LIMBER UP THE OTHER SHOE:

Bush's Secret Stash: Why the GOP war chest is even bigger than you think. (Nicholas Confessore, May 2004, Washington Monthly)

Like the Democratic 527s, these groups have innocuous-sounding names: Americans for Job Security, for example, and Progress for America. Like the 527s, these groups are staffed by veteran party operatives and, in practice, are wholly or primarily devoted to getting their side's candidates elected. And like the 527s, they may raise and spend unlimited amounts of soft money on radio and television ads, direct mail, and voter contact efforts. [...]

One of the recent arrivals is Americans for Job Security, located in a tidy brick building on the northern border of Alexandria's new white-collar sprawl. "It's so much cheaper out here than being downtown," says AJS's president, Michael Dubke, as he greets me at the front door and leads me into a nondescript conference room. Like many of its neighbors, AJS is organized as a 501(c)(6), which is to say a not-for-profit "business league" or trade organization. But as trade organizations go, it is rather unusual. Not only is the group's membership--several hundred individuals, corporations, and other trade organizations--secret, but by all appearances, the members don't share a particular line of business. Despite a budget of millions of dollars a year, AJS doesn't have the kind of public relations or policy staff that, say, the Chamber of Commerce does. In fact, Dubke, a cheerful, clean-cut 33-year-old with the rangy build of an ex-jock, is AJS's sole employee. The group has no Web site, puts out no policy briefs or press releases, and does no lobbying on the Hill.

About the only thing that AJS does is buy television, radio, and newspaper advertisements--lots of them. This is a source of pride for Dubke. "Ninety-five percent of the money that we take in membership [dues] is spent on our grassroots lobbying," he tells me, like a discount carpet salesman bragging about his low overhead. "We spend our money on product." During the hotly contested 2000 race, widely regarded asa watershed election for issue advertising, AJS spent about $9 million on political ads. A chunk of the money went towards attacking Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore for his prescription-drug plan, with ads airing in such key media markets as Spokane, Wash., and Tampa, Fla. (All told, according to a study by the Brennan Center, AJS was the most active outside group supporting Bush in 2000.) But AJS didn't stick to the presidential race. It also spent millions of dollars on behalf of Republican candidates in closely-fought Senate races in Michigan, Nebraska, and Washington. During the midterm elections two years later, with Democratic control of the Senate at stake, AJS dumped another $7 million into advertising, again mostly in key races, notably Minnesota's.

Traditional 501(c) groups run ads on a narrow set of issues important to their members. This year, for instance, the NRA might run ads attacking candidates who support extending the ban on assault weapons, while the Sierra Club might air spots against candidates who support drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. AJS, by contrast, is more catholic in its interests. During the last two election cycles, the group's campaign ads have addressed taxes, education, tort reform, prescription drugs, immigration, dam removal in the Pacific Northwest, even federal regulation of drinking water--"basically anything we label a 'pro-paycheck' message," Dubke remarks.

Much like a political party, AJS only seems to lurch into action at election time, even if one of its many core issues is being debated in Congress at some other time. Traditional Washington trade associations expend most of their resources trying to affect the legislative process, but Dubke sees this as a waste of time. "Our main purpose is to get these public policy issues out into the debate," he told me. "I have yet to have somebody tell me when is a better time to talk about public policy issues" than during campaign season.

Aside from timing, about the only thing AJS's ads have in common is that nearly all of them attack Democrats, usually those in tight races. And although groups running "issue ads" are not supposed to coordinate with candidates, in at least some cases AJS appeared to do just that. During 2000, for example, AJS launched a massive ad campaign in support of embattled incumbent Sen. Spencer Abraham (R-Mich.). As Newsweek reported that year, funding for the ads came from the tech industry, which cut checks to AJS at the request of then-Senate Majority Leader, Trent Lott (R-Miss.), Abraham's mentor. In 2002, the group ran ads in Alaska, where incumbent Republican Sen. Frank Murkowski was in a tight race with the state's Democratic lieutenant governor. According to published reports at the time, AJS's ads followed a conference with Murkowksi's political consultant and used the same themes that Murkowski's own campaign was employing.

By all appearances, AJS's main purpose is rather like that of a Democratic-leaning 527. Just as the 527s collect soft money from traditionally pro-Democratic interests and spend it to help defeat Republicans, AJS collects soft money from traditionally pro-Republican interests and spends it to defeat Democrats--but without facing any of the scrutiny the 527s do. Indeed, that's the whole idea. The Democratic shadow party has received massive press coverage during the past year, their donors demonized as shady fat cats by Bush surrogates in the conservative press. Contributors can give to the Republican 501(c)s, however, with no fear of being outed. Dubke allows that his donors include corporations, other trade associations, and individuals, but won't disclose their names (though a few, including the American Insurance Association and the American Forest and Paper Association, have gone public with their involvement). It makes sense that corporations and trade groups that give to AJS might not want their names to get out. With business on Capitol Hill, and hence a need to court Democratic members of Congress, they don't necessarily want to be seen contributing to a group that might be targeting some of those same Democrats. As Dubke puts it, "We have the ability to say things that other people might be afraid to say because they have other agendas and other interests."

Another GOP soft-money conduit is Progress for America, a self-described "national grassroots organization" that listed zero income from membership dues on its last tax return. Like many such groups, it is run by a handful of operatives with a half-degree of separation from the GOP. Its founder is Tony Feather, the political director of President Bush's 2000 campaign. Feather's own consulting firm handles direct-mail and get-out-the-vote contracts for Bush's reelection effort, the Republican National Committee, and the party's congressional campaign committees. The former political director of one of those committees, Chris LaCivita, is now executive director of PFA. The group's Web site used to describe its purpose as "supporting Pres. George Walker Bush's agenda for America," but that slogan, apparently too brazen to pass legal muster, has since been changed; now PFA supports "a conservative issue agenda that will benefit all Americans." The group hopes to raise up to $60 million in soft money this year, and has enlisted the help of some prominent Republicans to do so, including Bush's campaign manager, chief campaign counsel, and party chairman. Thus, when Bush's lawyers accuse the Democrats of organizing a "soft-money conspiracy," they know what they're talking about.

Other GOP soft-money front groups include the American Taxpayer Alliance, run by Republican operative Scott Reed, and two groups chaired by former RNC lawyer Christopher Hellmich, Americans for Responsible Government and the National Committee for a Responsible Senate. Then there's the benignly-named United Seniors Association (USA), which serves as a soft-money slush fund for a single GOP-friendly industry: pharmaceuticals. USA claims a nationwide network of more than one million activists, but, just like Progress for America, listed zero income from membership dues in its most recent available tax return. USA does, however, have plenty of money on its hands. During the 2002 elections, with an "unrestricted educational grant" from the drug industry burning a hole in its pocket, the group spent roughly $14 million--the lion's share of its budget--on ads defending Republican members of Congress for their votes on a Medicare prescription-drug bill.

So how much will these groups spend on behalf of the GOP this year? There's no way to know now, because, unlike 527s, these 501(c)s won't have to disclose their 2004 fundraising activities until 2005 at the earliest. But it's a pretty fair guess that they'll give their Democratic doppelgänger a run for its (soft) money. According to an investigation by The Washington Monthly, just three of the pro-GOP groups--Americans for Job Security, the United Seniors Association, and the American Taxpayer Alliance--spent close to $40 million during 2002. And that was an off-year election. By contrast, the eight Democratic groups currently being sued by Bush's reelection campaign have raised about $50 million so far during the 2004 presidential cycle.

To the average person, it might seem that if the Democratic 527s are a cynical mechanism for evading the ban on soft money, then surely the GOP-leaning 501(c)s are even more so. How, then, does the Republican shadow party get away with it? First, while the 527s admit that their ads are meant to affect elections, the 501(c)s do not. Instead, they insist that they're running "issue ads" intended merely to rouse debate about specific issues, not get anyone elected or defeated. Legally, this is considered "grassroots lobbying," an activity on which 501(c)s can spend unlimited amounts of money.

Which goes a long way to solving the mystery of where all that GOP soft-money went. It always seemed strange that the 527s were so overwhelmingly Democratic.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 10, 2004 8:38 PM