Campaign Coordination

This part is old news, but the Bush campaign has temporarily put their hatred of trial lawyers aside in their efforts to stop “shadowy 527 groups” :

Bush’s campaign complained in the suit that at least five senate-leaning fundraising organizations, including MoveOn.org, Media Fund and America Coming Together, are violating the law by coordinating their efforts with Kerry’s campaign and by raising unlimited funds from labor union, corporate and individual donors while expressly working to defeat Bush.
. . .
The complaint charges that the groups — known as 527 organizations for the section of the tax code that governs them — have “conspired to circumvent the law” and are “working in complicity with other long established special interest groups and wealthy individuals to illegally raise and spend soft money while illegally coordinating their efforts . . . all for the express purpose of defeating President Bush.”
. . .
The independent groups grew in importance after the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill became a law, which barred labor unions, corporations and wealthy individuals from giving unlimited contributions to political parties. As long as they do not coordinate with candidates, the groups can legally accept unlimited contributions and spend as much as they want to advocate the election or defeat of a candidate. Much of the money is spent on television ads.

Of course, the big irony here is that the newest ad from the Bush campaign is oddly similar to one by the Progress for America Voter Fund. Take a look at these screenshots and see if you can guess who made each ad :




The shots on the left are from the Bush ad “Windsurfing” and the ones on the right are from the PFA ad “Surfer Dude”. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that the campaign and a 527 group are releasing ads that are nearly identical, because if it isn’t, then the Bush campaign has violated federal campaign finance laws.


posted by greg on September 23, 2004 @ 11:27 am

3 comments

  1. Break laws? Coordinate with 527s? Surely not. We should be shocked, SHOCKED! by such allegations. There is a different explanation for this phenomenon–read:

    “Bush Team Orchestrates Larger Ad Campaign”

    http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=694&u=/ap/20040923/ap_on_el_pr/bush_ads_congress_5&printer=1

    Comment by Ereshkigal — September 23, 2004 @ 2:01 pm

  2. Is it just me, or is the name “Progress for America” EXTREMELY deceptive? Especially when there’s a REAL progressive group called the “Center for American Progress” around?

    Comment by Assamite — September 23, 2004 @ 5:47 pm

  3. My Fellow Democrats!

    Check out my new web site:

    http://fcos.us/

    Comment by John Kerry — September 25, 2004 @ 8:03 pm

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