super PAC

Coined by reporter Eliza Newlin Carney in 2010.^[1]

super PAC (plural super PACs)

1. (US politics) A political action committee which may support a political candidate, and officially endorse one, but is legally bound to not coordinate with any candidate, and is not limited in financial contributions from donors or financial spending.

   Synonym: (official name) independent-expenditure only committee

   Coordinate terms: PAC, spooky PAC

   • 2015 April 13, “On the Trail of Super PAC Money”, in The New York Times‎^[2], archived from the original on 16 June 2022:

     Court decisions have established that super PACs are supposed to act independently of a candidate, with no coordination permitted. But the indictment focused on the suspicious timing of hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to Mr. Menendez’s re-election campaign from a generous friend who allegedly sought government favors through the senator’s influence.

   • 2025 March 7, Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman, “Inside the Explosive Meeting Where Trump Officials Clashed With Elon Musk”, in The New York Times‎^[3], →ISSN, archived from the original on 7 March 2025:

     Mr. Musk remains Mr. Trump’s biggest political financial supporter — just this week his super PAC aired $1 million worth of ads that said, “Thank you, President Trump” […] .

• This is not a PAC as defined under United States Internal Revenue Code.
• Super PACs came to the fore in the 2011 political campaigning season. Super PACs were created through court verdicts in the United States that challenged financial constraints on political advertising, as a right to free speech restriction, which were guaranteed under the US constitution's first amendment.

• super PAC on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• “super PAC”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.

• A-cuppers, scrape up