Bush says he'll sue to curb outside adsALBUQUERQUE -- 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. Continued... |
