Swift Boat Veterans, Conservation Voters, MoveOn.org Fined $630,000
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WASHINGTON — Three groups that played a prominent role in the 2004 presidential election agreed to pay almost $630,000 in fines for campaign finance violations, the Federal Election Commission announced yesterday.
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth will pay $299,500, the League of Conservation Voter Fund $180,000, and Moveon.org Voter Fund $150,000. They failed to register as political action committees as required for those campaigning for or against a particular candidate and thus should have been barred from accepting contributions greater than $5,000, the FEC said.
The groups were heavily funded by individual donors who financed their advertising campaigns. Swift Boat Veterans, which led the attack on Democratic Senator Kerry’s war record, received $4.5 million from Houston builder Bob Perry. Moveon.org, which opposed President Bush for re-election, received $2.5 million from investor George Soros. The League of Conservation Voters, which backed Mr. Kerry, got $950,000 from the chairman of Moore Capital Management, Louis Moore Bacon.
“The bipartisan and unanimous nature of the commission’s action today leaves little doubt that this agency is willing to regulate election activity more aggressively than it has in the past,” FEC Vice Chairman Robert Lenhard said.
The organizations are called 527 groups, taking their name from a section of the American tax code. Unlike political action committees, they can take unlimited donations from unions, corporations, and individuals. The growth of 527s was a response to a 2002 campaign finance law that stopped the political parties from accepting corporate, union, and unlimited individual contributions.
Moveon.org co-founder Wes Boyd said the fund went out of business after the 2004 election and now relies on small contributions to its PAC.
“If this means that the FEC is really pushing big money out of elections, it’s good for democracy,” Mr. Boyd said. The crackdown “would almost certainly put Swift Boat Veterans and similar groups out of business.”
The president of the League of Conservation Voters, Gene Karpinski, said the group settled with the FEC so it could turn its attention to environmental issues.
A spokesman for Swift Boat Veterans couldn’t be reached for comment.
