Forbidden love: an iconic love, up there with unrequited, unconditional, and Courtney.
And today, we’re talking about one of the most forbidden loves: the love between an
American political candidate and their super PAC. Prohibited by law to even speak to each other,
they rendezvous in the shadows—wait, no. That’s not right. They rendezvous extremely in public,
which is totally illegal yet totally allowed, because in federal elections,
as in life, true love finds a way… and that way is through offensively brazen loopholing.
And where there’s offensively brazen loopholing, there’s HAI.
The first thing you need to know is that there are limits on how much money campaigns,
traditional PACs, individuals, and party committees can give each other. The caps force
candidates to earn popular support to fund their campaigns—so in theory, one mega-rich jabroni with
terrible taste in senators can’t just prop someone up single handedly… unless he’s got a super PAC.
Super PACs, by their mere existence, are what I’m gonna call “level-one sneaky:”
they’re a loophole in campaign finance law that lets in bigger donations. See, in 2010,
the Supreme Court ruled that political groups can collect and spend as much money as they want from
whoever they want, as long as they’re doing “independent expenditure,” i.e. not directly
collaborating with campaigns. In the 2022 midterm elections, super PACs spent 1.3 billion dollars,
outspending every candidate and political party because it’s so easy for them to do it. Basically,
if I’m running for president, my campaign—Sam 4 Prez—is subject to all these limits. But the super
PAC supporting me—Half As President—isn’t, as long as they’re not in cahoots with the campaign.
But here’s the thing: we at Sam 4 Prez really want to be in cahoots. We want HAP to spend their
infinite money in a way strategically aligned with us, and we want to help them raise more. So now,
it’s time to get level-two sneaky. Super PACs want donors to know that
supporting them supports their candidate, but they can’t have the candidates’ name in their name;
hence why Joe Biden’s was called “Unite the Country” instead of “Joe Money, Joe Problems.”
But Carly Fiorina’s in 2016 was called “CARLY for America” because, they insisted, “CARLY” stood for
“Conservative, Authentic, Responsive Leadership for You.” But what did “America” stand for?
As a presidential candidate, I cannot solicit donations for Half As President. But I can
appear at their fundraisers as a “special guest,” only suggest people donate up to $3,300, and get
outta there before the money moves. I can’t work with HAP on ad buys, but we can both hire the same
political consulting firm to produce our totally separate ads, as long as that firm pinky-promises
the Federal Election Commission that there’s a firewall between us. What does that mean? Legally,
nothing. As long as the consultant says there’s a firewall, as far as the FEC is concerned, there’s
a firewall. Here’s how blatantly shared vendors coordinate campaign and super PAC activities:
in 2016, the Trump campaign and the NRA’s super PAC each hired one of the Slaters Lane
media strategy firms—so named because these quote-unquote distinct firms are all located
on the same street and are definitely one thing. The Trump campaign placed 52 ad spots targeting
adults aged 35-64 in Virginia. That same week, the NRA super PAC bought 33 ads on the
same station, the same week, targeting the same demographics, with the same messaging. Somehow,
that’s “independent expenditure.” But here’s my favorite loophole:
The FEC forbids any private communication between campaigns and super PACs. Did you hear it? PRIVATE
communication. That’s right: political campaigns and super PACs can collude… as long as they do it
in public. And they’ve got some bold methods. Like, obviously, you can’t film an ad for your
super PAC… but if you randomly post a bunch of b-roll of you “getting stuff done,” and your
super PAC happens to use it for ads, that’s their business! That’s why Ted Cruz posted a full 15
hours of himself wandering around, and also why I made Jet Lag: the Game: footage for the super PAC.
There’s also a trick called “red boxing,” where, in peak campaign season, candidates
hide totally unsubtle messages to super PACs on obscure corners of their websites. For example,
Sam 4 Prez would have a red box saying something like “Voters age 18-24 need to hear that Sam is
a total legend with a pristine track record on transit policy,” which the folks at HAP would
turn into a bunch of radio ads saying exactly that—train pun included. And these instructions
aren’t just on candidate’s websites, the major party committees each run their own
sites that give thinly veiled instructions on what messaging to use for each candidate.
These are—legally speaking—”publicly available internet materials,” so it’s allowed. Like,
if you tweet your strategy and a super PAC happens to read it, that’s just a happy coincidence!
And when I say tweet your strategy, I mean it literally. An advisor to the Buttigieg campaign
tweeted this during the 2020 race, and within a week, a PAC ran an ad in Nevada following his
instructions. The FEC let it slide. In 2014, two follower-less Twitter accounts started tweeting
seemingly nonsensical strings like this, and when CNN found them and reached out to the Republican
party with questions, the accounts were deleted within three minutes. Why? Because most likely,
these tweets contained data from polls super PACs had conducted, and this was a public, coded way
to let campaigns see the results. They’re not actually that nonsensical. The letters at the
front are state postal codes, the last number is reliably an existing congressional district in
that state, that looks like a date—presumably the date of the poll—and the other numbers look like
polling results. That’s as far as I got, but better nerds than me looked across the tweets
and figured out the code, which is this. Say it with me: publicly available internet materials.
So, yes, political campaigns and super PACs are forbidden from communicating.
But not in the Romeo-and-Juliet way where there are consequences. It’s
more in the Charles-and-Camilla way where they do whatever they want and then run a country.
Wait, hold on, what’s this? “HAI viewers who want to support independent creators and get
access to tons of original content should know about this video’s sponsor: Nebula?”
Well, if the red box says so… hi, HAI viewers! Are you sick of ads? Do you want early access to
content from your favorite creators? Do you want exclusive videos that will never be on YouTube?
Well, a little birdie told me that you should know about Nebula. Nebula is a platform I started with
a few of my closest political allies, home to an unbelievable array of top-quality content made
by the creators you know and love, but with a bigger budgets—seriously, if you enjoy the
stuff all these creators make on a YouTube budget, just imagine how good the stuff they can make with
more is. Stuff like RealLifeLore’s series Modern Conflicts—breaking down today’s RealLifeWars—and
all the fun and borderline nonsensical things I’ve made, and all their classes: like Sarah
Feldman’s on producing a pop song, Tony Santos’ on video editing, and BrightTrip’s on ocean safety.
It’s seriously an amazing content library, all without ads, without algorithms, and designed
with an economic model that enables creators to make more of their best work sustainably.
There’s a reason over 600,000 people have signed up so far, and if you want to join them, when you
sign up using the link in the description right now you can get $20 off a yearly subscription,
meaning you pay just $2.50 a month for everything Nebula has to offer. It’s a great deal for you
and a great deal for us, since we get a cut of your fee for as long as you’re subscribed.