PACs = Please Accept Cash

The mid-term elections are only a little over a month away. Political ads are in full swing, yard signs have taken over front lawns, and campaign polls dominate the local eleven o'clock news. As I was clicking through channels between classes the other day, I came across an ad for Joe Courtney, the Democratic incumbent for Connecticut's second district. I then began thinking, who pays for the air time for those ads? And who provides campaign signs? The fact is that interest groups play an enormous part in the course of a campaign, especially Political Action Committees (PACs). PACs are private groups that organize to help elect candidates who advance important issues of that specific PAC. 

          http://www.opensecrets.org/races/summary.php?cycle=2010&id=MN03

For Erik Paulsen, PACs have been extremely generous to him. For the 2010 campaign 484 PACs have contributed to the Paulsen campaign totaling in $694,986. Most of the PACs providing funding are coming from the finance, insurance, and real estate industries.Considering Paulsen serves on the Congressional subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit, this is anticipated. Both New York Life Insurance and PricewaterhouseCoopers, a large accounting firm, have each provided $10,000 and are a couple of the top contributing PACs for Paulsen's campaign.

Jim Meffert is without a doubt struggling in raising money for his campaign. Meffert only has $20,000 in PAC contributions. Half of that has come from the American Optometric Association. This is not surprisingly considering Meffert served as the Executive Director of the Minnesota Optometric Association. As a result of Meffert's low campaign budget he has only been able to afford wed ads on YouTube. Below is my favorite Meffert campaign ad that was funded by political action committee Friends of Jim Meffert.