At a town hall in Little Rock, a participant asked Warren about the super PAC supporting her presidential candidacy. Warren has publicly opposed the use of super PACs, and in fact, her website still says, “Elizabeth rejects the help of Super PACs and would disavow any Super PAC formed to support her in the Democratic primary.”
Super PACs are political action groups that can raise unlimited amounts of money for candidates and don’t need to disclose donors. Within the last couple of weeks, at the presidential debate in Nevada, she said that she and Amy Klobuchar were the only two candidates not using super PACs.
But Warren started accepting the help of the Persist PAC earlier this week. It is spending over $12 million on Warren ads in over a half dozen states. She has said she needed to use it because the other candidates are accepting aid from super PACs.
At the event on Saturday, Warren noted that in her first Senate run in Massachusetts in 2012, she and her opponent, Republican Scott Brown, agreed not to use super PAC money.
In 2020, she said, “I asked everybody to join me in this. And the answer from literally everybody was zero. Crickets. No answer. No one.”
She said she’s ready any time to drop the super PAC support, but she won’t do it alone.
“We could keep super PACs out of this, but it takes everybody following the same set of rules,” Warren said. “So, as soon as everybody’s ready, I’ll lead the charge.”
— Zak Hudak and Caroline Linton
