Soft-money debate plays out in Nevada

Kirsten Searer

Thursday, Feb. 19, 2004 | 11:42 a.m.

The ad has run on a seemingly continuous loop on Las Vegas TV stations for more than a week.

While the voice of President Bush makes the case for going to war in Iraq, a needle on a lie detector machine twitches out of control, indicating that the President is misleading the public.

The ad, sponsored by the MoveOn.org Voter Fund, is part of a two-week, $1.5 million advertising binge in Nevada and four other states targeted by the anti-Bush group.

"They're battleground states where the outcome of the 2000 presidential election was very closely contested," said MoveOn.org Executive Director Peter Schurman.

Advocacy groups such as the Sierra Club, The New Democrat Network and Voices for Working Families also are targeting Nevada, which narrowly voted for Bush in 2000, for advertising and get-out-the vote campaigns this year, according to their Web sites.

Yet their efforts in Nevada and other swing states are at the center of a national controversy.

Critics, mostly Republicans, argue that the groups evade federal campaign financing laws by relying on unregulated "soft money" contributions from corporations, unions and wealthy individuals.

On Wednesday, the Federal Election Commission indicated that it might agree. The commission indicated it would place more restrictions on independent advocacy groups, also called "527s" because of their federal tax designation.

Organizations such as MoveOn.org's Voter Fund, which is registered as a 527 group, can collect unlimited soft money. The groups cannot give money to candidates but can spend money to promote an issue or to attack or promote a candidate by name.

But the FEC ruled Wednesday that may require the 527 groups to raise more, smaller individual donations to fund ads that "promote, support, attack or oppose" federal candidates.

On Wednesday, the Republican National Committee hailed the FEC's decision.

"Today's ruling effectively shuts down illicit 527 groups that operate in the shadows by using unregulated soft money to influence federal elections," RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie said in a statement.

But Paul Sanford, general counsel of the Center for Responsive Politics, said it's still unclear how much of the regulated "hard money" organizations such as MoveOn.org's Voter Fund will have to raise.

"In theory, they are supposed to use hard money," Sanford said, referring to the donations that are regulated and limited by federal law. "But in practice that's not necessarily the case."

The 527 groups likely will be able to get around the hard money regulations that are set out in campaign finance laws that were passed in 2000 to reduce the influence of unions and corporations, he said.

"If these groups set themselves up for the purpose of basically derailing a presidential candidate, and they're out there raising million-dollar contributions for that purpose, essentially we have a version of the system the new law was supposed to change," Sanford said. He said that could mean "soft money contributions are used to change the outcome of federal elections."

Already, MoveOn.org's Voter Fund receives significant contributions from "real people ," Schurman said. But many of those donations were matched by big contributors such as billionaire George Soros and Progressive Corp. Chairman Peter Lewis, who pledged a combined $5 million to the group.

For now, MoveOn.org's Voter Fund ads will continue to run in Nevada. The state, with its large number of unregistered voters and its close split in the number of registered Republicans and Democrats, has proven to be a magnet to groups that hope to get out the vote in November.

The Sierra Club ads, which started running Jan. 15 in Nevada, eight other states and Washington, D.C., charge that the Bush administration has allowed industries to emit unsafe levels of toxins.

The New Democrat Network has criticized Bush in commercials that aired in November on Spanish-language Las Vegas channels.

And the Voices for Working Families has targeted Nevada as one of 16 states where it will coordinate drives to register female and minority voters to support Democratic candidates. Already, the AFL-CIO has given the group $478,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics Web site.

Nevada Democratic leaders said they've heard state Republicans criticize the ads by advocacy groups with the "527" federal tax designation, especially MoveOn.org, but said they would not work to stop them.

"I am one who believes in people having the freedom to organize and advocate," Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Wednesday.

"It's an organization that believes they have a role to play in our modern society. I don't know why anyone would say they don't."

Nevada state Democratic Party chairwoman Adriana Martinez said the MoveOn.org issue ads, even if they are viewed as extremist by some, won't hurt her party's push to make gains in this years' election.

"Personally, I just find them humorous, as do most of the people that I ask," Martinez said.

MoveOn.org is an online activist group first formed in 1998 to protest the impeachment of President Clinton.

Since then, it has grown into one of the largest political groups in the country, with 10 million members, including an estimated 10,000 members in Nevada.

The group has three activist arms:

Most members of MoveOn.org participate in the activities organized by the 501(c)(4). Today, for example, members of the group will go to Senate offices around the country, including in Nevada, to ask their senators to censure Bush for lies they say he perpetrated when justifying the war in Iraq.

Las Vegas resident Barbara Hall, a Democratic activist, said she plans to visit Sen. John Ensign's office in Las Vegas today to ask him to censure Bush.

While the 66-year-old Hall hasn't yet contributed money to MoveOn.org's Voter Fund, she said she supports the messages they promote on TV.

"I'm glad there's something there that's already in place so people will at least question what's going on," she said.

The Bush-Cheney campaign hopes Wednesday's initial ruling will discourage 527 groups from using soft money to campaign against Bush, campaign spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt said. She declined to comment on the individual charges made in the advertisements.

"This is typical of these secretive third-party groups in an election year," Schmitt said. "If MoveOn.org was in charge of national security, America would have waved a white flag to terrorists."