Oct. 31, 2001
More Trick than Treat with 'Issue-Advocate' Groups
By J. Barlow Herget
RALEIGH - The Halloween season is a good time to look at the campaign practices of "Issue Advocacy" organizations, political organizations that say they're not for or against specific candidates, but then beat them up with attack ads.
These groups are a growing force in state and national politics, and their methods are often more trick than treat as legitimate political players.
And like goblins and ghosts, the people behind these issue advocacy groups are difficult to track down. First, these groups do not have to disclose their contributors. Second, they usually hide their real purpose behind some highfalutin name like "The Apple Pie and Motherhood Supporters."
A third and more serious aspect is that issue advocates are not bound by campaign rules that limit the amount of money they can raise and spend. Gary Bartlett, director of the State Board of Elections, looks at these organizations and the money they are bringing to elections and says they "will make soft money look like chump change."
Some legitimate organizations do issue advertising. When you seen an ad from the National Rifle Association or the AFL-CIO, you know who these groups are and what issues they stand for. But there are others that come and go like midnight mushrooms. These others meet the legal criteria for an independent, issue-oriented entity, and they usually have high-sounding names, but in truth, they are shams. Their real purposes are to elect or defeat particular candidates.
One of the most notorious examples of such a front group was the Republicans for Clean Air group out of Texas. It turned out to be an outfit for two wealthy Texas brothers, Sam and Charles Wyly, who supported then Gov. George W. Bush against his Republican primary opponent, Sen. John McCain.
The name suggested the organization was an environmental lobby interested in clean air issues. The Wyly brothers’ business involved the electrical power industry, but they were hardly known as Sierra Club champions. Still, Republicans for Clean Air spent about $2.5 million in the New York, Ohio and California primaries on television ads attacking McCain’s environmental record. One pictured the senator sprouting smokestacks. You can picture the Wyly boys enjoying their trick on New York, Ohio and California voters.
Closer to home, a North Carolina group called Farmers for Fairness launched a campaign against the 1998 re-election of state legislator Rep. Cindy Watson, R-Duplin. Watson had voted against hog farming interests in the eastern part of the state, and the fair-minded farmers vowed to defeat her.
At one point, the group was spending $10,000 a week in 1998 on campaign advertising that did everything but say "vote against" Watson. She subsequently lost the election, even though the press identified Farmers for Fairness as a special interest for the hog industry.
These groups have popped up in local elections, too. One that drew attention was an organization named CARE that spent thousands of dollars in the 1999 mayor’s race in Cary. There was little question about their purpose - the defeat of candidate Glen Lang. A wealthy entrepreneur, Lang won despite being outspent by CARE.
Republicans for Clean Air, Farmers for Fairness, CARE (don’t you love the names?) all claim that they were simply informing the public on "issues" related to the election, not campaigning against McCain, Watson or Lang. Which raises a critical issue about issue advocate groups.
The federal courts repeatedly have defended issue advocates’ right to play politics. The one line they cannot cross in their advertising and campaigning is explicitly urging citizens to vote for or against a certain candidate. There even is a list of the magic words they cannot utter in their "issue advocacy."
There is, of course, a legitimate way to endorse or criticize specific candidates. Following the campaign finance reforms of the 1970s, independent organizations who wanted to campaign directly for candidates were allowed to establish Political Action Committees (PACs).
Such PACs are permitted to give limited amounts of money and in-kind help to political candidates. (The most successful of the groups do more than provide money; they deliver their respective members’ votes.) More importantly these groups do not act anonymously. Their members take responsibility for what they say and disclose their names and how much they give.
The sham issue advocates want no part of such rules and regulations. They prefer operating in the dark of non-disclosure and scaring voters with negative, misleading ads. Citizens deserve better. Our democracy is not a game of trick-or-treat.
Barlow Herget is a businessman and former member of the Raleigh City Council.
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