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Tuesday, March 9, 2004

Media Fund's initial two-week buy, beginning Wednesday in 17 competitive states, will include commercials that criticize Bush's policies and priorities. Bush's re-election campaign plans to ask the Federal Election Commission to investigate.

The group expects to raise tens of millions of dollars to run ads this election year. It bought at least $1 million worth of airtime Monday and expects to buy more this week for its initial ad run.

Bush's campaign, which began its own $10 million initial ad blitz last week, called the group's activity illegal. The campaign said it would file a complaint with the FEC accusing Media Fund of violating a broad, new ban on the use of "soft money" - corporate, union and unlimited contributions - for federal elections.

"This is the blatant soft-money circumvention of the recently passed campaign finance laws that all the Democrats, from Senator Kerry and Senator Daschle to Nancy Pelosi, were so sanctimonious about," said Tom Josefiak, general counsel of the Bush-Cheney campaign.

"It is an attempt to blow up the ban on the newly passed campaign finance reform bill to use soft money to win a federal election," he said in a statement.

At the same time, Citizens United, a conservative group headed by former Republican congressional aide David Bossie, is running an ad in several states that is funded with soft money and pokes fun at presumptive Democrat nominee John Kerry's haircut, designer clothing and property holdings. The ad calls the senator a "rich, liberal elitist from Massachusetts who claims he's a man of the people."

"The rank dishonesty of the Republican position is certainly highlighted by their refusal to condemn the identical activities of Republican groups," said James Jordan, a spokesman for Media Fund.

Bush's campaign contends Media Fund is trying to influence the presidential election and should have to register with the FEC as a political committee, which would limit it to accepting donations of up to $5,000 from individuals and other political committees, and require it to disclose its fund raising and spending to the commission.

Several campaign finance watchdog groups filed a similar complaint with the FEC against Media Fund and other political soft-money groups in January.

Jordan called the Bush campaign's allegations "simply, a lie, a deliberate misrepresentation of the law."

"This is nothing more than a cynical and transparent attempt to intimidate our donors and silence dissenting voices," Jordan said.

Media Fund, headed by former Clinton administration adviser Harold Ickes, is the second outside group to go on the air in as many weeks to counter Bush's multimillion-dollar ad campaign and ensure a Democrat presence on the airwaves. The liberal MoveOn.org Voter Fund also is running ads in swing states.

The Bush campaign suggests that Media Fund's donors might have broken the law by giving to the group, and it wants the FEC to find out whether contributors gave thinking their donations would be used to influence a federal election.

Soros spokesman Michael Vachon accused the Bush campaign of trying to intimidate donors with a "completely bogus" complaint. Asked if Soros would keep writing checks to Media Fund and other soft-money groups, Vachon said, "Absolutely."

Media Fund argues that it is legal to spend soft money on anti-Bush ads as long as it stops short of calling for his election or defeat. The donations must be kept separate from any corporate or union contributions.

Bush-Cheney officials said they wouldn't ask for the ads to be pulled off the air because the FEC doesn't have that authority, and because a court is unlikely to act before the FEC finishes its review of the new campaign finance laws. The object of the complaint is to highlight what Bush campaign officials say are Democrat hypocrisies and to prod the FEC to act more quickly than it has in the past, the officials said.

The FEC is considering how the new campaign finance law affects soft-money groups, such as Media Fund, that aren't registered with the commission as political committees, including whether they should face new limits on their fund raising and spending. The agency is expected to decide the question by May.

© 2004 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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