Second, the current campaign laws permit subjective interpretation. Both of these definitions are ambiguous enough to raise problems. Darryl Eskin, Executive Director of the Democratic Party of Colorado, interprets the events differently. Rather, a person, though a volunteer for Schoettler's campaign, independently bought the shirts and independently distributed them at the General Assembly. We might as well flip a coin, for there is no rational basis to decide.
General hypotheticals can also make the point.
If a friend of a candidate decides to make independent expenditures, surely the friend is going to have a fairly intimate knowledge of what points the candidate is running on. Eskin, as head of the opposing party, characterized the TV spots of Centennial Spirit as indistinguishable from the official advertisements. There's no clear way to evaluate it. The third problem with the current campaign finance laws is that they hand the advantage to rich candidates, who can spend any amount of their own money on their own campaigns. A candidate of average means must rely on the contributions of others, and so is hurt by caps on contributions.