Five Senate primaries this cycle. Five candidates with an enormous money advantage. Five losses. Dr. Casey Burgat of George Washington University joins Micaela Isler and Adam Belmar to work out what campaign money actually buys, and where it stops working. Casey’s Substack piece “So Much for Buying Elections” is the starting point, but the conversation turns practical fast: if the late advertising blitz has the worst return, what does that say about the PAC dollar written early, off a relationship, before anyone knows the race is competitive?

Crash Course with Casey Burgat
https://www.caseyburgat.com/

Two primaries, two big polling misses. Eric Wilson of the Center for Campaign Innovation and the Campaign Trend Podcast returns to explain what broke in Wisconsin and Michigan, what margin of error really measures, whether AI "synthetic polls" deserve a line in your research budget, and how PAC directors should allocate resources when the numbers can't be trusted. Plus: the four types of voters — mobilizers, connectors, spectators, outsiders — and why the loudest 9% is distorting what campaigns think they know.

How much of your PAC's fundraising year is you — and how much is just the economy you're operating in? Chad Taylor of SAGAC Public Affairs put it to the test: 15 cycles, 300 business PACs, $4 billion in receipts. The surprise? When you de-trend the data, a hotter economy means slower fundraising. Uncertainty drives giving; prosperity doesn't. Adam Belmar and David Schild unpack the "insurance theory" of PAC fundraising, the three-factor UPP check for reading your cycle, and why your fall ask should open with the congressional calendar — not last quarter's earnings.

Congress sits at 9% trust and gets reelected at 90%+ anyway. Americans trust big business at 17%, but the shop down the street gets 67%. What's going on?

This week, Michaela, David, and Adam dig into Bruce Mehlman's "trust recession" data with Lauren Colicelli (AVP, Strategic Political Engagement, American Council of Life Insurers; NABPAC Vice Chair) to figure out what it means for employee-funded and business trade association PAC programs. The throughline: trust collapses at a distance and holds up close, so the winning move isn't fixing Washington's numbers — it's closing the distance between your program and your people.

It's our annual rite of summer: a conversation with NABPAC's intern from The Fund for American Studies. This year that's Brandon New, a rising junior studying finance at the University of Florida who came to Washington by way of the Florida House of Representatives — and who very nearly missed the whole thing when his reply to Micaela's interview offer landed in a spam folder.

Micaela Isler, David Schild, and Adam Belmar talk with Brandon about what a summer inside the PAC community actually teaches you. He spent it in FEC data, in meetings with PAC directors and government relations professionals, and in a TFAS debate where he found himself correcting his classmates on contribution limits and disclosure. He also talks about coming back to a city he first saw at eleven years old on a Capitol tour — this time with a badge — and what that means to a family built by a Vietnamese immigrant mother, a veteran father, and a grandfather who served in World War II.

His advice to the next student thinking about it: take the leap. Every opportunity, every coffee chat, every application you don't think you'll get.

This is NABPAC's fifth TFAS intern, and every one of them has been on this show. For PAC directors listening: it's a reminder of what an intern brings to your organization — and what you give back to the next generation.

The wait for NRSC v. FEC is over — and it landed with a bang. On June 30th, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to strike down federal limits on party coordinated expenditures, overruling a 25-year-old precedent and clearing the way for national party committees to spend unlimited amounts coordinating directly with their own federal candidates' campaigns.

Hosts Micaela Isler, Adam Belmar, and David Schild bring back NABPAC general counsel Mark Renaud of Wiley to break down what actually changed and what didn't. Mark walks through why this ruling only touches the six national party committees — NRSC, DSCC, NRCC, DCCC, RNC, and DNC, plus the federal accounts of state parties — and doesn't touch contribution limits, disclosure rules, or coordination bans anywhere else in the system. He also flags the specific dollar limits multi-candidate PACs now need on their radar for giving to national and state party committees, and draws a bright line on earmarking: covering a member's party dues is fine, directing money toward a specific race is not.

The conversation also covers why state-level coordination limits in roughly two dozen states could be the next domino to fall, and what PACs with genuinely novel questions should do while the FEC still lacks a quorum to issue advisory opinions. A clip from LexPolitica's Steve Roberts rounds things out with practical budget advice for PAC directors weighing bigger party contributions this cycle.

America turns 250, and Micaela Isler, David Schild, and Adam Belmar are marking the semiquincentennial with fireworks, C-SPAN recommendations, and a Supreme Court ruling PAC managers can't afford to miss.

Bonus James Madison Episode from Adam:
Consider The Constitution: Becoming Madison
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/becoming-madison/id1703405569?i=1000774991344

When Brody Mullins published "The Long History of People Stealing Money from Political Action Committees," we didn't just read it — we put it to the test. In this episode, Micaela Isler, David Schild, and Adam Belmar dig into the actual case data, separate employee-funded and business trade association PACs from those driving the headlines, and argue that a scary headline is best answered not with defensiveness but with discipline. Plus: the FEC's enforcement gap, why "the courts are closed" is never a defense, and what stewardship of other people's money really demands.