Michael Crowley in this week’s New York magazine takes a detailed and fascinating look at 527s, the allegedly non-partisan political groups which, unlike candidates, can take in soft money — huge contributions of up to a million dollars or more at a time.
Ostensibly, 527s take advocacy position on issues, rather than endorsing or attacking candidates running for office, but their critics say that has become a distinction without a difference. The New York Times’ editorial page has scorned them as “secret groups” and “slush funds,” and Sen. John McCain has flatly stated that what they are doing is “not legal,” but the Federal Election Commission disagrees. In March, after the Bush-Cheney campaign and the Republican National Committee asked the FEC to shut down the Democratic 527 machinery, the FEC demurred, and said it would take no action this year.
Specifically, Crowley’s article focuses on the Media Fund and Americans Coming Together (ACT), two liberal 527s who may spend as much as $150 million before Nov. 2 in an attempt to “bring down the president. …Think of it as a parallel campaign, a second front in the Democratic war against Bush,” writes Crowley. And he does a good job of taking his readers inside the effort.
Given federal restrictions on 527s explicitly campaigning for or against a given candidate, interviews with those who run them can border on the surreal. “We are not in the business of electing or defeating candidates,” a poker-faced Harold Ickes, field general for both ACT and the Media Fund, deadpanned to Crowley. Ickes is a former deputy chief of staff for Bill Clinton, and in Washington he’s considered a masterful shadow operative, and a guy you want on your side. As quoted by Crowley, however, he sounds no more menacing than your high school civics teacher: “The goal of the Media Fund is” not to get anyone elected, but rather “to create, test and then air ads that raise issues that we think are important in this election,” Ickes told Crowley, practically adjusting his halo as he spoke.
Thus, Media Fund’s ads tiptoe right up to the edge of advocacy, without explicitly urging citizens how to vote. That’s a neat trick, if you can pull it off. That’s why Media Fund hired a team of ad warriors led by Madison Avenue legend C.J. Waldeman, who’s known for producing memorable spots. “We try to do work that cuts through the clutter to get our clients’ message out,” says Waldeman, who calls his team Campaign Farm.
Cut through the clutter he did. A sample Waldeman ad: Open on footage of belching factory smokestacks. “During the past four years, it’s true, George W. Bush has created more jobs,” a narrator intones. Then the camera zooms back, revealing factory walls covered in Chinese characters as the narrator hammers home the punch line: “Unfortunately, they were in places like China.” No mention at all of how you should vote Nov. 2, of course; that would be illegal.
So far, the Media Fund has aired more than $20 million worth of ads in swing states, and for now, Campaign Farm’s work is done. ACT is beginning to turn its attention more to ground tactics — planning a massive voter turn-out operation to bring hundreds of thousands of (likely) Democrats to the polls — and now that the 527s have laid the groundwork with ads carpet-bombing the Bush camp, the Kerry campaign itself has stepped in to crank up its own ad campaign.
“The goal was to provide some air cover [for Kerry] early in the campaign,” says David Kessler, who worked with Waldeman. Apparently, it worked. Crowley quotes Democratic operative Howard Wolfson: “If [ACT and Media Fund] didn’t exist, you can assume Kerry would down five points in the polls from wherever he is now.” Ickes too is pleased with the spring ad barrage: “I bet [Bush] has spent close to $70 million” in advertising, he says jubilantly, “and he hasn’t moved one percentage point.”
As for ad man Kessler, he looks back on his work and Waldeman’s and he is pleased: “It reminded me of the scene in Saving Private Ryan, when they hit the beachhead and the sh*t is flying. That’s what our job was — take the f*cking beachhead and [Kerry] will come in when he’s ready.”
And you thought this wasn’t war.
–Steve Lovelady
Steve Lovelady was editor of CJR Daily.