If you can’t join them, beat them. That’s the strategy behind a new political SuperPAC launched in May 2014 by Harvard economics professor Lawrence Lessig. The SuperPAC is named MayDay PAC.

Lessig—an outspoken critic of the negative impact of dark money on political campaigns—is fighting fire with fire by attempting to raise $12 million, which will ultimately be applied to five targeted Congressional races in the 2014 mid-term elections, yet to be chosen. Lessig wants to focus on candidates who are committed to campaign-finance reform. And, by the way, Lessig does, indeed, see the irony of the need to fight big-money’s influence by…raising big money.

According to Think Progress:

Lessig vows that 100 percent of the money will go to candidates who want to reform campaign finance, and all overhead costs will be paid by the directors. Lessig hopes to use the maritime and aeronautical distress signal, “mayday”, as a call to action to end the growing influence that the 1 percent holds over American politics. “Our democracy is held hostage by the funders of campaigns. We’re going to pay the ransom, and get it back,” Lessig said in the launch video. “We want to build a Super PAC big enough to end all Super PACs.”

Lessig’s effort comes as a response to recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings that opened the floodgates to unlimited and undisclosed campaign donations. Think Progress reports that the 2012 election broke records for outside spending on elections, with over $300 million spent by outside groups that do not have to disclose donor information. The 2014 election is likely to surpass even that sum.

On 2014 Senate elections alone, advertising spending is already 45 percent higher than the previous cycle — and nearly 60 percent of ads are funded by outside groups, according to an analysis by the Wesleyan Media Project. Over two-thirds of ads supporting Republican candidates were bankrolled by outside groups. Democrats are not far behind, with outside groups funding almost half of pro-Democrat ads.

As reported by Moyers & Company, Lessig plans to raise funds using a two-tiered model: He hopes to appeal to a large pool of small donors as well as a smaller pool of deep-pocketed donors. When he launched Mayday PAC, he said that if $1 million was raised—via online crowdsourcing—by the end of May, whatever was raised would be matched by the larger contributors. If Mayday missed its goal, all money would be returned to donors.

The result was eye-popping. Mayday’s servers swooned under the volume of traffic from inspired small donors, and the SuperPAC took in $1 million in its first two weeks. Lessig plans to release the names of the initial donors at the end of May. He has said that their participation reveals an across-the-spectrum interest in reforming campaign finance. Later in 2014, he will begin the second phase of the crowdsourcing drive, seeking the next $6 million dollars.

It remains to be seen whether Mayday PAC can exert significant influence on an election landscape addicted to deep-pocketed, often anonymous donors. But if Lessig can pull this off, he will have accomplished something—in partnership with grassroots America—that Congress and the courts have been unable—and unwilling—to do.

The post SuperPAC to end all SuperPACs raises $1 million in its first two weeks appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The answer to the question of what NFL bounties and Super PACs have in common, is one word, “excess.” If we were to expound on it, we might use terms like too much testosterone, bullying, little regard for fairness, and the ends justify the means.

Bountygate is the system in which Gregg Williams, a defensive coordinator in the National Football League, paid bribes to players if they hit opposing players with such violence that they knocked key opponents out of the game. Williams was hired as defensive coordinator of the St. Louis Rams in February, 2012, but has never coached a down for the team. Over the three previous years he committed his greatest transgressions when he worked for the New Orleans Saints. This included the 2009 when the Saints became “America’s Team” because four years they won the Super Bowl just four years after the area experienced the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. There’s a certain irony in Williams being a renegade in New Orleans. I hadn’t known that putting bounties on people’s heads was part of the job definition of a Saint.

Previously, Williams had utilized this technique with the Washington Redskins and the Buffalo Bills.

Fortunately for the NFL, its commissioner, Roger Goodell, (a) doesn’t like any more violence than is “necessary” in a clean game of tackle football, and (b) doesn’t tolerate having someone tell him a lie to his face. Once he became aware of Bountygate, there was little doubt that the consequences to the perpetrators would be firm and iron-clad.

Goodell is the son of former Senator Charles Goodell of New York City. The senior Goodell was among the last of the vanishing breed of civil, moderate, thoughtful Republicans. The junior’s politics are also known to be moderate, but his commitment to honesty is a fierce as can be.

Senator Charles Goodell campaigned longer before Super PACs had been invented. Super PACs have come into existence over just the past few years. They are less a creation of political parties than they are of the Supreme Court. In 2010, the Court ruled in the Citizens United case that the First Amendment prohibited the government from restricting political expenditures by corporations and unions. The Court ruled that restrictions could still apply to candidates’ official committees, but that anyone or any non-tax-exempt organization could give as much money or in-kind contributions as it wanted to a separate committee that worked on behalf of a candidate. These committees became known as Super PACs. PAC is an acronym for Political Action Committee. They are indeed super because the magnitude of the money that they receive and spend is unprecedented.

David Axelrod, a top political consultant to President Barack Obama, reluctantly agreed to allow Super PACs to form and help the president. Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich already have huge ones. When asked why he was following suit, Axelrod said “we can’t play touch football while they’re playing tackle.”

Super PACs can do virtually anything legal on behalf of a candidate, except coordinate directly with the official campaign committee of the candidate. The extent to which this “restriction” is described in a previous Occasional Planet piece that reports on former Federal Elections Committee Chairman Trevor Potter being interviewed by Stephen Colbert.

While a Super PAC is supposed to be separate from a candidate’s official campaign committee, its leader can be the candidate’s best friend. The head of the Super PAC can be a business partner of the candidate. A candidate can’t sit down one-to-one with an official from a Super PAC to discuss strategy, but the candidate can deliver a speech to an audience in which he describes what he would like to see someone (e.g. his Super PAC) do to advance his cause. Newt Gingrich did exactly that prior to the South Carolina primary.

Just as bounties in football thoroughly undermine the limited civility of an inherently violent sport, Super PACs undermine the limited moderation in a political campaign. Football bounties take cheap shots at opposing players; Super PACs run the dirtiest commercials against opponents of their candidates.

Perhaps the one difference is that bounties may well be eliminated because the NFL has a strong commissioner in Roger Goodell. Super PACs thrive because there is no commissioner of our political process, unless you think that Chief Justice John Roberts and the eight other Supremes are capable of limiting the excess in campaign. It’s a sad state of affairs when the NFL is more civilized than our political process.

The post Football bounties and Super PACs: Excess is the common denominator appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Under Citizens United, Super PAC donors’ identities are shrouded in secrecy, but The Caucus, a New York Times blog, has begun a savvy effort to lift the curtain. After 2011 campaign finance reports were filed on Jan. 31, The Caucus went to work.  Because some Super PAC contributions came in via limited liability companies—some of which appear to exist only on paper—New York Times reporters have been working their way through corporate records and the list of mystery donors, attempting to match them and name them, one by one.  Among the findings:

A $50,000 donation to the pro-Romney Super PAC, Restore our Future, from “Sareli Investments? It is tied to Mark S. Siegel, chairman of the board of Patterson-UTI, an oil and natural gas drilling firm.

A $10,000 check from “JHJM Nevada I, LLC” made out to the Democratic-aligned Majority PAC? Connected to Stephen J. Cloobeck, chief executive officer of Diamond Resorts International.

But the source of one large donation–$250,000 to the Romney Super PAC—remains elusive. So, the Caucus launched a crowd-sourcing experiment, asking readers to help by using their own sleuthing skills and personal connections to expand on reporters’ efforts.

Checking different kinds of business records – like certificates of incorporation, articles of organization, or annual reports — filed with secretary of state’s offices in different states has been key in resolving other donors’ identities. Searching campaign finance records by employers, which can be done with the Center for Responsive Politics’ donor lookup tool, has been helpful is providing clues as well.

The result has been a significant influx of information. However, to date, that pesky $250,000 donor has yet to be identified. But the response to the crowd-sourcing request has been so positive that The Caucus is encouraging readers to look even further.

If readers have information that will help us fill out the biographies of any of the donors that we have identified in our ongoing interactive feature, please send them as well.

Have a tip on the donor’s actual identity? Or love poking around in public records and want to help? The Caucus will take all suggestions, morsels of information and leads. If you want to be credited, we will. If you want to remain anonymous, that is fine as well. We promise to protect your confidentiality.

Keep the tips coming to camfin@nytimes.com.

The post Crowdsourcing helps solve the Super PAC funding puzzle appeared first on Occasional Planet.