Soros-tied Group Fined Over '04 Ads
The Federal Election Commission today issued another in a string of six-figure fines against partisan political groups -- this time against America Coming Together, a group financed by George Soros and labor organizations that sunk more than $100 million into campaign activities intended to help Democrats in the 2004 elections.
The decision to fine the group $775,000, the FEC's third largest penalty in its three-decade history, was intended to send a stern message to independent groups. The FEC has said it will crack down on groups that raise unlimited resources outside of the campaign finance system but then spend that money on political attack ads and other activities aimed at influencing the outcome of specific elections.
The groups are permitted to spend such funds on more generic activities, such as voter drives. But in this case, the FEC determined that ACT was spending its money on political ads, telemarketing, and door-to-door canvassing targeting clearly identified federal candidates.
It cited several examples of materials that targeted President Bush in the 2004 contest, including one ad attacking Bush's health care policy. The ad asserted that seniors face skyrocketing prescription drug costs and big insurance and drug companies were reaping record profits "because George Bush blocked re-importation of less expensive medicines from Canada. And Bush said 'no' to guaranteeing price controls on health care costs."
"ACT failed properly to attribute and report expenditures attributable to specific candidates, failed properly to allocate and report joint administrative activities and used non-federal funds to pay the federal share of such allocated expenses," the FEC determined.
The fine was reached as part of a conciliation agreement with ACT, meaning the group agreed to the findings and the terms of the settlement.
The complaint against ACT was brought by Democracy 21, a non partisan campaign finance reform group. In a statement yesterday, the group's president, Fred Wertheimer welcomed the decision, but suggested that the fine was too little too late -- not nearly large enough to deter independent groups from engaging in "huge illegal expenditures ... in the 2008 presidential and congressional elections for the third federal election in a row."
"The amount of the penalty imposed against ACT in this case represents only a tiny fraction of the nearly $100 million that the FEC found ACT illegally spent to influence the 2004 election," Wertheimer's statement said.
In response to the FEC announcement, ACT released a statement signaling that the ruling vindicated the group of several allegations against it. ACT said the FEC dismissed charges that ACT leaders coordinated their activities with the Kerry campaign and made clear the violations were not deliberate.
The group settled over the question of whether they should not have spent unregulated funds -- money not subject to the FEC limits -- on campaign activites that directly targeted a specific candidate. ACT called this a "legally and factually complex question."
"Today's actions mark the conclusion of three years of politically motivated charges by the Republican Party and ill-conceived allegations by self-styled campaign finance "reform" groups," the ACT statement said.
Soros has helped finance the group's activity, but had no direct role in its operations.
--Matthew Mosk
Posted at 4:30 PM ET on Aug 29, 2007
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Posted by: DorothyfromColumbus | August 30, 2007 9:15 AM
Stefan,
Oh boo-hoo. Your "National Right to Work For Slave Wages Foundation" can go pound salt. You won't be happy until most Americans are making minimum wage. And then you'll get rid of minimum wage too.
Posted by: stevenjay | August 29, 2007 5:38 PM
Surprise, surprise. Strictly from Hungary. (Good currency bet, though.)
Posted by: philip_riggio | August 29, 2007 5:23 PM
In 2004, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation filed one of the complaints that led to this FEC concialiation agreement. As a group that defends employees against forced political confromity by unions, we were alarmed by the diversion of $26 million by officials of the Service Employees International Union, taken mostly from workers' forced union dues, into partisan and overt electioneering activity.
We feel this FEC action is a mere slap on the wrist. The big problem with the FEC's "enforcement" action is, at the end of the day, not one cent of the millions of dollars illegally funnelled into federal election activity will be returned to the unionized workers forced to foot the bill as a condition of employment.
The SEIU union was the biggest ACT donor at $26 million, according to SEIU's president Andy Stern, a founder of ACT. And many other millions of dollars in workers' forced union dues were transferred into ACT by officials of other major unions.
Stefan Gleason
Vice President
National Right to Work
Legal Defense Foundation
shg@nrtw.org
Posted by: shg | August 29, 2007 4:52 PM
Has the Federal Elections Commission ever looked into the so called independent "Swift Boat" group from the 2004 Presidential Election? Maybe someone aught to look into that group. Seems like the FEC is very selective. I can hear the Republicans now if the Democrats take over the Executive Branch in 2008 and some of their pet groups get fined.
Posted by: willin1 | August 29, 2007 4:50 PM
The comments to this entry are closed.
If this had been a Republican group this story would be on the front page of the Post in GREAT BIG LETTERS.
SBVT was a truly independent 527 group. No one has ever proved otherwise. No one has ever rebutted its claims about Kerry's war record and treasonous activities after his service.