The $10,000 cap — and how to get around it
Federal law caps what a PAC can give directly to a candidate: $5,000 for the primary, $5,000 for the general — $10,000 total per cycle. That’s it. No matter how rich the PAC, no matter how much it wants a candidate to win, the check it writes from its own treasury can’t exceed $10K.
But there’s another channel. Instead of giving its own money, a PAC can act as a conduit — a pass-through for individual donors. The PAC identifies supporters, steers them to the candidate, and the individuals write their own checks. Each individual is capped too ($3,500 per election), but there’s no limit on how many individuals can be bundled through one conduit.
The math: AIPAC’s PAC gave Wesley Bell $15,000 directly in 2026 — near the legal max. But 1,634 individual donors routed $2.1 million to Bell through AIPAC’s PAC as conduit. The direct check was capped. The routed money was not.
Three different kinds of money
PoliVion tracks three mechanisms separately, because they work differently:
PAC treasury → candidate
Capped at $10K/cycle. The PAC’s own money.
ROUTED MONEY
Individual → conduit (PAC) → candidate
Each donor capped, but unlimited donors can be bundled. The individual is the legal donor; the conduit steered them.
OUTSIDE MONEY
Super PAC → ads about the race
Unlimited. Never goes to the candidate. Pays for ads supporting or opposing.
When you see a headline like “AIPAC gave $X to a candidate,” ask which kind it is. A $15K direct contribution and $2.1M in routed individual donations are very different things — and they’re reported differently in FEC filings.
How to spot a conduit in FEC filings
When an individual gives through a conduit, the candidate’s FEC filing shows it as an earmarked contribution. The memo field says something like:
“EARMARKED THROUGH C00797670 – AMERICAN ISRAEL PUBLIC AFFAIRS COM”
The individual donor’s name is on the record. The conduit’s committee ID is in the memo. PoliVion reads these memos across millions of FEC records to reconstruct who routed money through which conduit — without changing who the legal donor was.
Not all conduits are networks
Some conduits are just payment processors. ActBlue (used by Democrats) and WinRed (used by Republicans) process millions of small-dollar donations. When someone gives through ActBlue, that doesn’t mean “ActBlue” as an organization influenced the donation — it’s plumbing.
Other conduits are network-specific: the organization actively steers donors to specific candidates as part of a political strategy. AIPAC’s PAC routing $2.1M from 1,634 donors to one candidate isn’t plumbing — it’s a network in action.
PoliVion labels each conduit so you can tell the difference:
- General platform — payment processor (ActBlue, WinRed). Not an influence network.
- Network-specific conduit — organization-directed routing (AIPAC PAC). This is where network influence shows up.
How to read PoliVion’s conduit data
On every candidate’s page, PoliVion shows:
- Total routed through conduits — the dollar amount individuals gave via conduits.
- Share of individual giving — what percentage of the candidate’s individual donations arrived through a conduit.
- Breakdown by conduit — which conduits routed the money, with network-specific conduits labeled.
The individual donors remain the legal source. The conduit is the routing layer — the connective tissue between a donor network and a candidate’s campaign.
Why this matters: If you only look at direct PAC contributions, you’ll miss where most of the money moves. The $10K cap makes direct PAC giving look small. The conduit layer is where a network’s real financial weight shows up — thousands of individual checks, steered by one organization, adding up to millions.
See the conduits in your races
Every 2026 midterm candidate, every routed dollar.
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