Bid to curb groups' political ads may dim a Kerry bright spot
WASHINGTON -- With the Bush-Cheney reelection committee holding a 50-to-1 money advantage over John F. Kerry, Democrats have taken comfort in a series of anti-Bush ads paid for by independent groups such as MoveOn.org and America Coming Together.
But the Republican Party, along with two senators who led campaign reform effort four years ago -- Arizona Republican John McCain and Wisconsin Democrat Russell Feingold -- have challenged the legality of these tax-exempt political groups and are urging the Federal Election Commission to halt their activities.
The McCain-Feingold campaign law, which was enacted in 2002, prohibits members of Congress and political parties from soliciting or spending so-called soft money. Such large, unregulated donations, typically from labor unions and wealthy individuals, have been a staple of fund-raising for the Democrats, who say that fewer of their supporters can write the "hard-money" checks of up to $2,000 that make up the bulk of Republican donations.
Supporters of the campaign reform law argue that if independent political groups -- known as 527s for the section of the IRS code they fall under -- want to openly tout one candidate over another, they, too, should fall under the control of the FEC, its campaign spending rules, and the new soft money regulations.
"Duh. They're engaged in partisan political activities, so, therefore, they should be regulated," McCain said last week during a Senate hearing.
The commission, chaired by a Republican, is drafting proposed regulations, which will be the subject of a hearing next month. The Supreme Court, which last year upheld the constitutionality of the new law, said that simply avoiding a direct recommendation to vote for or against a candidate -- FEC's existing standard for regulating partisan activity -- was too narrow an interpretation of prior court rulings on campaign spending. It left unstated whether Congress or the commission should draft language to define when groups other than the political parties should be regulated.
A change in the fund-raising rules could have a dramatic effect on the 2004 election. Bush has $104.4 million cash on hand, while Kerry has just $2.1 million after his primary campaign, according to reports both filed Jan. 31, the most recent available.
"This decision could fundamentally change the nature of the general election campaign," said one attorney involved in the dispute, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Four years ago, the Republicans used a similar cash advantage to dominate the airwaves while the presumptive Democratic nominee, Al Gore, limped along, waiting for an infusion of federal money that is not doled out to the general election candidates until their mid-summer political conventions.
Today, some 527s are indirectly aiding Kerry by bankrolling anti-Bush advertising campaigns with soft money. But these Democratic-leaning groups argue they are simply engaged in a form of free speech that Congress intentionally skipped regulating when it passed the campaign finance law.
Republicans counter that the groups are skirting the McCain-Feingold law, whose principal focus was to remove soft money from politics.
With the new law in place, soft money donors have been looking for an alternative outlet, which has given rise to groups such as MoveOn.org, America Coming Together, and the Media Fund. These groups have received pledges of up to $10 million each from financier George Soros, Peter Lewis, chairman of the
"We are dedicated to defeating George W. Bush, electing progressives at all levels of government, and mobilizing millions of people to register and vote around the critical issues facing our country," says the website for ACT, which is led by Ellen Malcolm, also president of EMILY's List, a group that gives financial support to female candidates. Soros himself has declared beating Bush his personal mission.
Republican-leaning groups have responded with similar ads -- including one last week making fun of Kerry's $75 haircuts -- yet the party itself continues to push for the new regulations. That focus could have unintended consequences for Republican-leaning organizations not currently embroiled in the presidential race, such as the National Rifle Association and the National Right to Life Committee.
Their spending, advancing conservative themes such as gun rights and abortion restrictions, would be restricted by the same regulations aimed at the Democrats, because it is also financed with soft money.
"We could become collateral damage," said Steve Moore, president of the Club for Growth, an antitax group that bills itself as "the largest 527 on the right." His group recently held a news conference with one of the most visible groups on the left, the Sierra Club, to protest the proposed regulations.
"We are caught in the crossfire," said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, another conservative group.
The earliest the FEC could approve new regulations is mid-May, and they would not take effect until the passage of 30 legislative days, defined as a day when one chamber -- generally the House -- meets for business. To date, there have been only 23 legislative days this year.
If the White House pushes for the swiftest possible enactment to thwart the Democrats, the Republican congressional leadership may have to keep their members in Washington until mid-June, a time by which they would normally be on vacation and when the presidential campaign is expected to be in full swing. By that time, Kerry would probably have enough of his own money to counter Bush's ads until late July, when the Democrats hold their nomination convention in Boston and he gets his general election money from the US Treasury.
New regulations would still pose a threat to the Democrats, though, by curbing 527 spending aimed at voter mobilization efforts planned for the fall. That is a prime function of ACT, the group led by Malcolm, which plans to target 17 battleground states. Democratic officials feel especially vulnerable because they believe the president's reelection committee will declare it has excess funds in late summer and transfer the money to the Republican National Committee, so it can boost its own get-out-the-vote efforts.
Not only has the debate split the parties and the FEC, but it has also fractured the so-called reform community. Common Cause, a group that argued vociferously in favor of the McCain-Feingold law, opposes any hasty regulation of 527s. Democracy 21, the Campaign Legal Center, the Center for Responsive Politics, and others argue to halt what they view as an end-around on the law.
In a letter to the FEC, Common Cause said "it is not clear that 527 political committees offer the same opportunities for corruption of officeholders, or carry the same appearance of corruption, that soft money donations to the political parties demonstrably did."
But Fred Wertheimer, the former president of Common Cause and current head of Democracy 21, wrote in a letter to the FEC signed by other McCain-Feingold supporters that the FEC must "look at the reality" of these groups, many of which were developed "for the overriding purpose of influencing federal elections" and thus should be tightly regulated.
Glen Johnson can be reached at johnson@globe.com.
