Election 2004

Interest groups start early with $4-million in ads

WASHINGTON - In Iowa or New Hampshire, it might be a weapons-reduction group urging President Bush and his Democratic rivals to do more to lower risk of chemical warfare.

Advertisements on television in West Virginia or Ohio may ask viewers to demand that Bush retain steel tariffs. In Wisconsin and Florida, the pitch may come from environmentalists critical of the Republican president's policies affecting beaches, lakes and forests.

Special interests have spent more than $4-million on such issue advocacy commercials a year before the 2004 presidential election and the stage is set for a spending spree by these groups, which are independent of the political parties. Driving the spending is the year-old campaign finance law, which restricts certain ads in the weeks before an election.

An Associated Press review of recent ads shows that most have been aired by liberal-leaning organizations and take on Republicans, Bush or his policies.

The AFL-CIO has spent at least $1.5-million on television ads, largely to attack a Bush administration-backed plan that would change which workers qualify for overtime pay. MoveOn.org, a liberal online group that has spent about $1.2-million on television ads, is critical of the war in Iraq and Bush's economic policies.

Political analysts attribute the early ads in part to an accelerated primary season. Mostly, though, they say the reason is the law that limits how interest groups can pay for ads running close to elections.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on the constitutionality of the law, which took effect in November 2002. Several interest groups sued, arguing the law violates free-speech rights.

Supporters say it helps crack down on commercials that clearly are intended to influence a federal election but are disguised as issues because they do not specifically advocate voting for or against a candidate.

The law prevents interest groups from using soft money - huge, unlimited donations from corporations, unions and individuals - to pay for ads that mention federal candidates in their districts one month before a primary and two months before the general election.

"They're going up early because they have to now if they want to use that money," said Ken Goldstein, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project.

The law prohibits national political party committees from raising or spending soft money. As a result, such contributions probably will flow to interest groups.

Analysts say these groups may go on the air early to lure big soft-money donors, test messages or aid the Democratic nominee.

"The nature of those messages is to make a generic case against Bush. They are advocating a position from which the candidate can build. If it tests well, the Democrat can then embrace it," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center, which researches issue ads.

The Sierra Club, for example, has spent at least $350,000 on ads in New Hampshire, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida, Nevada and Nebraska, attacking the president's environmental record.

All this means is that people who thought they were overexposed to political ads before the 2000 elections had better brace themselves. They are in for a lot more earlier in 2004.

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