WSJ:

The 2016 election cycle is seeing an expansion not just of super PAC fundraising but of the PACs’ responsibilities. The main reason: Super PACs can accept donations of unlimited size, while donations to candidate campaigns, such as Carly for President, are capped at $2,700 per election. The new arrangement means fewer donors, writing larger checks, can bankroll the basics of electioneering, freeing candidates from having to raise large sums in small increments. But it also raises thorny questions, because super PACs and candidates are barred by the Federal Election Commission from coordinating their strategy and messages….

The rules barring coordination between campaigns and super PACs are rarely enforced. The FEC often deadlocks on whether to investigate complaints, resulting in no action. Criminal charges have been even rarer in the years since super PACs gained prominence after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010….

 

Because Mr. Bush hasn’t yet announced his candidacy, he legally can solicit donations of unlimited size for the super PAC, a freedom that formal candidates lose under FEC rules. Mr. Bush told donors this week in Miami Beach that he had set a new GOP fundraising record, though he didn’t disclose a total.

A longtime Bush adviser, Mike Murphy, is poised to run the super PAC once it splits from the official campaign apparatus. Mr. Bush’s super PAC will have its own team for gathering and analyzing voter data, as well as its own press operations. There is also a separate policy shop independent of the campaign. An aide to Mr. Bush said the campaign, once it begins, won’t cede any of its data or voter contact operations to the super PAC.

The $2,700 federal cap on an individual’s donation to a campaign was designed to bar any one donor from having outsize influence on a candidate. Critics say super PACs, which face no such limits, help candidates circumvent the rule. At the same time, the FEC rule that campaigns cannot coordinate their strategy with super PACs means that candidates carry some peril in outsourcing campaign responsibilities to a super PAC, campaign-finance experts warned.

See my earlier Slate piece, Jeb the Destroyer.