President Barack Obama ? in an act of hypocrisy or necessity, depending on the beholder ? has reversed course and is now blessing the efforts of a sputtering super PAC, Priorities USA Action, organized to fight GOP dark-money attacks.
On Monday morning, Obama reviled the ?negative? tone of the super PACs, a dominant fundraising source in the wake of the Supreme Court?s Citizens United decision. But by the evening word leaked to POLITICO that Obama had offered his support for Priorities USA Action, which thus far has raised a fraction of what GOP-backed groups have raked in.
Continue ReadingObama?s top campaign staff and even some Cabinet members will appear at super PAC events. The president himself will not address super PAC donors, although there?s nothing to legally prohibit the president, first lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Joe Biden from expressing their support for the group ? as GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney has done for his own pet super PAC.
?We decided to do this because we can?t afford for the work you?re doing in your communities, and the grassroots donations you give to support it, to be destroyed by hundreds of millions of dollars in negative ads,? campaign manager Jim Messina told supporters in an email Monday night.
The timing of the announcement seemed rushed, several Democrats told POLITICO. It was made in a 10 p.m. call to Obama?s top bundlers, known as the National Finance Committee. Several party fundraisers raised the possibility that the campaign wanted to offset bad publicity generated by a Monday New York Times story, which reported that the campaign had returned $200,000 to the family of a wealthy Mexican fugitive seeking a pardon from drug and other criminal convictions.
Another awkward timing issue: Last week Senate Democrats, led by Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), announced plans to hold hearings into whether Republican-backed super PACs had violated federal law banning coordination between super PACs and campaigns.
?It doesn?t pass the smell test to say some of these groups aren?t coordinated,? Schumer told reporters.
But, as POLITICO reported last month, the fundraising prowess of the pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future ? and the effectiveness of its withering ads in degrading the popularity of rival Newt Gingrich in Iowa ? turned heads in Obama?s Chicago campaign headquarters, prompting the campaign to take the baby step of allowing national finance committee members to solicit contributions for Priorities USA.
But that wasn?t enough, sources say, to pull in major players such as George Soros, Peter Lewis, Steve Bing and others into the game. And many top Democratic donors were afraid of giving to Priorities USA until Obama made clear he wouldn?t stand on the sidelines and criticize their efforts.
Republicans lost no time in blasting Obama?s move Monday night.
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