A new group financed by a Texas billionaire and organized by some of the same political operatives and donors behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against Sen. John F. Kerry in 2004 plans to begin running television ads attacking Barack Obama, a signal that outside groups may play a larger role than anticipated in the closing days of the presidential race.
The American Issues Project has amassed a multimillion-dollar fund, and the group is putting the final touches on an eleventh-hour campaign targeting the Democratic presidential nominee, sources said…
The resurgence on the right appears as though it will not go unanswered. The Service Employees International Union is set to unveil a multimillion-dollar television campaign on Monday, and other liberal and Democratic-aligned groups are rushing to establish financing for efforts over the final weeks of the campaign…
AIP emerged on the scene in August, airing controversial anti-Obama ads in four battleground states — Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan — that sought to raise questions about his ties to William Ayers, a member of the Vietnam War-era radical group known as the Weathermen. The ad was sponsored entirely — at a cost of more than $2 million — by Harold Simmons, a Dallas-based businessman who also helped fund the Swift boat activities four years ago.The new group was launched by Chris LaCivita, who was intimately involved in the Swift boat campaign, and Tony Feather, one of the co-founders of Progress for America, which spent tens of millions backing Bush in 2004.
According to sources familiar with AIP, it has secured significant financial backing from a handful of major donors and is planning more ads like the Ayers commercial in the weeks between now and Election Day.
Four years ago, mid-September might have been too late to organize for November. But the rules for outside groups changed after a recent Supreme Court opinion that loosened restrictions on corporate and union electioneering within 60 days of the general election. That enabled groups such as AIP, which is organized as a nonprofit corporation, more leeway to launch last-minute attack ads…
The Federal Election Commission is revising its rules governing electioneering communications. These revisions implement the Supreme Court’s decision in FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc., which held that the prohibition on the use of corporate and labor organization funds for electioneering communications is unconstitutional as applied to certain types of electioneering communications.
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