"The only campaign that would have even been legal 8 years ago belongs to a 74-year-old socialist"

ONE EVENING IN OCTOBER, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, Republican candidate for president, hit the stump at an elementary school in Windham, New Hampshire. It was one of those idyllic New England fall nights, just cool enough for a sweater, and along the winding road to the school's entrance the leaves were beginning to turn. Volunteers in red T-shirts and navy blazers scurried around with clipboards, collecting tickets and handing out flyers by the door. Inside, they taped campaign signs beneath the basketball hoops, and ushered guests to their seats. Girl Scouts with badge-covered vests and glittering headbands sat cross-legged on the floor in front of senior citizens, whose white hair bobbed above the crowd like the Monadnocks in winter. The tableau was almost Rockwellian.

But unbeknownst to the voters in the room, they were guinea pigs in one of the most brazen experiments in modern politics. The people with the clipboards to whom they'd just given out their names, addresses, and phone numbers weren't with the Fiorina campaign, despite what some of these volunteers had strongly implied. True, they did all seem to be wearing CARLY T-shirts and CARLY stickers, but technically, it was an acronym. When I asked a man with a clipboard what it stood for, he said he wasn't authorized to answer.

In fact, the event was run by a super-PAC, one to which Fiorina has, to an unprecedented degree, outsourced virtually every aspect of her operation but the stump speech itself. Signs, shirts, stickers, phone calls, canvassing, event staffing, ads, grisly rapid-response abortion videos—even a documentary, Citizen Carly, which it screened in four states. Super-PACs can accept unlimited contributions from individuals and corporations, but they are prohibited from naming themselves after a candidate. So after the Federal Election Commission threatened the group with penalties last summer, the super-PAC formerly known as "Carly for America" became "Conservative, Authentic, Responsive Leadership for You and for America"—that is, CARLY.

Federal law also prohibits super-PACs from coordinating with political campaigns. The way CARLY and Carly navigate this is a bit more complicated. Traditionally, campaigns pick and choose which towns they want to visit, select a venue, and book an event. Fiorina doesn't usually do that. Instead, she accepts invitations from hosts, usually supportive chamber of commerce types, who'd like to hear her speak. She then posts the event on a Google calendar that's publicly accessible to anyone who knows where to look. CARLY sees an event has been posted and coordinates with the host about running it. So Carly coordinates with the host, and the host coordinates with CARLY, but CARLY does not coordinate with Carly. Got it?

IN A NORMAL YEAR, CARLY's end run around election laws might be a scandal, but 2016 is not normal. Billionaire Donald Trump led the GOP field for nearly four months before running his first TV ad; his biggest campaign expenses have included baseball hats and T-shirts. With the Iowa caucuses fast approaching, Dr. Ben Carson, his closest competitor, took a month off to sell his new book. But his campaign continued to raise and spend vast sums of money through a direct-mail fundraising tactic that gave more than half of every dollar raised to consulting firms. Hillary Clinton is such a magnet for money her outside group has an outside group. (Citing a loophole that exempts an organization from being regulated by election law so long as it only exists online, Clinton is even coordinating with one of her super-PACs.) The only campaign that would have even been legal eight years ago belongs to a 74-year-old socialist.
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http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/12/uncampaign-2016-fiorina-trump-carson-pac#testa