Obama campaign urges donors to embrace super PAC

WASHINGTON — Reversing an earlier stand, President Barack Obama is now 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 is already 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. The new super PACs can't coordinate directly with candidates or their campaigns, but they have played a major role in the Republican primary contests by raising millions of dollars for negative advertising in early contests in Iowa, South Carolina and Florida.

Messina said senior campaign officials, along with some White House officials and members of Obama's Cabinet, would attend and speak at fundraising events for Priorities USA but would not directly ask for money. He said Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and first lady Michelle Obama would not be part of the effort and would remain focused on Obama's own re-election campaign.

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, and a false alternative to the power of rich individual and corporate interests that are increasingly dominating our government."