November 1, 2006
Behind the `Mob' Ad, a Republican Donor With a History
By LAURA MANSNERUS
TRENTON, Oct. 31 — A much-criticized television
advertisement that
uses a mob character to impugn Senator Robert Menendez
was financed
by a Republican donor who has given more than $6 million this
year
to start ad campaigns attacking Democrats.
The donor, Bob J.
Perry, a Houston home builder, gave $4.45 million
in 2004 to the Swift Boat
Veterans for Truth, an independent
organization that attacked Senator John
Kerry's Vietnam War record,
damaging his presidential campaign and leading
to protests about the
tactics used by such outside groups.
The
anti-Menendez ad was produced by one such group, the Free
Enterprise Fund
Committee, which said it received about $1 million
from Mr. Perry. His role
in the ad was reported on Tuesday in The
Star-Ledger. Earlier this year, Mr.
Perry started another group, the
Economic Freedom Fund, with a $5 million
contribution. Together, the
committees are running attack ads in about a
dozen states.
In the anti-Menendez ad, titled "Politicos," a stocky
character with
a leather jacket and a "Sopranos" accent rasps into a
cellphone: "We
got a problem. Our boy down in Washington, Bob Menendez, he's
caught
in a federal investigation. The feds start looking at these fixed
contracts, and bada-bing, we're in it deep."
"We need to get the
bosses to fix this thing, like they did for
Torricelli," he says at the end
of the ad.
Jill Hazelbaker, a spokeswoman for Mr. Menendez's Republican
opponent, State Senator Thomas H. Kean Jr., said the campaign
condemned
the ad when it started running a week ago. That statement,
Ms. Hazelbaker
said, "makes clear that we loathe the ad."
She said the Kean campaign
could not call on the sponsors to stop
running the ad. Campaign finance laws
prohibit any direct contact
between campaign officials and the independent
groups, known as 527s
after a provision in the federal tax code that permits
them to spend
unlimited amounts as long as they do not coordinate efforts
with
candidates.
But Matt Miller, a campaign spokesman for Mr.
Menendez, said: "The
Republicans have been very good at getting all their
donors to fund
side projects to smear Democratic candidates. We saw it pop
up in
New Jersey with the Free Enterprise Fund ads, which repeated Tom
Kean Jr.'s smears."
Todd S. Schorle, a spokesman for the Free
Enterprise Fund Committee,
said that Mr. Perry provided almost all of the
group's financing but
that the ad was entirely the creation of the committee
staff and the
agency that made it, Nelson Warfield and Company. Mr. Schorle
said
the ad cost $200,015 and was to run for a week, ending today, on
cable stations in several North Jersey counties.
When asked about
Mr. Perry, Mr. Schorle said, "We don't discuss any
of our
donors."
The committee has run ads against other Democratic Senate
candidates, including Ned Lamont in Connecticut, Jon Tester in
Montana
and Harold Ford Jr. in Tennessee. The Economic Freedom Fund,
Mr. Perry's new
committee, has run attack ads in at least five
states.
In Indiana,
the state attorney general filed a complaint against the
group and forced it
to stop automated telephone calls attacking a
Democrat, Baron Hill, who is
challenging Representative Mike Sodrel.
Anthony Holm, a spokesman for Mr.
Perry, declined to comment.
Mr. Perry is the nation's top donor to the
independent groups this
year, according to the Center for Responsive
Politics, which tracks
federal campaign finance reports. In 2004 he and his
wife, Doylene,
were the biggest Republican donors to 527 groups, giving $9.6
million.
