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Stealth Campaigns – Part Three (cont.)

Surprisingly, GOP media consultant Stuart Stevens said the Bush campaign staff was not happy about the Swift Boat ads, either, even though they undoubtedly bolstered the president’s reelection effort. He noted the group had alleged that Kerry did not deserve all of the medals he won in Vietnam. “They entered the argument on the medals issue, which I always felt was the worst way to argue that,” Stevens said. “Like ‘should he have gotten two medals instead of three?’ It’s just insane. And so I felt that by entering the argument at that point they had discredited the argument.”

The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a 527 organization, had a core membership of men who had served with Kerry in Vietnam. The group announced it would spend $500,000 on its first ad attacking Kerry in early August 2004, around the same time one of its members, John O’Neill, published a companion bestseller, Unfit for Command. The group eventually aired seven television commercials, raising more than $22 million, including $4.5 million from Bob Perry, a conservative Republican housing developer in Texas.

As controversial as the Swiftboat ads were, however, they may not have been — as some have said — the most effective independent ads made on Bush’s behalf in 2004. The Progress for America Voter Fund, a 527 that reported receipts of nearly $45 million in 2004, claims it had the most impact on the election with “Ashley’s Story,” a 30-second TV spot about a Ohio girl whose mother died in the 9/11 attacks. The ad showed President Bush hugging the girl, who said: “He’s the most powerful man in the world and all he wants to do is make sure I’m safe — that I’m okay”

Republican-oriented independent groups got a late start in 2004 election cycle. At first, Republicans argued that the law did not allow such activity. But when the election commission refused to overrule the work of these committees in May 2004, the GOP quickly jumped into the game. Both Swift Boat Veterans and Progress for America appeared on the scene shortly after the FEC announcement. Swift Boat Veterans spent more than $22 million in 2004; Progress for America spent more than $35 million. In 2007, these two groups agreed to settle charges of failing to register with the FEC and violating contribution limits. PFA paid $750,000 in fines and Swift Boat Veterans paid $299,500.

On the Democratic side, Harold Ickes, a former Clinton White House official, was the guru for a cluster of independent campaign organizations in 2004. Two of those he helped to start were the Media Fund and America Coming Together, both organized as 527s. America Coming Together mounted a high-tech, get-out-the-vote drive on behalf of Kerry, spending $78 million. Later, ACT agreed to pay a $775,000 FEC fine imposed because most of the money it spent in the presidential race had been raised outside of federal election law restrictions. The Media Fund spent almost $60 million in the 2004 contest, almost all on advertising. In late 2007, the Media Fund was fined $580,000 on FEC findings that it accepted unlimited donations, expressly advocated the election of Kerry and defeat of George Bush, and failed to file as a political committee with the FEC. Critics noted that even though these fines were large by FEC standards, they represented only a tiny percentage of the groups’ total funding and the FEC’s action did not come until three years after the election, making it meaningless in terms of the election results.

Although ACT and the Media Fund had disbanded by that time, Ickes indicated he was prepared to mount another shadow campaign effort in 2008 with a variety of nonprofits such as America Votes, a get-out-the-vote coalition funded by an array of liberal groups and unions, and a for-profit entity, Catalist, which was trying to compile voter lists in every state. The two entities shared an office in downtown Washington, D.C. The lists were expected to allow Democrats to micro-target their messages for specific constituencies — much as the Republicans did in 2004. Catalist appeared to compete with a similar effort under way at the Democratic National Committee headquarters. Insiders said it was created as part of an ongoing feud between DNC Chairman Howard Dean and Ickes, who lost his bid for the party chairmanship to Dean. The result: duplication of another traditional party function by an independent organization.

Wertheimer of Democracy 21 noted that these four groups combined — ACT, Media Fund, Swiftboat Vets and Progress for America — spent a combined sum of almost $200 million in the 2004 election, more than the $150 million spent by the two presidential candidates. He vowed to do whatever necessary to oppose limitless spending by independent groups in 2008. “We’re going to have to fight the political calculation of political operatives thinking that we’ll go out and break the law, spend millions of dollars, and get a small fine down the road after the election is over,” Wertheimer said. “Just think about it. Think about if you have a presidential election decided on [more than] $100 million in illegal expenditures. I mean it calls into question the legitimacy of the election in the same way that massive voter fraud would.”

Although the groups cited for violations in 2004 agreed to pay their fines, none of them admitted to violating the law. “The Media Fund is confident that all of the issue advocacy it conducted in 2004 followed both the letter and spirit of the law,” its president, Erik Smith, declared in a statement released to the media. “In the end we determined it [was] in the best interests of The Media Fund to avoid litigation cost, settle for a fine, and agree not to contest the FEC’s conclusions.”

Ellen Malcolm, president and founder of EMILY’s List, a PAC that assists pro-choice Democratic women candidates, said the FEC made it difficult for independent groups to comply with the law. “Don’t get me started on that,” said Malcolm, who also headed up ACT in 2004. “The Republicans spent a lot of time trying to keep people from supporting ACT. So they were running round saying it’s illegal and all this sort of nonsense, filing suits. … The FEC came out with an advisory opinion that had one set of standards. … You couldn’t make sense out of reading the advisory opinion about what you were supposed to do, really. Then they went to rulemaking and abandoned the [advisory opinion]. And they came up with nothing for a long, long, long, long time. Meanwhile we are all sitting around saying, ‘Well, where are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to do this?’”