Handbook·Money in politics

What's the difference between a PAC and a Super PAC

Explainer·Verified 2026-07-10

The answer

A candidate committee is the campaign itself, under the candidate's direct control, and it can only take small, capped, fully disclosed contributions. A traditional PAC pools capped contributions from many donors and gives directly to candidates, also capped and disclosed. A Super PAC can raise and spend unlimited money from anyone, but only if it acts independently of the candidate, no coordination allowed. A leadership PAC is a fourth animal entirely, run by a sitting officeholder, nominally to help other candidates, but documented to often fund the lawmaker's own travel, meals, and lifestyle instead. The folk model treats all of these as "a PAC." The plain mechanic that breaks it is that each one answers to a different rulebook, and the rulebook, not the name, decides who controls the money.

How it actually works

For the 2025-2026 cycle, an individual can give a candidate's own committee $3,500 per election, or $7,000 total across a primary and general.¹ A traditional multicandidate PAC can give a candidate up to $5,000 per election, and individuals can give that PAC up to $5,000 a year.² Both channels are capped, and every donor above $200 is named in FEC filings.

A Super PAC skips the cap entirely. It can take a $10 million check from one person and spend it all on ads. The only legal condition is independence, no coordination with the candidate it's helping.² The FEC's coordination test has three parts: who paid, what the ad says, and whether the spender acted at the request or suggestion of the campaign.³ In practice this is close to unenforceable. The Center for Public Integrity found the FEC has opened only three coordination investigations since 1999, producing two fines totaling $26,000, and has never fined a Super PAC for coordinating with a candidate.⁴ Former staffers routinely run "independent" Super PACs supporting their old boss, legal as long as no one can prove a conversation happened.

Leadership PACs work differently again. Any member of Congress can start one, contribution-capped at $5,000 per donor per year, with the stated purpose of distributing money to help elect other candidates or party committees. A joint Issue One and Campaign Legal Center investigation of FEC filings from January 2019 to December 2020 found the leadership PACs of 120 members of Congress spent less than half their money on politics, and 43 members spent less than a quarter.⁵⁶ Collectively, these PACs spent about $2 million at hotels and resorts, $950,000 on airfare, $220,000 at sporting events and concerts, $150,000 at steakhouses, and $130,000 at golf courses and country clubs, all technically legal because the rules only require the spending have some plausible connection to officeholder or political duties.

Who holds the power

Candidates control their own committee directly. Super PAC operators, often former campaign staff or allied consultants, control unlimited money at arm's length. Individual members of Congress personally control their leadership PAC's checkbook.

Where you come in

FEC.gov and OpenSecrets.org list every leadership PAC and its itemized disbursements by name, so any lawmaker's steakhouse and golf spending is a matter of public record. See how to look up who funds your representative to check a specific lawmaker.

Glossary: super PAC · leadership PAC

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