Political groups playing reduced role in 2008 race

Now less money for negative ads

Independent political groups, some of which made big splashes in the 2004 race, are playing reduced roles in this year's presidential campaign. With three-plus weeks to go, there's less money pouring into nasty negative television advertising from outside groups than in 2004, and much of the activity is directed toward narrow niches in the electorate.

The lower profile for these groups is partly the result of the sheer volume of advertising purchased by the candidates and parties, as well as the fund-raising success of Democrat Barack Obama, whose campaign is buying massive amounts of air time in key states. Also, many activist groups are focusing this year on congressional contests, not the presidential race. But veteran observers and players in the system said it also reflects the impact of the Internet on campaign fund-raising and online advertising tactics.

"Group ads still represent the dog that's not barking," Ken Goldstein, director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project, wrote in a report this week about spending on TV ads in the battleground states." Compared to 2004, a much smaller percentage of ads are sponsored by groups."

"Groups have found what their value to this process is, and it's not necessarily tonnage, it's message," said Evan Tracey, president of the Campaign Media Analysis Group, which assembled the data and material analyzed by Goldstein's project at the University of Wisconsin. "We're not without groups, they're just not ringing the meter. In part that's because you've got two candidates: [Obama] who doesn't need them, and [McCain] who doesn't want them."

Both Obama and McCain have criticized outside groups, but Obama at this point in the campaign has been the greater beneficiary of this unsolicited help. Groups making so-called independent expenditures that specifically advocate for the election of Obama or the defeat of McCain had spent $37.6 million through last week, compared with $27.5 million urging a vote for McCain or against Obama, according to the Federal Election Commission. By contrast, in 2004, there was a total of $192.4 million in independent expenditures, mostly by the national parties. Nearly all these expenditures are expenses of political action committees, which operate with limits on the amount an individual may contribute.

Obama's chief helpers through independent expenditures to date have been the political action committees of the Service Employees International Union, with $23 million spent; MoveOn.org, $5 million; SEIU's New York-based Local 1199, $3.7 million; and the United Auto Workers union, $2.9 million. The SEIU has spent significant amounts on TV ads and paid canvassers; MoveOn has purchased a large amount of Internet advertising, and the UAW last week went up with a significant TV ad purchase in four upper midwestern states, including time on the network that broadcasts Big Ten college football games.

McCain's major benefactors thus far have been the Republican National Committee, $15.7 million, the PACs of the National Rifle Association ($3.2 million) and Republican Majority Campaign ($2.1 million), and the American Issues Project ($2.9 million), a new entity fully financed by a McCain fund-raiser. The RNC has spent exclusively on TV ads attacking Obama, the NRA has produced anti-Obama advertising in several media, and the Republican Majority Campaign has focused heavily on phone banks, direct mail, and e-mail communications.

The other major - and murkier - source of outside expenditures are the politically active organizations operating under sections 527 and 501c4 of the Internal Revenue Code. They can raise unlimited sums from individuals or businesses and labor unions, and file less detailed reports.

The 527 was the weapon of choice for many activists in 2004, when major donors wrote multimillion-dollar checks to underwrite advertising and organizing efforts of groups that spent a combined $434 million on federal campaigns, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research group. As of July this year, 527s had spent about $156 million, the center reports. New reports are due later this month.

The highest-profile 527s in 2004 were the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which spent about $22 million attacking Democrat John F. Kerry's record in the Vietnam War; Progress for America, which spent about $45 million, much of it on a memorable ad in which a girl, whose mother was killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, praised President Bush; and The Media Fund and America Coming Together, a related group that spent about $136 million on TV ads and field operations in support of Kerry.

These groups, however, must file with the FEC reports of "electioneering" communications - TV or radio ads - that mention a federal candidate within 60 days of the election.

Some of the niche groups operating in this cycle fall into these categories. For instance, the Judicial Confirmation Network, founded in 2004, paid $548,000 last week for air time in small markets in Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania for an ad that knocks Obama's opposition to the Supreme Court nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito, but is mostly about Obama's past associations in Chicago with a former 1970s radical, a controversial pastor, and a former fundraiser convicted this year on corruption charges. The group is a 501c4.

The California Nurses Association aired an ad, on the theme "a heartbeat away," attacking Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, McCain's vice presidential pick. The Wisconsin project identified about $60,000 spent on the ad, mostly in Ohio, Wisconsin, and Missouri.

With more than three weeks left in the campaign and still incomplete disclosure reports, it's probably too soon to conclude that outside groups are playing a downsized role in the presidential race, said Stephen Weissman, associate director of the Campaign Finance Institute, a nonpartisan research organization affiliated with George Washington University.

"You can't compare this year directly to the last election yet because corporations and unions can spend more now at the last minute in a campaign," he said. That is because of a 2007 Supreme Court decision that struck down sections of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance law that prohibited so-called issue ads that mentioned a federal candidate within 60 days of an election.

That's not the only change in campaign finance practices in this year's contest.

After McCain-Feingold banned unlimited large donations, or soft money, by corporations and labor unions, multimillionaire activists stepped in and underwrote most of the independent groups that were active in 2004.

That was also the year the Internet began to transform political fund-raising, which Obama has taken to new levels of success. "In the soft-money years, a lot of big checks written by corporations weren't given particularly willingly," said Jim Jordan, a Democratic political consultant who played a leading role in America Coming Together and The Media Fund four years ago.

"McCain-Feingold didn't take money out of politics but it got powerful politicians out of the loop of raising big checks," Jordan said.