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Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2004

NEW YORK – President Bush's campaign asked a court Wednesday to force the Federal Election Commission to act on its complaints against anti-Bush groups spending millions of dollars in the presidential race, arguing that the FEC is failing to do its job.

In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, the campaign argued that the FEC was taking too long to address what the campaign calls illegal spending of corporate, union and big individual donations to influence the presidential race.

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The lawsuit seeks a preliminary injunction that would force the commission to act on its March complaint within 30 days. After that, the campaign could sue to block the groups' activities through court action rather than relying on the FEC.

"To prevent these 527s from continuing to violate federal election laws, we have asked the federal court to step in and order the FEC to act," said Tom Josefiak, general counsel for the Bush-Cheney campaign.

Outside groups trying to deny Bush a second term have spent more than $60 million on advertising, far outstripping organizations sympathetic to the president that have vowed a late campaign drive to match their rivals.

Josefiak said that if the court and the FEC moved quickly it could get action before Election Day and curtail the soft-money groups.

The campaign and Republican National Committee filed complaints in March accusing anti-Bush groups, including Media Fund, America Coming Together and Moveon.org, of illegally spending large contributions to influence the federal election.

A law that took effect in November 2002 broadly banned the spending of so-called soft money to influence presidential and congressional races.

The anti-Bush groups argue that the ban applies only to activity that explicitly calls for a federal candidate's election or defeat, and say their spending stops short of that.

The Bush campaign views its action Wednesday as the first step in its legal campaign in limiting the group to individual contributions and forcing them to disclose their activity to the FEC. The sponsor of the soft-money ban, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, has said he wants to go to Congress this month with legislation to outlaw the soft-money groups.

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