Bush says he'll sue to curb outside ads

ALBUQUERQUE -- President Bush plans to sue in federal court to stop the unlimited, unregulated political spending of so-called 527 groups that have waged $63 million in negative television commercials against him this year, and most recently gave rise to a veterans' coalition now assailing Democrat John F. Kerry's military record, the White House said yesterday.

The lawsuit, which would be a joint endeavor between Bush's reelection campaign and Senator John McCain, a leading Republican advocate of campaign reform, would press the Federal Election Commission to impose fund-raising limits and other curbs on 527s, a label taken from the section of the tax code under which these groups fall.

By law, such groups -- which by raising unlimited amounts of money from donations can amass multimillion-dollar war chests -- must not coordinate their political activities with a presidential campaign, which comes under stricter fund-raising guidelines.

The Bush complaint deals only with 527s that have attacked him, but the Bush campaign's general counsel, Tom Josefiak, said yesterday that a ruling against one set of 527s would have "precedential value" and apply to similar other groups.

Bush's campaign chairman, Marc Racicot, said the suit would be filed "at an appropriate moment" and indicated he hoped that a court would act before Election Day to alter the potent influence of 527s in the 2004 race.

"Courts can move with extraordinary speed if the circumstances warrant," Racicot said in a conference call with reporters. "There's not a steep learning curve" in this case.

Bush has decried 527s for months as "shadowy" and above the law of campaign finance. But it is Kerry who has been more battered by a 527 in the past three weeks because of the television ads mounted by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth group, which charges Kerry lied about his Vietnam War heroism and betrayed veterans by accusing soldiers of widespread atrocities in Vietnam.

According to a Los Angeles Times poll published yesterday, when voters are asked who has the honesty and integrity to be president, Bush leads Kerry by a margin of 46 percent to 39 percent. A month ago, the two men were tied on that question. The number of people who believe that in his two tours of combat duty in Vietnam Kerry showed qualities America needs in a president has also dropped, from 58 percent in June to 48 percent now, according to the Times poll.

White House aides said the president wants to regulate unlimited soft-money donations and political activities of all of the groups. But White House spokesman Scott McClellan and Bush campaign officials, pressed by reporters yesterday, refused to single out the swift boat veterans group as one of the 527s to be targeted by the lawsuit.

Bush disclosed the idea for the lawsuit in a telephone call from Air Force One to McCain, a move that also underscored Bush's political strategy against Kerry.

Both Bush and Kerry have sought to use their separate relationships with McCain to gain advantage in their race for the White House. McCain, the former Vietnam POW, called on Bush early this month to condemn the swift boat group. Yesterday, The New York Times reported that McCain planned to "express my displeasure" directly to the president -- delighting the Kerry camp, which has hoped that McCain would do its work in pressuring Bush on the veterans' group.

But before McCain could, White House aides said, Bush made his case for the lawsuit by phone, asking McCain to team up with him on a broader, legal effort to regulate all of the 527s, as opposed to only singling out the swift boat coalition for criticism.

And in another indication of how pivotal McCain is to both candidates, the Kerry campaign yesterday withdrew an ad that featured video of McCain, who ran against Bush in the 2000 Republican primary, chastising Bush for not condemning a veterans group critical of McCain. In a USA Today interview, McCain had expressed displeasure with Kerry's using the video.

"We're going to honor John McCain's wishes and stop running that ad," said Kerry spokesman David Wade. "We hope George Bush will have the courage to listen to John McCain and finally condemn the smears and lies by his friends and allies attacking John Kerry's military record."

Describing Bush's conversation with McCain, McClellan told reporters on a Bush campaign swing to New Mexico yesterday: "The president said he wanted to work together to pursue court action to shut down all the ads and activity by these shadowy 527 groups. And the president said if the court action doesn't work, then he would be willing to pursue legislative action and work with Senator McCain on that."

While the precise exchange between McCain and Bush over the swift boat group is not known, the Republican senator told the Associated Press after the phone call that Bush was standing by his remarks of the last week, saying Kerry served honorably and criticizing all of the 527s without singling out the veterans' group.

The Kerry campaign, which rarely criticized 527s until the veterans organized theirs to attack him, tried to shift attention away from legal action and back to Bush's views about the swift boat group's attacks on Kerry.

"This isn't an issue about 527 ads or campaign finance; it's a question of whether the commander in chief will denounce a group whose claims have been discredited by eyewitness accounts, official naval records, and, in some cases, their own words," said Kerry campaign spokesman Phil Singer.

Patrick Healy can be reached at phealy@globe.com.