Protecting Contribution Limits in Georgia (Safe Affordable Georgia v. Chairman of the State Ethics Commission, et al.)

Georgia, like most states, sets limits on how much an individual, political party or political action committee (PAC) can contribute to state candidates for elected office.  

These base contribution limits — which cap how much a single donor can give to a specific candidate — are considered the primary tool for regulating money in politics and preventing quid pro quo corruption. These limits have been repeatedly upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court on this basis.

But Georgia is unique in that it permits its governor and lieutenant governor to establish and run a “leadership PAC” that is exempt from this system of contribution limits. This allows these incumbents to use leadership PACs to make contributions to state candidates without limit — including even to their own campaigns — by coordinating expenditures and otherwise defraying the expenses of the campaigns.

Georgia’s leadership PAC loophole thus creates an unfair, two-tiered campaign finance structure that favors powerful incumbents over challenger candidates. The U.S. Supreme Court has disapproved of any “asymmetry” in contribution limits between candidates vying for the same seat, holding that this imbalance “is antithetical to the First Amendment.”

It is unsurprising that multiple candidates have challenged the leadership PAC loophole and Georgia courts have repeatedly blocked incumbents from exploiting the loophole to benefit their own campaigns.  

Safe Affordable Georgia — a hybrid PAC chaired by Brad Raffensperger, Republican candidate for governor — has challenged Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones’ use of a leadership PAC to finance his campaign against Raffensperger in the Republican gubernatorial primary.  

The issue with Raffensperger’s lawsuit, however, is that he does not target the leadership PAC provisions that create asymmetry in the law. Instead, he requests an exception from the base contribution limits that apply to all other candidates in the gubernatorial race — but only so Safe Affordable Georgia can operate like a leadership PAC and support his campaign without limitation.

The lower court refused to provide this relief, pointing out that the requested exception would only compound the inequity in the system by extending  “the unconstitutional structure” created by the leadership PAC provisions to Raffensperger, privileging him over all the other non-incumbent candidates for governor in 2026.

This relief therefore does not solve the constitutional injury that Safe Affordable Georgia identifies — and further would allow a backdoor attack on Georgia’s base contribution limits that are indisputably constitutional.  

Limits on contributions to candidates for elected office are an important measure of advancing the government’s vital interests in preventing corruption and the appearance of corruption.  

As Campaign Legal Center argues in its amicus brief, Safe Affordable Georgia makes no attempt to reconcile its request for an exception from Georgia’s base contribution limits with the overwhelming weight of precedent supporting the constitutionality of such limits. The “leadership PAC loophole” should not be used as pretext to undermine Georgia’s otherwise valid and effective system of limits on money in politics.

The “leadership PAC loophole” has incited legal challenges in successive Georgia elections. Multiple candidates have charged that the loophole creates an unfair competitive advantage for any incumbent governor or lieutenant governor running for state office in violation of the First Amendment.

All courts to have considered the merits of these challenges have determined that the leadership PAC loophole is likely unconstitutional in this context. But the parties in those earlier cases requested and received an injunction barring the incumbent’s leadership PAC from receiving contributions or making expenditures in the relevant election.

Safe Affordable Georgia does not seek to close the loophole but rather to exploit the loophole to support Raffensperger’s campaign without contribution limits. This would exacerbate the First Amendment problem instead of resolving it. And by creating new gaps in the Georgia’s otherwise unform contribution limits, the request would undermine Georgia’s efforts to prevent corruption in its politics by limiting the flow of big money to candidates’ campaign reserves.  

Contribution limits like Georgia’s are constitutional. The type of relief that Safe Affordable Georgia requests in its lawsuit seems to be a backdoor way of ridding itself of base contribution limits that it has no plausible way to challenge directly.