Candidates Increasingly Connected To Supposedly Independent PACs

It looks like most of the 2012 presidential hopefuls have one thing in common: They have close ties to the people who run some so-called Super PACs.

Those are the new-fangled PACs that are allowed to raise unlimited money and can run ads supporting or attacking candidates, but are also supposed to operate independently of candidates. As the New York Times detailed [1] Sunday, those lines are increasingly being blurred:

The groups are typically founded by the candidates' former aides, financed by the candidates' top donors and implicitly blessed by the candidates themselves. And they are quickly beginning to rival the candidates' own money operations in size and scope, setting off a fund-raising arms race that is changing the way presidential campaigns are financed and executed.

As the Los Angeles Times has detailed, Democrats and Republicans have both [2] been aggressively using Super PACs. There are a number of Super PACs that support President Obama, which have raised $7.61 million altogether in the first half of this year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics [3]. (For more on Super PACs and how they came to be, check out our earlier guide [4].)

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