Political leanings: Democratic
2022 total spending: $31.2 million
Future Forward USA PAC, legally known as FF PAC, is a liberal political action committee created in 2018, ahead of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign.
The group is what’s known as a hybrid PAC or Carey committee. That means it “has the ability to operate both as a traditional PAC, contributing funds to a candidate’s committee, and as a super PAC, which makes independent expenditures,” according to OpenSecrets. Carey committees must have separate bank accounts for those purposes.
FF PAC was established by Future Forward USA Action, a liberal advocacy group that says its mission is “to help rebuild America’s middle class — and American democracy — by advancing new ideas and fresh perspectives.”
Chauncey McLean, who previously served as director of media tracking for the Democratic Party in 2012, is the hybrid PAC’s president. McLean’s strategy during the 2012 election “revolutionized political ad buying” by using data to target ads to the most persuadable voters, according to the New York Times.
In July, the Times also reported that FF PAC has become the Biden-Harris reelection campaign’s preferred super PAC, ahead of Priorities USA Action, which had been a main outside group supporting Democratic presidential candidates in past elections.
As of June 30, FF PAC had raised just over $67,000 for the 2024 election cycle, and about $56,000 of that was contributed by Future Forward USA Action, which, as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, can raise unlimited amounts of money without disclosing its donors. Filings with the Federal Election Commission also show that for the 2020 presidential and 2022 midterm campaign cycles, FF PAC raised a combined $182 million, with more than $77 million coming from its parent organization.
In the 2020 and 2022 elections, the PAC also spent $182 million, including about $158 million on independent expenditures, which are communications that “expressly advocate” the election or defeat of a specific candidate. According to the ad-tracking service AdImpact, FF PAC paid to run just one ad in 2023 – a 30-second spot encouraging Virginia voters to support Democrats in the November 2023 elections.
So far, much of the pro-Biden advertising in the 2024 cycle has come from Future Forward USA Action, which spent at least $14.8 million to run 86 different ads last year, according to AdImpact’s figures. During the last presidential election, the advocacy group spent about $28 million on “advertising and promotions,” according to its tax filings for 2019 and 2020.
FactCheck.org Undergraduate Fellow Hadleigh Zinsner contributed to this article.
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