplier over the course of a race,” POV executive director Luke Thompson told Axios.

The big picture: Republican super PACs have outspent their Democratic counterparts in five of the six election cycles since the Supreme Court's "Citizens United" decision, according to OpenSecrets data.

But there are fewer restrictions on money raised by campaigns directly, and they pay lower rates for broadcast advertising. In general, that makes each campaign dollar more valuable than each super PAC dollar. Republicans want to translate more of their independent groups' huge "soft" money support into "hard" dollars for their candidates and party committees.

 

So Super PACs are covering the digital ad game on Facebook and Google, and campaign dollars go to traditional ad buys.

But of course, that means basically unlimited money for wealthy donors to buy ads for candidates like Vance, who belong in a comic book rogue's gallery more than Congress.