| | Attack ad producers complain of Obama 'campaign of intimidation'
 Barack Obama and a conservative group have escalated their fight over the group's TV commercial linking him to a 1960s radical, by firing off dueling letters to the Department of Justice.
The Obama camp argued that the organization, the American Issues Project, is violating the law. The group cited a Supreme Court ruling to argue it is allowed to air the ad, which links Obama to 1960s radical William Ayers.
The group's ad assailed Barack Obama last week for his alleged ties to former 1960's Weather Underground radical William Ayers. The ad uses footage of 9/11 as a backdrop to ask, "Why would Barack Obama be friends with someone who bombed the Capitol and is proud of it? Do you know enough to elect Barack Obama?"
The Obama campaign has responded by charging that the ad is in violation of federal campaign finance laws and asking the networks not to air it. Fox and CNN have complied, but the ad has run widely on local stations in several states, and Obama supporters have responded by "inundating" those stations with emails. The Obama campaign has also sent a letter to the Department of Justice asking for a criminal investigation of possible violations of election law.
The American Issues Project has now struck back with a press release complaining of "a campaign of intimidation and legal threats to convince television stations and the federal government to force off the air an ad by the American Issues Project detailing the link between Sen. Obama and remorseless domestic terrorist William Ayers."
AIP, which was co-founded by a former McCain staff member, is organized as a type of tax-exempt non-profit known as a 501c(4). This means that it can freely lobby on issues but is only allowed to engage in an "insubstantial" amount of activity supporting or opposing political candidates. The anti-Obama ad would appear to violate that restriction.
The AIP press release goes on to quote its president, Ed Martin, as saying, "The scary question this raises is if Barack Obama demonstrates this little regard for free speech from his opponents during the campaign, what could the American people expect from him as a president? The tremendous amount of time, money and effort the campaign is expending to run its own ads on the Ayers controversy and dispatch its hired guns all over the country -- during the Democratic convention -- speaks to the fear they must have that this issue is resonating with American voters."
The Obama campaign's own ad, which attempting to turn the Ayers issue back on McCain, asks, "With all our problems, why is John McCain talking about the sixties, trying to link Barack Obama to radical Bill Ayers? ... McCain knows Obama denounced Ayers' crimes, committed when Obama was just 8 years old."
Obama and Ayers live in the same Chicago neighborhood but are said to have only a casual relationship. In the 1990's, Ayers hosted a brunch when Obama first ran for the Illinois Senate, and Obama chaired the board of a school-reform group co-founded by Ayers. However, since 2002, when Obama left the board of a Chicago arts-grant foundation on which they both served, they appear to have had only minimal contact.
The funding for AIP has been provided entirely by right wing Texas billionaire Howard Simmons, who gave $2.87 million to the group on August 12. Simmons is also a major fund-raiser for John McCain.
Simmons has long been a generous donor to right-wing Republican candidates. In 2004, he contributed at least $2 million to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth for its attack ads against Democratic presidential John Kerry. In the 1990's he admitted in court to having forged his daughters' signatures in order to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republicans from family trusts.
The confrontation pits two of Washington's prominent campaign finance lawyers against each other - Robert Bauer for Obama and Cleta Mitchell for the American Issues Project.
"This is an organization with no known other activities, no known financial support of any significance," Bauer wrote.
Mitchell replied: "The majority of AIP's annual expenditures are not political expenditures but are devoted to grassroots lobbying and education on issues, public policies and other communications, activities and programs appropriate to a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization in accordance with all applicable provisions of the Internal Revenue Code."
AIP spokesman Christian Pinkston said the group has raised what he called "significant" sums of money from a number of individual donors to carry out its lobbying and education functions. He said the group formed last year but did not have any financial activity until this year. A 501(c)4 corporation is not required to divulge the identity of its donors except when it airs a political ad.
"They're going all of these routes - through threats, intimidation - to try to thwart the First Amendment here because they don't have an argument on merit," Pinkston said.
Bauer also argued that if Simmons' $2.9 million contribution was for political purposes, then he exceeded federal contribution limits. He urged the Department of Justice to intervene because the ads "violate the law in both directions - both in the raising and the expenditure of the funds."
Mitchell wrote in response: "Surely we have not come to a point where the government and its agencies are used to protect presidential candidates from citizens' speech, essentially destroying the very purpose, meaning and historical essence of the First Amendment."
(with wire reports)
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