Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.
Intriguing updates emerged on Democratic gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra’s campaign website on Tuesday.
Highlighted in bright red text, and boxed by a red outline, was a game plan for attacking one of Becerra’s top rivals in the California governor’s race, billionaire hedge fund founder turned environmental activist Tom Steyer.
But was that message meant for California voters or, perhaps, a more specific audience — the operatives running the newly formed big-money independent committees that are backing his campaign?
Becerra’s website may be using a practice known as “red boxing,” a nod to how campaigns signal what they want outside groups supporting them to focus on in their ads and other tactics. That strategy is used to avoid running afoul of laws prohibiting campaigns from directly coordinating with “independent” expenditure committees.
“What we’re looking at with the Becerra web page is a textbook example” of efforts to circumvent rules that disallow such coordination, said Aaron McKean, senior legal counsel for campaign finance at the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit focused on fair elections. “It’s specifically calling out particular messaging and particular ways of communicating with voters ... as a way to get Super PACs, nominally independent spenders, to do the bidding of the campaign.”
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Such practices are growing increasingly common — and increasingly lucrative. According to a 2024 article titled “Coordination in Plain Sight: The Breadth and Uses of ‘Redboxing’ in Congressional Elections” published in the Election Law Journal, more than 200 candidates for federal office used the tactic during the 2022 midterm election, and often received greater financial support from independent expenditure committees than candidates who did not embrace the strategy.
