-Caveat Lector-
FEC Drops Business Group Probe
Staff Report Is Critical but Says Ruling Makes Case Untenable
By George Lardner Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 19, 2001; Page A04
The Federal Election Commission has decided to drop a four-year-old case
accusing major business organizations of illegally coordinating their
1996 campaign efforts with the Republican Party, but only after a stinging
report by FEC investigators that questioned the credibility of "much of the
testimony."
FEC lawyers said in their final report that "the facts make for a
compelling case" of illegal coordination under the rules in place during
the 1996 campaign but could not meet a restrictive standard the commission
adopted last year. They recommended the case be closed, which the
commission did last month.
The business groups, which undertook a $5 million advertising campaign to
defend House Republicans against a $35 million attack by the AFL-CIO,
responded angrily in a letter to the commission last week, denouncing the
staff report as "inaccurate, vindictive, defensive and stunningly unfair."
Banded together as "the Coalition," the industry groups protested that they
had been treated more harshly than the AFL-CIO, which the FEC stopped
pursuing almost a year ago despite what the Coalition said was stronger
evidence of "coordination" between organized labor and the Democratic
Party.
"The Coalition clearly had nothing approaching the day-to-day inside
contacts with campaigns and candidates enjoyed by the AFL-CIO,"
Coalition lawyer Jan W. Baran said in the June 13 letter. Yet, he said,
the FEC dropped the investigation of organized labor without taking any
depositions and without reviewing thousands of pages of discovery
documents.
The FEC subpoenaed nine witnesses in the Coalition case and took the last
deposition in March after winning a court order compelling it. The final
staff report, signed by FEC acting general counsel Lois G. Lerner in
April, said "much of the testimony is less than credible." A copy of the
report and the Coalition's response was made available by a Coalition
member.
The FEC report noted that the witnesses for the most part "denied or could
not recall any discussions" with then-House Republican Conference Chairman
John A. Boehner of Ohio, widely described as the man in charge of "taking
on organized labor," or other party leaders or candidates about the
Coalition's ads or activities, the AFL-CIO ad campaign or a response to
that campaign.
Representatives of the five founding members of the Coalition -- the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the
National Restaurant Association, the National Association of
Wholesaler-Distributors and the National Federation of Independent
Business -- regularly attended meetings Boehner held each Thursday with
business and trade groups to discuss ways of winning congressional passage
of the GOP's "Contract With America" and how to "mobilize"
members.
According to the FEC report, the Coalition was established in April
1996, shortly after Boehner warned in a speech to the U.S. Chamber of
union efforts to "defeat the Republican majority in Congress" and reelect
President Bill Clinton. It eventually signed up more than 30 business
groups as members and hired pollsters and media consultants who also worked
for the Republican National Committee and other GOP committees and
candidates.
The first Coalition ads began airing in July 1996 in the districts of two
Republican freshmen who had been targeted by the AFL-CIO, Greg Ganske of
Iowa and George R. Nethercutt of Washington state. The business forces
carried their fall advertising campaign to about 41 congressional districts
and capped it by mailing out 2 million "report cards" on candidates
10 days before the election.
But while Coalition leaders showed Boehner the early test ads and gave a
Boehner aide tapes of the rest, they said they did not discuss the ads'
contents with Boehner and provided the copies only so he could "see what
his allies in the business community were doing, about which he knew
nothing beforehand." The Coalition witnesses also denied that Boehner or
any other GOP leader had urged or suggested formation of the Coalition.
The FEC lawyers expressed sharp doubts about such claims but said they were
unable to find "evidence of coordination"
that would meet the stringent demands imposed by a controversial 1999 court
ruling in a Christian Coalition case, which the commission chose not to
appeal.
U.S. District Judge Joyce Hens Green issued the Christian Coalition ruling
and made clear that she expected it to be appealed. The decision, election
lawyers said, made it almost impossible to prove illegal coordination,
requiring, for instance, proof of "substantial discussion or negotiation"
between a political campaign and an outside group about the content, timing
and location of a particular ad.
The FEC said the Coalition's test-ad choices remained "especially
troubling," in part because of a fax the House Republican Conference
received about an AFL-CIO ad in Nethercutt's district, but it doubted that
further depositions would be fruitful, particularly with the five-year
statute of limitations about to expire.
Coalition lawyer Baran took strong exception to the FEC staff's claim that
a case could have been made under its old rules. He said those rules were
"so gauzy and uncertain" that Judge Green declared them unconstitutional.
The report, he also complained, "makes much of witnesses' inability to
provide detailed accounts of meetings" without pointing out that "the
commission waited four or five years after the meetings to ask its
questions."
Dirk Van Dongen, president of the Wholesaler-Distributors Association,
whose own credibility was questioned in the report, said it was full of
"aspersions and innuendo," unlike last year's report on the AFL-CIO case.
"I know what we did and what we didn't do," Van Dongen said. "I know we
did not cross any line we knew we should not cross. We're not stupid
people. And we're not that adventurous. [AFL-CIO President] John Sweeney
got up on his soapbox and told the world what he was going to do. Is it
any surprise that we said we were going to do something about it?"
=======================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
*Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
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