Last May, Politico reported that Justice Democrats, the congressionally focused insurgent candidate recruitment and training operation that helped launch Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s career, started a super PAC. Justice Democrats’ structure as a political action committee (PAC) permits it to work directly with Democratic primary insurgents while observing strict spending limits. A super PAC, on the other hand, would allow Justice Democrats to spend unlimited funds on campaigns as long as that spending is an “independent expenditure,” electoral work done on behalf of or against a campaign without communicating with the beneficiary candidate.
Both Bernie Sanders and AOC have called for the end of super PACs. Yet when Justice Democrats launched their super PAC, groups like the Sunrise Movement jumped to their partner’s defense. In a series of tweets, the environmental justice organization wrote: “All your favorites—including everyone who put real support behind @BernieSanders—have this setup.” The setup seemed to work for Jamaal Bowman’s recently successful campaign, which benefited from a large super PAC intervention on his behalf from Justice Democrats and the Working Families Party.
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