Senator Ted Kaufman writes in today’s Opinion pages about how the Super PACs corrupted the Republican primary this year. Kaufman begins with a brief history of the court cases that instituted Super PACs, remember that corporations are people too. (Thank you Mitt Romney for that line, thank you.) Kaufman then gives some pertinent examples of how Super PACs turned events in Iowa, South Carolina and Florida.
Super PACs’ impact was demonstrated immediately in the Iowa caucuses. On Dec. 5, 2011, one month before caucus night, Newt Gingrich was gaining popularity nationally and was beating Romney in Iowa by 31 percent to 17 percent in the CBS/New York Times poll. Then the Romney Super PAC struck. It spent $335,000 the next week attacking Gingrich, and Gingrich’s support fell to 27 percent. The next week, it spent $779,000 and Gingrich fell to 25 percent. The next week, $663,000 and Gingrich fell to 14 percent.
By caucus night, Romney’s Super PAC had spent $3.4 million and Gingrich’s Super PAC less than $800,000. The Iowa Republican Party announced that Romney was the winner, but the real news was that Romney’s Super PAC money had reduced Gingrich from 33 percent of the vote to 13 percent in just one month of negative ads.