In The Northwest: GOP cries foul as Democrats skirt campaign law
By JOEL CONNELLY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST
Forget the much-publicized Hollywood event at the Beverly Hilton Hotel this week, in which anti-Bush entertainment folk schmoozed with politicos raising money to oust the president.
Up here in the Emerald City, we do our plotting against presidents more discreetly.
A similar cast of headliners to the Hilton shindig slipped into Seattle a few weeks back for a meeting at the Rainier Club.
Its goal: raising a war chest in the many millions of dollars that will mobilize voters opposed to Bush's re-election.
Would-be givers heard from Harold Ickes, White House deputy chief of staff to President Clinton, and Ellen Malcolm, founder of Emily's List, which raises money for pro-choice Democratic women.
What they outlined, said Seattle businessman-philanthropist Ken Alhadeff, was "a critical, dramatic, meaningful strategy, to be accomplished entirely outside the Democratic Party."
The latest opinion surveys show an America divided pretty evenly down the middle, as it was in the 2000 election.
Identification and motivation of sympathetic voters will be critical to both sides in 2004.
Coming off a highly successful turnout drive in last year's mid-term elections, Republicans have set a goal of signing up 3 million new GOP-leaning voters. They hope to find 40,000 in Washington state.
"It is the most exciting aspect of my job. ... We are going to beat them on the ground next year," Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie said in a recent visit.
The "Elephant Hunt" -- as GOP State Chairman Chris Vance dubs it -- won't be hurting for ammo. With a goal of $200 million, the Bush-Cheney campaign has already raised more than $100 million.
And that has set the president's opponents to mobilizing early.
"Instead of focusing all our energy on different Democrats who are running," said Alhadeff, "We will concentrate on the broader task of getting the message across to the American people.
"If we wait until (Democrats) get a candidate, we'll be so far behind that it will be too late."
The strategy was worked out last summer at the Southampton, Long Island, home of billionaire investor George Soros. Soros has backed fledgling democratic institutions in eastern Europe and Russia with millions of dollars.
The session included Malcolm, Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope and Steve Rosenthal, former AFL-CIO political director and architect of successful union voter turnout drives in 1998 and 2000.
Out of it has come a group called America Coming Together (ACT), headed by Rosenthal, which aims to raise $85 million toward mobilizing Democratic-leaning voters -- particularly in 17 swing states.
A companion drive, The Media Fund, would spend $80 million to run radio and TV ads.
Soros pledged $10 million to launch ACT. Another $12 million has come from Ohio auto insurance executive Peter Lewis and San Francisco investment executive Rob McKay.
Local supporters of the voter turnout effort include Alhadeff, RealNetworks founder Rob Glaser and conservationist Paul Brainerd.
"I intend to give them money. ... I have been approached through the Sierra Club's political committee," said Snohomish businessman Tom Campion. Campion has underwritten efforts to protect Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil and gas drilling.
Republicans are crying foul.
They point out that Democrats championed the McCain-Feingold Act, which banned "soft money" donations to political parties -- unrestricted donations spent on party-building activities.
Now, however, pro-Democratic interest groups are circumventing the new law by mounting "independent" campaigns to bring a change at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
"No organization on the right side of the political spectrum comes anywhere near to that kind of money," said the GOP's Gillespie.
Organizers of the anti-Bush drive respond that Republicans have a huge advantage in "hard money" donations to Bush-Cheney and various Republican campaign groups.
"The Republican machine would otherwise bury us," Alhadeff said.
As well -- ignored by most media -- corporate interests have spent heavily, largely to support Republicans.
Americans for Job Security, a secretive group with insurance industry roots, spent $600,000 in 2000 to boost GOP Sen. Slade Gorton.
Often using front groups, the pharmaceutical industry poured $29 million into 2002 congressional races. Counting up benefits bestowed in the new Medicare "reform" bill, drug makers realized a massive return on their investment.
The less-than-scintillating 1996 and 2000 presidential elections saw only about 50 percent of America's eligible adults bothering to vote.
Seattle's recent, hard-fought municipal election drew a turnout under 40 percent of those eligible.
Large groups of Americans -- young adults, Hispanic immigrants, the working poor -- play little role in governing their country. Involving these constituencies would, in Alhadeff's words, "revitalize democracy" -- and maybe the Democrats.
On the Republican side, Bush's political guru Karl Rove has estimated that 4 million Christian conservatives did not bother to vote in 2000.
Major questions hang over both sides. Each is capable of wasting money on a large scale.
In 2000, Republicans turned off voters in droves with lengthy, pre-recorded phone messages from Barbara Bush and Elizabeth Dole. The missives tied up phone lines until they had run in full.
The AFL-CIO set out in 1996 to defeat this state's six newly elected GOP House members, but blew $1.5 million on TV advertising that had little impact.
Already, one anti-Bush group -- MoveOn.org -- is airing screechy TV spots labeling the president a liar and deceiver. Not wise, when polls show a majority of Americans personally like the man.
The alternative -- one-on-one contact with voters -- is far more effective. It is also infinitely more difficult.
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