Romney: Ban on super PAC, candidate coordination “makes no sense at all”

Posted by icarus on 29 Feb 2012 / 0 Comment

Bottom line….Mitt Romney thinks candidates should be able to receive unlimited funds from corporations and wealthy donors. He thinks one billionaire being able to give $100 million to one candidate “makes no sense at all”:

“My question is not if you’re following the letter of the law, because I know that you’ve said that you are, but do you think that that squares with the intent of the law governing Super PACs, that there’s not more separation between those entities?” the reporter asked.

Romney’s response:

“I think we’ve been very careful to make sure we’re following the law as well as the intent of the law. I also think that the law itself is a very strange, awkward and inappropriate piece of legislation. I think this idea that people are limited in giving to a campaign and that they’re unlimited in giving to a Super PAC and that, therefore, the campaign can’t guide the very advertisement that’s affecting its future makes no sense at all. I think our campaign finance laws ought to be thrown out and rewritten to remove this extraordinary anomaly.”

Source: National Journal

Of course one has to wonder how his campaign will be able to continue to fund itself as the Romney campaign has maxed out a larger % of it’s donors than do any of the other campaigns. While there are huge, huge donations coming in from billionaires into these outside groups that are funding ads all over the country…legally – the campaign can’t coordinate….so the campaign will have to fund the blocking and tackling like voter registration, voter mobilization, phone calls etc. The campaign can’t use funds from the 3rd party groups…and that means that Romney could be in a potentially perilous financial situation as the campaign stretches on beyond Super Tuesday.

“What it shows is that [Romney] does not have a broad base of support among small donors, who are motivated to give small amounts to the campaign,” campaign finance expert and UC-Irvine professor Richard Hasen told TPM.

But the real worry for Romney is maxed out donors, who have given the $2,500 limit to his primary run and can no longer legally contribute. The chart below shows what percentage of each candidate’s total cash as of the start of 2012 came from top dollar donations.