Setting Up and Operating a Corporate PAC and Understanding Super PACs: What You Need to Know Before the 2016 Elections

This program has two components: first, a top-to-bottom explanation of traditional political action committees (or PACs), the role they play in the political process, and the rules that govern how they are operated; and then a discussion of the relatively new independent-expenditure only PACs (or Super PACs as they are called) and how they can be used to support or oppose candidates.

This program, presented by Ronald Jacobs, the chair of Venable’s political law group and editor of the Political Law Briefing Blog, will help corporations, nonprofits, and trade associations understand how they can create and operate a PAC to support political candidates at the federal and state level. You will learn how to solicit contributions without violating the rules on coercion, how to structure PAC governance, and how to handle PAC disclosure requirements.

After examining PACs, the program switches to discuss Super PACs. It begins by explaining the difference between contributions and expenditures, and how individuals, nonprofits, and corporations may make unlimited contributions to Super PAC to support or oppose candidates. Super PACs must remain independent of the candidates they support, and this program will discuss what it means to impermissibly “coordinate” with a candidate, and what interactions are permissible. Finally, learn how states are at the forefront of forcing Super PACs to disclose individuals behind the contributors to Super PACs.

Learning Objectives:

I.     Grasp how a corporate PAC can be used to make contributions to candidates at the federal and state level

II.    Discover how to set up and operate a corporate PAC

III.   Understand who may be solicited to make contributions to a PAC and the restrictions on how to solicit

IV.   Comprehend how a Super PAC is different from a traditional PAC

V.    Recognize coordination restrictions on the interaction between Super PACs and candidates