Super PAC Facts with Brody Mullins

Fifteen years after Citizens United, the conventional wisdom was wrong. Corporations never flooded Super PACs with cash — and Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Brody Mullins, co-author of The Wolves of K Street, explains exactly why. On this episode of Facts About PACs, Brody joins Micaela, Adam, and David to unpack why publicly traded companies have stayed on the sidelines, who is spending big in the Super PAC game, and which industries — crypto, big oil, Wall Street, and AI — are starting to rethink that calculus.

Episode Sponsor: Aristotle

Transcript

Brody Mullins (00:00):

Corporate PACs help fund the pro-business middle in this country, which gets things done.

Micaela Isler (00:12):

Welcome back to the Facts About PACS podcast. I'm Mikayla Isler, NAPAC's president and CEO, and I'm joined today, as always, by Adam Belmar and David Shield for a conversation about Super PACS and why they've remained the domain of wealthy individuals and not corporations.

David Schild (00:30):

Micaela, since Citizens United opened the door in 2010 for corporations to pour unlimited money into super PACs, the political world has been waiting for the floodgates to open. And now here we are 15 years later, these floodgates are still mostly closed as it relates to corporate giving.

Adam Belmar (00:46):

Our guest today has spent two decades investigating the intersection of corporate power and politics. He's the author of The Wolves of K Street, the secret history of how big money took over big government. The Pulitzer Prize winner, whose reporting literally changed the law. And he has a few things to say about why companies have stayed out of the Super PAC game and whether that's all about to change. Coming up in just a minute, Brody Mullins joins the show. The Facts About PACs Podcast is produced especially from members of the National Association of Business Political Action Committees. In every episode, we recap this week's NABPACtivities, share actionable intelligence and better practices all while connecting the PAC community. And today's episode is brought to you by Aristotle. For more than 40 years, Aristotle has been the trusted partner for political compliance, PAC management, advocacy solutions, data insights, innovative technology tools, and campaigns.

(01:43):

Everything your political program needs, all in one place. Aristotle's expert team delivers award-winning customer service and tailored solutions to fit every organization's budgets and goals. Now you know.

Micaela Isler (01:56):

Well, thank you, Adam. And as always, thank you to our dear friends over at Aristotle for supporting this episode today. Guys, it is a beautiful day in DC. I don't know. It just feels like we should be heading to a beach very soon, but lots of fantastic NAP activities to share. We just came off of our February lunch this week where we unveiled some of our new data out of our insight survey at the end of the 2024 election cycle that we conducted last year with our members. Really great opportunity. Packed house this week talking about everything from average contribution, giving, where money's going, size of PAC boards, you name it. We have it covered. Even, David, it was really fun to see just what a PAC director looks like today from how many employees they're managing, salaries and bonuses, all those fun things. So a great opportunity for us.

(02:46):

We're going to be rolling out more in our resource emails as well as additional content throughout the year. So exciting stuff for us.

David Schild (02:53):

Yeah. Really cool to see the sort of demographic picture of PAC professionals changing while knowing that some of the key priorities, some of the key skills, some of the key abilities are unchanged almost over half a century.

Adam Belmar (03:05):

All right. I think one thing that I want to know is, was there any sort of quiet discussions about PAC Swag and what we're going to be rolling out in this year's PACSwag preview?

Micaela Isler (03:14):

Well, apparently SOCs are the latest and greatest, so fun SOC seemed to be what everybody's talking about. But also wanted to flag for our members. We have always fantastic. Mark Renat, our very own general counsel from Wiley, who will be with us actually on St. Patrick's Day next month. And there may or may not be some Guinness, so folks are going to have to join to see if we'll have it there.

Adam Belmar (03:36):

Slaunch.

Micaela Isler (03:38):

But without further ado, joining us now is Brody Mullins, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist. Welcome back to the Facts About PACS podcast.

Brody Mullins (03:47):

Thanks for having me.

Micaela Isler (03:48):

So Brody, let's start with the big myth. I've been talking about this all week, but after Citizens United, the media told everyone that corporations were about to flood the Super PAC world with cash. And 15 years later, that hasn't happened yet. Why not?

Brody Mullins (04:05):

Yeah. I think you sort of summarized that perfectly and yet is sort of what we're trying to figure out right now. But what we've had wrong for the last 10 years is, so like the Wikipedia entry for Citizens United is, you guys mentioned all the right words, open the floodgates for corporate cash into elections. And it's been long enough now that we can look back at the records and find out that it's just not true. 100% Citizens United opened the floodgates for cash into elections through these super PACs, 100% true. But if you look beneath the surface, which is very easy to do, it's not corporate cash if you define corporate cash as coming from companies. The money comes from billionaires who have made money working for companies, but big publicly traded US companies are not giving money to super PACS. But the why is that, in my opinion, from my covering companies over the years is that companies are risk averse when it comes to politics.

(05:01):

They want to be on the side of the winner. You don't want to pick the wrong side and lose and get punished. You want to get things done in Washington and getting things done in Washington for the most part involves working with Republicans and with Democrats and with independents and whoever's here. So you don't want to have bad relationships with either side. And also publicly held companies have lots of governors, let's call it, on giving. You've got shareholders and you've got boards and you've got PAC directors and you've got customers, you've got employees and I'm probably missing a category. So many people who, half are Republicans and half are Democrats and they keep these companies down the middle. I remember writing a story years and years ago when I think it was Target in Minnesota gave money to, I think it was even before the worst Super PACS, it was a 501 and they gave money to some pro- business member, I don't know if it was a Republican or Democrat, running for governor, I believe.

(05:59):

And it turned out that that candidate had supported when he was younger, some anti-gay marriage proposition or something like that. And some blog found out about it and wrote about it. And tons of people who are target employees and customers got really upset by that. And it was sort of a lesson to target and to every other company, just don't get involved in this stuff. It's not worth it. Give money through your PACS, give money to 50% to one side, 50% to the other side, or 60, 40. And that's kind of how things work, but corporations just do not play in this Super PAC game despite what the media tells you.

David Schild (06:34):

And Brody, I'm glad you're pointing this out because I think there are a lot of people who are still fuzzy on one of the core distinctions here that follow that Supreme Court decision. And I like to say independent expenditure only committee because PAC and Super PAC are too often used interchangeably, but of course we're talking about a big difference between organizations where employees contribute voluntarily and then those funds are spent in the aggregate, usually by some sort of governance committee at that corporation or association. And as you pointed out, the way billionaires are pouring unlimited funds into their pet concerns, their pet projects, am I naive for hoping that the people who run for office and write the laws actually understand campaign finance? I

Brody Mullins (07:16):

Don't know if they do. A lot of people ask, "Is this system going to change?" I mean, we've set up a fundamentally unfair system. And if we were to sit down and say, "Okay, what is the worst way of setting up an election system and how to fund it? " We would say, "Let's have the richest people in the world be allowed to give as much money as they want to a campaign and let's have everyone else have to donate in a smaller capped amount to candidates in a way that's regulated and disclosed." Whereas the richest people can just write all the checks they want. Sometimes, we're talking about PACS. Sometimes they're through 501 or other organizations that are not even disclosed. We don't even know who's giving money. So back to the question, will it change? The problem we have, or another problem we have is that the people who win elections are the ones who write the rules.

(08:02):

So I think there's a lot of members of Congress who really don't like this system, but they're benefiting from it and they're probably not going to change it unless there's some sort of a scandal or pressure from the American citizens.

Micaela Isler (08:14):

Brody, one thing I just want to also just make clear as we talk about how everyone's so fuzzy on this, and both of you have touched on this a little bit, but there is a major, major distinction between the super PACS and our traditional PACS in that all that money cannot go directly to the campaign and to the candidate directly. Does that distinction matter to you?

Brody Mullins (08:35):

I know what the rules are and I feel like those rules should make a difference, but I feel like they seem to matter less and less. I mean, in practice, it means that a candidate running for office who's being supported by a super PAC, the candidate and the super PAC cannot coordinate. The candidate can't tell the super PAC, "Hey, can you run an ad bash from my opponent for X, Y, Z? Or can you run an ad saying that I took a great vote on the tax bill that's going to help everyone?" You're not allowed to have that coordination. So there's sort of like a shadow campaign where the candidate is running their election funded by hard dollars. These are the actual donations from regular Americans, from corporate PACS, from wealthier Americans that are all regulated cap disclosed. You can't give more than a packing of the most, which is only $5,000 per election.

(09:17):

And a candidate is running his or her election, and then you've got this sort of shadowy super PAC system that's running sort of parallel alongside the candidate. I would also think at some point the candidates would say, "Who are these people who are running my campaign for me? I should be in charge of my own campaign." And again, I would think they would say that and outlaw super PACS, but the winners benefit from the system and they sort of keep it the way it is. I would hope, think, love that at some point enough members of Congress say, "Hey, I'm the candidate, I'm on the ballot, I'm running the campaign, and I should have the most powerful, loudest voice in the election." And right now, that's not the case.

David Schild (09:56):

Brody, you said something on one of your podcasts that I thought was really fascinating, and you mentioned it just a couple of minutes ago, right? Most corporations are trying to avoid involvement in some of these controversial issues, but there's one industry that is the exception to this, and that's crypto. Talk more about that.

Brody Mullins (10:11):

Yeah. So that's why I love the yet part earlier, because we're just starting to figure this out. I mean, the thing about these super PACs is they're ... The Citizen United was 2010, but it took a while for people to get used to them, and they really started exploding for the first time in the last election. In the last election, the 2024 election was the first time that a super PAC or that super PAC supporting one of the presidential candidates spent more than the candidates, and that was Donald Trump. The super PAC supporting Donald Trump in the last election spent more money than Donald Trump and the RNC on that election. That seems to be unfair, un-American, shouldn't be that way. That was not the case of Democrats and Kamala Harris, but by the next election, it will be. I mean, these super PACs are coming on strong.

(10:53):

So they're quickly becoming the most dominant force in our elections. And then in that brief period of time, companies and industries were not giving, but then we saw crypto. Crypto in the last election spent, I think, 250 million, 300 million or so through one main super PAC, but some others specifically to elect or really to defeat certain members of Congress who they saw as a threat. Number one was the Senate banking committee chairman, Chaired Brown from Ohio. Incredibly rare for a powerful committee chairman to be defeated in their home state, but the crypto industry took aim at him because he essentially wanted to outlaw the industry. What's different about crypto, it sort of shows the difference between crypto companies and regular publicly traded companies is that the crypto industry is facing an existential threat. They believe, and it's true, that there are Democrats and some Republicans who could pass legislation to literally outlaw the industry.

(11:53):

And therefore, if your business is threatened to that level, you're going to do anything it takes. Who cares about your shareholders if you have them or your employees? You may not have shareholders' employees if you don't have a business, so they go to the mat spending anything they can. We're also maybe starting to see this now with AI, which is interesting. Some of the AI companies are coming together to form a super PAC where they're talking about going into certain elections in New York and Texas and elsewhere. So maybe things are changing. The one other sort of longstanding area or industry that's starting to dabble here is the oil industry. Some oil companies are giving and API, the trade association for the oil and gas industry has been giving a little bit. And when I say a little bit, I mean, a couple million dollars, not a hundred million dollars, but it's the same through line.

(12:41):

So why is big oil giving money? Because they feel like they face an existential threat from Democrats. They feel like Democrats already hate them enough. They're not going to love them. They're not going to have fifty fifty support among Republicans and Democrats. For right or wrong, the Republican Party tends to support big oil and the Democratic Party does not. And therefore they feel like things can't get any worse than Democrats, so they're going to start giving just some money. They're not going full speed in. And then we just saw at the end of December, the Financial Services Forum, which represents big banks start a 501C6. This is not a super PAC, but it's sort of maybe on the way to a super PAC. And what the big banks are saying is these crypto companies are destroying us. And I don't know if Wall Street's feeling an existential threat, but they're starting to feel threatened enough where they're saying, hmm, maybe the risk or reputation is worth it to protect our industry.

(13:32):

So if we had this conversation a year ago or six months ago or five months ago, we'd say it's only crypto. And now it's crypto and big oil and Wall Street and AI. So who knows? Things may be changing quickly. But back to the beginning, there's the big risk. You pick the wrong person. If crypto, for example, lost and Kamala Harris won, well, there may not be a crypto industry right now. So that's incredibly risky to go all in with one side or the other, Republican or Democrat.

Adam Belmar (14:06):

Yes. The existential threat has got a sharp blade on both sides. And I think following along your idea that this landscape is maturing and that there's an innovation at hand, it seems like there's a new category emerging. I was reading and prepping for this interview, Brody, about something that some players are calling megapacks. In fact, Covington and Burling, which is a major law firm, issued an alert to their clients in December of 2025 saying, and I'm quoting here, "We're entering a new world of corporate and industry super PAC activity." And so I want to ask you, it sounds like you agree with this, do you? And where is this inflection point? Do you think that it's gathering momentum?

Brody Mullins (14:49):

It's hard to say. It seems like a lot of the traditional norms and rules in politics and policy are changing. And this might be one of them where the companies used to just play in regulated, disclosed corporate PACS or individual contributions through the regular system. And maybe that is an old school rule that's falling apart. I mean, it's certainly true that because of super PACS, unfortunately, the $5,000 PAC contribution or the whatever it is, 2,900, whatever the cap is, 3,300 individual is just a drop in the bucket compared to what it used to be because again, the super PACs are spending so much money. So maybe just the old rules are outdated or the old norms are outdated to have influence and individual donation doesn't cut it.

David Schild (15:39):

Brody, this has been really a great overview of sort of the state of play and how it looks from somebody outside the industry who does such a great job of covering these sorts of things. We talked about this on stage at the NAMPAC Conference in the fall, and you and I discussed how employee funded and business trade association PACs have been a stabilizing force because exactly like you said, business want to avoid controversy. They want to typically invest in people who share their business ideas on both sides of the aisle, putting my listener hat on, right? Is that still the case? I mean, just here we are five or six months after you and I had that conversation, is it still a stabilizing force in politics?

Brody Mullins (16:19):

Yeah, I believe so. Again, the irony here is that my brother and I wrote this book about how corporate America became so influential in DC from the 1970s to the beginning of the Trump administration or so. And so much of that was by using corporate PACS, by persuading employees, eligible employees and managers to donate to corporate PACS, have those corporate PACS give as much money as possible to Republicans and Democrats to create this bipartisan center in Washington. And that gave companies incredible influence over policy for most of our lifetimes. And what those policies meant were sort of a pro- business, a landscape in DC that was lower taxes, less regulation, pro- trade, pro- immigration. And now that we're in this era of super PACS where members of Congress are not getting as much of a share ... Well, we've seen two things. One is the overall amount of money from corporate PACS into campaigns is going down, not as a percentage, but as a total.

(17:23):

Corporate PACs are giving less money to candidates. And then as a share, they're getting much smaller because individual donors are giving so much more, and then you've got these super PACs. So taken together, that means that people running for office for Congress and the presidency are less needy of money from corporate. They're less dependent on them, and therefore they're less drawn to that pro- business center. So there's a stat that I pulled together for the Wall Street Journal that I think it was 2014 or 2012, I forget which year. In that year, 51% of members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats equally divided, got about 50% of their election funds from corporate PACs. So 50% of members of Congress get 50 of their money from core PACs. In 2022, that was down to 17%. So in 2022, only 17% of members of Congress got to majority of their money from corporate PACS.

(18:12):

And what that means is that they're getting money from smaller donors. And the way you raise money from smaller donors is you do and say crazy things on Twitter and you go to the extreme and you don't compromise and you vilify the opponent and you bash corporate America and you block things, you don't do things. If you want to get money from corporate America, you go to the middle and you compromise and you work on legislation and you try to get things done. Things that are good for, by the way, America and companies that employ Americans. And so it just seems like things have come full circle where now it seems odd to say, but corporate PACs help fund the pro- business middle in this country, which gets things done. You remove that, and this is what we have. Literally, the Washington we have right now is what you get when you have people trying to raise money from the extremes, whether that's super PACS or small donors.

(19:03):

And is the solution creating a more robust corporate PAC campaign finance system? Maybe. It's very hard to argue that corporate PACS are the answer to American democracy, but they might be.

Micaela Isler (19:15):

We of course love to hear that. I mean, the one thing we talk about all the time on the Hill is just we are that moderating force and we do represent millions of employees who choose to participate in the process. Their organizations are viewed as a trusted source of political information. To your point, we're not that hyperbolic sort of crazy talk. We're talking about the issues, we're not talking about social issues. We don't engage in presidential politics. And so are super PACs the shiny bright, and are they going to be long-term sustainable?

Brody Mullins (19:45):

That's a tough question. I mean, the trend certainly is for members of Congress raising greater share of their money, not from corporate PACs, but from individual donors, and there seem to be an unlimited supply of those, or from getting support from billionaire super PACS, and right now there's seemingly endless supply over there also. So I think it would take a lot to increase the relevance of corporate PACS, but one way of doing it for corporate PACS or overall for our system is to change the campaign finance rules, as in we've got two separate systems. We've got the regulated and disclosed system that you guys are in, which is cap donations, disclosed, limits on various types of coordination, and then you have the super PACS which can do whatever they want, and most importantly, raise whatever they want. And what that has done is really hurt our political parties compared to the super PACs.

(20:40):

I mean, the super PACs have more power and more money than the political parties, which also seems un-American in a system where the political parties and the candidates should be the primary voice in elections. So I think if you raise the caps on how much you can give to a political party or maybe even to a candidate, I think a lot of people may not like the fact there'd be more money in politics, but it would be a fair fight. And I think Virginia has a system like this. I think maybe Mississippi does also, where corporations, individuals, unions, whoever can give whatever they want to a candidate, the candidate discloses where their money's coming from, the voters can see it and they can decide. The system we have right now is one side can do that, but the other side can't. That just doesn't seem fair.

(21:20):

The flip side also is that if you were to raise the caps on corporate PAC donations and recipients, that puts a lot more pressure on corporate employees if they have to contribute more money to their own corporate PAC. So that can be hard also.

David Schild (21:33):

248 days until the 2026 midterms. I am glad that we have a Pulitz Surprise when are keeping an eye on this stuff.

Micaela Isler (21:39):

Well, Brody, this is just genuinely just such an important conversation for the PAC community and as always, just a pleasure having you with us on the Facts About PACS podcast.

Brody Mullins (21:49):

Thanks for having me. Great conversation.

Micaela Isler (21:51):

Absolutely. And thanks to everyone downloading and sharing the Facts About PACS podcast. Subscribe and meet us right back here next week.