Pro-Trump Super PACs in 2020

At Politico, Natasha Korecki and colleagues have a long piece on the 2020 campaign.  This excerpt deals with super PACs.

In early July, [Sheldon] Adelson contacted Republican strategist and former George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove. Adelson was Trump’s most generous giver, but he was uncomfortable with the existing pro-Trump super PACs. He wanted help in creating a new outfit he could feel confident in.

By that point, the pro-Trump America First Action super PAC had been raising money for two years. But there were widespread doubts about the group in the donor community. Big givers saw it as a dumping ground for ex-White House officials like former press secretary-turned-“Dancing with the Stars” contestant Sean Spicer.

That month, Steve Hantler, an adviser to Republican mega-donor Bernie Marcus, contacted veteran Republican strategist Chris LaCivita. Would he be interested in putting a super PAC together?

LaCivita, the architect of the 2004 Swift Boat Veterans for Truth takedown of John Kerry, signed on. Organizers had also spoken with former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who had been eager for an alternative super PAC to emerge, though the talks quickly stalled and major donors would have strongly objected to his appointment.

Word of the nascent super PAC encouraged Trump advisers, who were longing for air cover. But as the summer wore on, the Trump campaign grew antsy. Where was this much-anticipated organization? It didn’t help that Trump had antagonized Adelson during an early August phone call in which he falsely accused the mega-donor of not doing enough to help him, possibly delaying matters further.

The outfit, Preserve America, would finally get off the ground in early September with millions of dollars in funding from Adelson and Marcus. By then, the Trump campaign had gone a full month getting clobbered by Biden on the airwaves.

The Trump team’s summer blackout may have been costly: Exit polls showed that more than 70 percent of voters decided on whom to vote for before September.