Obama campaign steers donors toward super PAC

WASHINGTON – Reversing an earlier stand, President Barack Obama now is encouraging donors to give generously to the kind of political fundraising groups he once assailed as a “threat to democracy.” He had little choice, his campaign says, if he was to compete with big-money conservative groups that are sure to attack him this fall.

Obama’s campaign is urging its top donors to support Priorities USA, a super PAC led by two former Obama aides that has struggled to compete with the tens of millions of dollars collected by Republican-backed outside groups. Campaign officials said Tuesday the president had signed off on the decision.

The president already is facing criticism that he is compromising on principle and succumbing to Washington political rules he pledged to change. Yet in a plea to supporters, campaign manager Jim Messina said it would be unfair and unwise for the president’s re-election effort to live under one set of rules while the Republican presidential nominee benefits from a new supercharged campaign finance landscape.

“We decided to do this because we can’t afford for the work you’re doing in your communities, and the grassroots donations you give to support it, to be destroyed by hundreds of millions of dollars in negative ads,” Messina said.

The Supreme Court opened the door to the super political action committees, stripping away some limits on campaign contributions in its 2010 decision in the Citizens United case, a ruling that Obama has spoken against.

Republicans jeered Obama’s decision, and they weren’t alone. Supporters of more openness in government said the president had capitulated on his past calls to rein in the role of money in politics.

Former Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., a longtime advocate for campaign finance limits, said the decision to support the super PAC would “gut a winning, progressive strategy. When Democrats play by Republican rules, people see our party as weak.”