Bush Campaign Accuses MoveOn of Coordinating

WASHINGTON – Senator Kerry accuses the Bush campaign of illegally coordinating with a group putting out attack ads about Mr. Kerry’s Vietnam record.The Bush campaign accuses the Kerry campaign of coordinating with anti-Bush independent groups.The mutual finger-pointing is highlighting the difficulty, as a matter of law, of proving illegal coordination between a presidential campaign and an independent group funded by unlimited contributions. But as a matter of politics, the Bush campaign hopes that its latest effort – unveiling a “coordination watch” – will shift attention back to Mr. Kerry in the battle over unsavory third-party attack ads.Mr. Kerry yesterday said attack ads paid for by the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are part of a calculated “smear and fear” campaign by the Bush camp. While denying any links to the veterans group, the Bush campaign responded by releasing what it said would be the first installment of “Coordination Watch”- an effort to chronicle the relationship between the campaign and the so-called 527 groups “that are working on their behalf” and which have aired over $63 million in ads condemning President Bush.“We are going to shine the light on the dark space between the Kerry campaign and the 527s,” said a Bush campaign spokesman, Kevin Madden.But proving wrongdoing by either campaign requires more than proving connections, said the chairman of the Federal Election Commission, Bradley Smith.“It’s not enough to show that Bill knows Joe, because in politics everyone knows each other,” Mr. Smith told The New York Sun. The commission has already received formal complaints from both campaigns alleging that their opponents have violated the law. He said the commission would review the complaints on their merits. It is unclear whether commissioners will reach any conclusions before the November elections.The campaign yesterday released four instances of ties between Mr. Kerry and the 527s, which Mr. Madden described as “evidentiary proof of high-level coordination.” They included a December announcement that Mr. Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, would participate in a “house party” in California,organized by MoveOn.org; an announcement on the Democratic Party’s Web site that is “partnering” with MoveOn and several other groups to “organize a massive public mobilization” against tax cuts for the wealthy; direct links on the Democratic Party Web site to the MoveOn.org Web sites; and a magazine article about a television ad-maker who took his attack ads to MoveOn after the Kerry campaign did not run them.The anecdotes come in addition to the formal complaint filed in April in which the Bush campaign alleges that, among other things, the “shadow Democratic network of soft-money 527s are doing precisely what the Kerry cam paign needs them to do on a daily basis.” Among other things, the complaint alleged that the hiring of Mr. Kerry’s former campaign manager, Jim Jordan, by America Coming Together and the Media Fund, violated campaign finance laws. A spokeswoman for the groups, Sarah Leonard, yesterday denied any coordination with the Kerry campaign. MoveOn.org had no comment, according to its public relations firm.The Kerry campaign this month also filed a complaint against the Swiftboat Veterans, and has alleged that it is funded in large part by a Texan Republican donor with links to the president’s chief political strategist, Karl Rove.The Bush campaign denied any coordination with the group, and the president’s campaign chairman, former Montana governor, Marc Racicot, called on Mr. Kerry to condemn the activities of all the groups, known as 527s, for a section of the tax code that allows them to run television ads funded by unlimited individual donations so long as they do not coordinate with campaigns or political parties.“There’s no place in American politics for $63 million in third-party activity that smears the President of the United States of America by accusing him of lying, condoning torture, and poisoning pregnant women, and we look forward to scrutiny of the activities of Democratic 527s such as The Media Fund and ACT by those in the media,” said Mr. Racicot.Under the Federal Election Commission’s rules, the so-called 527 groups can be found to be “coordinating” with a campaign if they air the same content in their broadcast ads as does the campaign, or if they arrange their public communications at the request, suggestion, or acquiescence of the campaign.Although the commission has subpoena and deposition power to gather evidence about relationships between campaigns and third parties, the groups may operate to the strategic advantage of a candidate by airing ads in key swing states or hitting key campaign themes without explicitly coordinating with his campaign, said Mr. Smith.“It is very hard to prove because so much is in the public arena. How smart do you need to be to know that Ohio is a key state or know what the candidate’s message is?” Mr. Smith said.The campaign finance lobbyist for the watchdog group, Public Citizen, Craig Holman, said, the legal standard is “very, very difficult to meet” and would require “something like an FBI sting operation.”“You’d have to tape-record or get someone to testify that ‘the campaign told me what the candidate wants, and this is what the candidate wants,'” he said.“You can share media buyers, campaign consultants, attorneys, and legal staff. The only way it becomes coordination is if that person actually communicates to the person the plans of the candidate’s campaign,” he said.Mr. Holman said that in his opinion, none of Mr. Kerry’s activities listed yesterday in the Bush campaign’s “Coordination Watch” would violate the rules.For this reason, he and other advocates of stricter campaign finance regulation have criticized the Federal Election Commission’s coordination rules as too lax, he said.“I do believe section 527s frequently work in tandem with the campaigns on both sides, with Kerry and Bush. They target the same hot states as the campaigns,” said Mr. Holman, a former political science professor who studied the use of third-party ads in the 2000 election.Another longtime advocate for stricter rules, the executive director of Democracy 21, Fred Wertheimer, said yesterday he is still “monitoring” the coordination issue and was not prepared to comment.

Bush Campaign Accuses MoveOn of Coordinating

Bush Campaign Accuses MoveOn of Coordinating

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