Outsourcer

Outsourcer in Chief

Competitors, take note. Carly Fiorina is running a leaner campaign by shifting basic tasks to her better-funded super PAC.

By Shane Goldmacher

The story broke just in time for Carly Fiorina's three-day swing across New Hampshire: 13 state representatives were endorsing her for president. It wasn't just news in New Hampshire. It was news in Fiorina's own headquarters.

That's because the endorsements weren't rolled out by her campaign. Instead, they had been secured and unveiled by the super PAC supporting her.

"I learned about it from WMUR," said Sarah Isgur Flores, Fiorina's deputy campaign manager, of the local TV station that had the scoop.

And how did Fiorina learn about her raft of new backers? "She gets clips," Flores said. "So, I guess, I presume she read it in the clips."

Welcome to 2016, the first presidential race where candidates' actual campaigns are taking their cues from—and sometimes a backseat to—the super PACs backing them.

One month into her long-shot bid for the White House, Team Fiorina is pushing these boundaries to the extreme, further in fact than any contender in the Republican field. Her official campaign has shifted some of the most fundamental political tasks to the super PAC, from rounding up endorsements to assembling a ground game and even answering questions about Fiorina's business background.

Indeed, the first Fiorina field office of 2016, in South Carolina, belongs not to her campaign but to her super PAC. When voters search for "Carly Fiorina" on Google, the first ad that pops up is for her super PAC, not her campaign. And on her recent New Hampshire visit, it was Fiorina's super PAC that was advancing her events, even staging them with stickers and signage.

"It's a modern approach to the ways campaigns are done nowadays," said Leslie Shedd, spokeswoman for Carly for America, the pro-Fiorina super PAC with a name so indistinguishable from the official Carly for President campaign that the Federal Election Commission has demanded they change it.

It's also an uncharted territory with implications and ramifications for the way the rest of the 2016 campaigns will be run.

At a recent Iowa cattle call—Sen. Joni Ernst's "Roast and Ride" in Boone—Fiorina busily shook hands and scribbled her signature on bright red "Carly" posters. A handful of staff and volunteers in red "Carly" shirts, including Shedd, buzzed about, clutching clipboards to sign up supporters and hawking free "Carly" stickers. They were the paraphernalia and personnel of her super PAC.

"The big focus, especially out here in our early states, is the ground game," Shedd explained. "It's signing up volunteers. Lots of signing up volunteers, trying to spread the word in Iowa with Carly, really organizing here on the ground."

In contrast, the official Fiorina campaign had a far less visible presence—Fiorina, two aides, and her Iowa state director.

"They obviously bring a ton of volunteers to events, which is fantastic," said Flores, glancing over at the super PAC team working the crowd. "And they're great at branding. The red t-shirts and everything, we love seeing those."

Whatever volunteers the campaign itself said it had on hand were harder to spot.

The campaign and the super PAC can't legally strategize together, or even plan who will show up when and where. The way Flores described it, the campaign sees itself as ultimately responsible for all things Fiorina 2016 but will acquiesce when they spot the super PAC doing overlapping work. ("We announce endorsements, too," she noted.)

"If we see something that needs to get done, we're gonna do it," Flores explained. "If we see that that need is being filled, then we can move resources elsewhere."

The deference comes down to cash. The Fiorina super PAC is expected to have far more money: Fiorina's friends and former colleagues in corporate America (she was the first female CEO of a Fortune 20 company) can make only $2,700 in direct campaign contributions but can give unlimited sums to the super PAC.

"The actual Fiorina campaign has to be a bit more judicious with its resources than the super PAC does," said Keith Appell, a veteran GOP consultant and senior adviser to the super PAC.

Since her time as CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Fiorina has fended off attacks that she was an outsourcer, but perhaps the most audacious outsourcing of her career is happening today, on the campaign trail.

Among the basic tasks outsourced to the super PAC is answering questions about Fiorina's tenure at Hewlett-Packard. Last month, the Fiorina campaign referred Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler to the super PAC to answer questions about her record at the technology giant. Kessler said such a referral is "not common," and he couldn't recall another declared candidate who had done so. In fact, it was so uncommon that Kessler didn't realize that his referral to Carly for America meant he was no longer speaking with the Carly for President campaign itself.

After publishing his fact-check, Kessler had to update his story to say it was the super PAC, not the campaign, that had answered his questions. "It shows how confusing it can be," Kessler said in an interview.

"[A] big thing that we're going to focus on is dealing a lot with Carly's business record. It's extremely extensive. It's very dense. And it can be somewhat complex," Shedd said. "Sarah and Anna [Epstein], with [the] campaign, they're just two people," she said of Fiorina's official press team. "You get lots of questions. I think a lot of it is just providing support if they're unable to answer questions and it's something that we can."

"If it's something specific, like, how does Carly feel about X, Y, and Z issue of the day, that's something that's really going to have to go through the campaign," Shedd went on. "But anything that's kind of providing a larger picture about Carly and her background, and why it is she'd be a great president will come through us."

Such delineated and blended responsibilities can make the two groups appear as if they're working hand-in-glove. During her trip to New Hampshire last week, the super PAC was advancing Fiorina's own events. At both a VFW hall in Hudson and a school in New Boston, red "Carly for America" posters, courtesy of the super PAC, adorned the walls and hung on the podiums where Fiorina was set to speak. The events had been publicly announced.

And, earlier this month, the Fiorina campaign emailed its supporters a link to a new video, titled "Momentum," that had been produced by the super PAC. The campaign then embedded the super PAC's video on its own website, alongside a contribution form. It's actually possible to watch to the end of the video and see two disclaimers on the same page: one identifying the ad as paid for by the super PAC; the other identifying the page itself as paid for by the campaign.

Super PACs have quickly evolved from groups that mostly produced television ads in 2012 to the center of candidates' considerations in 2016. Jeb Bush has assigned his longtime chief strategist, Mike Murphy, to run his super PAC. Some of Scott Walker's closest Wisconsin advisers are running his. And it was the Ben Carson super PAC, not the Carson campaign, that operated a booth and helped organize his straw poll victory at the recent Southern Republican Leadership Conference.

But it is Fiorina, with her super PAC providing some of the fundamental infrastructure of a campaign, who is setting an important precedent for campaigns, big and small. It shows the new ways underfunded candidates can now compete, needing only a handful of wealthy patrons. And it paves the way for a candidate like Bush, who has a super PAC that is expected to dwarf the spending of even his own well-funded campaign, to delegate more authority beyond the campaign.

"With every cycle, there are new strategies. There's innovation. But in the end, it all gets back to the candidate," said Appell, downplaying the Fiorina super PAC's importance. "If she's a good candidate, she'll do very well. And so far, she's an outstanding candidate."

Despite the overlap in their operations, the super PAC and Fiorina's campaign say they have stayed on the proper side of laws that prohibit coordination.

Candidates and their supportive super PACs can't plot strategy together in private, but operatives have become increasingly brazen about working together in plain sight, suggesting ad copy for super PACs, writing public strategy memos with recommended ad buys, and even operating anonymous Twitter accounts to share polling data. The Fiorina effort—with its split press responsibilities, delegated field work, and super-PAC-decorated campaign events—is a new twist.

The Fiorina campaign embedded a video produced by a pro-Fiorina super PAC onto its website as part of a fundraising pitch this month. (Screenshot)The Federal Election Commission is responsible for investigating any alleged coordination between candidates and super PACs, but the commission's own chairwoman called the agency "worse than dysfunctional" earlier this year. (She has also called coordination rules "sadly murky.") The FEC did send a letter on May 17 telling the Carly for America super PAC that it had to change its name because outside groups cannot have the names of federal candidates in them. (The logos of both Carly for President and Carly for America, though different colors, feature Fiorina's first name, in all capital letters, with a star embedded in the 'A.')

Initially, Steve DeMaura, a former Fiorina adviser and current executive director of Carly for America, said the super PAC had not decided how to respond. But the group later said it would adjust its name—kind of. The group is filing paperwork to become "Conservative, Authentic, Responsive Leadership for You and for America."

Better known as: CARLY for America.

It is not clear how the FEC will respond.

Back in Boone, Iowa, at the Ernst "Roast and Ride," organizers provided the Fiorina campaign, and every other 2016 speaker, a booth to distribute literature and campaign swag. Unlike the others, the Fiorina booth was decorated with super PAC "Carly for America" balloons hung from the tent's poles. The campaign says its own volunteers staffed the booth, but a roll of "Carly for America" stickers could be spotted on the table throughout the event.

"Obviously I didn't know what they were doing out here," Fiorina said when asked about the super PAC's big presence.

So what did she think of it?

"It's encouraging," she said as she walked away. "Encouraging."