Advocacy Groups And Campaigns: An Uneasy Shuttle

New York Times ^ | September 8, 2004 | GLEN JUSTICE and JIM RUTENBERG

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WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 - Just last week, Stanley Greenberg was the polling mastermind guiding the way three liberal groups spent tens of millions of dollars attacking President Bush and registering voters. But he quit that position to be an unpaid adviser to the Kerry campaign as it presses to sharpen its message in the final 56 days before the election.

Mr. Greenberg is just the latest in a procession of top strategists who have moved between the campaigns and advocacy groups called 527's - the very organizations that are not supposed to coordinate their activities under campaign finance rules.

The case of Mr. Greenberg is all the more complicated because, he said Tuesday in an interview, he has visited the campaign of John Kerry at least twice to brief staff members on public polling he collected for another group, Democracy Corps, which he helped found with Mr. Kerry's media strategist Bob Shrum.

Mr. Greenberg said he had studiously followed the law at all times and consulted heavily with lawyers through all his activities.

But the free flow of personnel between the campaigns, the groups and the political parties is alarming advocates who fought for tighter campaign finance restrictions and who say it is undermining the rules - or perhaps even breaking them.

Representative Christopher Shays, Republican of Connecticut and a primary sponsor of the new finance law, said: "This smells - it smells real bad. It shouldn't be happening." Mr. Shays added: "There shouldn't be all this back-and-forth going on. It smacks of coordination and there's no good reason for it."

Mr. Greenberg is not the first operative to cross over between advocacy groups and campaigns this political season. Bill Knapp, who made advertisements for the Media Fund through much of the spring, is now a media strategist for the Kerry campaign. Zack Exley, who was a director for MoveOn.org, now helps run Mr. Kerry's Web site. America Coming Together has shared a lawyer with Mr. Kerry's campaign, Robert Bauer. Mr. Kerry's former campaign manager, Jim Jordan, is a consultant to several of the groups.

And just two weeks ago, President Bush's top outside lawyer, Benjamin L. Ginsberg, resigned after acknowledging he had been working with a veterans group attacking Mr. Kerry.

"These groups, parties and campaigns are winking and nodding as they go about efforts to circumvent the law," said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a group pushing for greater campaign finance restrictions. "The players don't seem concerned at all with the spirit of the law, and there are serious questions as to whether they are complying with the letter of the law."

The 527 groups, named for the section of the tax code that created them, are allowed to spend unlimited "soft money" contributions, though they cannot coordinate with parties or campaigns.

They have spent tens of millions of dollars this election season, mostly for Democrats on advertisements attacking Mr. Bush and to register voters in swing states.

Their role has put them at the heart of the controversy over the effectiveness of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, which was passed in 2002 to curb the influence of wealthy individuals, corporations and unions on elections.

As the campaign enters its final weeks, the groups are promising to continue to wield influence: Republican groups are raising millions, and a new Democratic group, called Texans for Truth, said it would start running advertisements this week questioning Mr. Bush's National Guard attendance. It was financed with help from MoveOn.org.

Republicans fending off accusations of improper coordination with Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group attacking Mr. Kerry's military credentials, jumped on the news that Mr. Greenberg was helping him.

"It's difficult for John Kerry to claim he is not coordinating with outside groups when the people responsible for putting these messages on the air are about to become his employees," Ed Gillespie, the chairman of the Republican Party, said in a statement.

Mr. Kerry's campaign, however, said that Mr. Greenberg, who quit his advocacy job last Tuesday, was not taking a formal role in the campaign; rather, he was offering his advice free.

"He's a supporter who likes to share his views about the race," said Chad Clanton, a spokesman for the Kerry campaign.

Mr. Greenberg said he was concerned about what appeared to be the campaign's drooping poll numbers in August but could help the campaign only if he left his position as the pollster for MoveOn.org, the Media Fund and America Coming Together because of the rules barring coordination.

"I determined I was going to liberate myself from the 527 straitjacket so I could carry on conversations with, obviously, the Kerry campaign, but also to speak to other Democratic leaders," Mr. Greenberg said. "I've had lots of good strategic conversations over the last week - conversations I could not have had."

Mr. Greenberg was a pollster for Bill Clinton and is among several former Clinton aides giving advice to the campaign. They include the strategists Paul Begala and James Carville and the former White House press secretary Joe Lockhart.

In 1999, Mr. Carville, Mr. Shrum and Mr. Greenberg founded a liberal policy group, Democracy Corps, which regularly conducts public polls and offers policy advice to candidates. Mr. Shrum took a leave from the group when he joined Mr. Kerry.

Mr. Greenberg acknowledged, however, that he had on a couple of occasions visited Mr. Kerry's aides to share the results of his polls. He said he was allowed to do this because the information was released publicly. Conversely, he said, the Kerry campaign was not allowed to share with him - or even hint at - any of its strategic thinking at those meetings because of his role with the liberal advocacy groups. He said lawyers were present at all times to make sure the law was followed.

"I could always have a one-way conversation, with a lawyer present," he said. "I've barely had a conversation with Shrum. It was too problematic. Now I can really have conversations with him, and it's refreshing."

Indeed, campaign finance lawyers in both parties say the regulations were primarily written to address the flow of personnel and strategic information from campaigns to 527 committees and other outside groups, not the other way around.

Advocates say that the rules, as written, do not go far enough to constrain coordination.

"There's a hole in the rules,'' Mr. Wertheimer said. "They only go one way."

Yet officials on both sides say that as long as people are free to move between the committees and the campaigns, there is no way to prohibit them from sharing knowledge they may have gained in old jobs.

"You can't own people's brains," said Wes Boyd, a founder of MoveOn.org. "They have to be able to make a living."

Jan Witold Baran, a Republican election lawyer, said: "You can't prohibit what people have in their heads and their minds. You can't erase this memory."

Mr. Baran said the interplay of personnel between the campaigns and the advocacy groups "shows how difficult it is to regulate human behavior in politics."

Of course, partisans are free to file complaints with the commission when they believe they see coordination, and both the Bush and Kerry campaigns have done so. One thing many parties do agree on is that the rules are complex enough to invite varying interpretations.

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nice post

To the RNC LURKERS - Keep telling UNDECIDED people the Democrats attack the President because they have no PLANS. They controlled congress but could not pass a drug plan during the entire Klinton Administration. They had 40 years to make education in the cities work but minorities in NYC OR DC can't read. They have no PLAN so they attack the President with BOGUS charges all the time CHEATING ON THE CAMPAIGN REFORM THEY WANTED.

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