AOC-linked PACs republishing Mondaire Jones likeness and linking to his website

Primary Day in New York is June 23 and quite a few Super PACs are dumping money into local campaigns.

In the Democratic primary for Congressional District 17 Super PACs connected to far-left progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, including “Fight for the American Dream,” are backing candidate Mondaire Jones and could be breaking some rules for PACs in the process. Numerous ads from PACs supporting Jones feature the likeness of Jones used in his personal campaign ads, as well as direct links to his campaign website.

In its controversial ruling in the Citizens United case, the United States Supreme Court ruled that private citizens and independent groups could form “Political Actions Committees” or PACs and spend as much as money as they would like in support of political causes and candidacies, so long as they did not coordinate with a candidate’s campaign directly. Since that time, what constitutes “coordinate” has been a contentious subject.

PACs are supposed to take care to avoid the appearance of impropriety and avoid linking directly to candidate’s own campaign material or use materials the candidate has paid for. It appears in the case of Jones, the PACs supporting him are pushing the envelope on this rule.

Ironically, Jones has been an adamant opponent of the Citizens United ruling that allows such advertising and has campaigned on overturning it.