Obama, conservative group battle through DOJ
DENVER (AP) ? Barack Obama and a conservative group have escalated their fight over the group's TV commercial linking him to a 1960s radical, by firing off dueling letters to the Department of Justice.
The Obama camp argued that the organization, the American Issues Project, is violating the law. The group cited a Supreme Court ruling to argue it is allowed to air the ad, which links Obama to 1960s radical William Ayers.
American Issues Project is a 501(c)4 nonprofit corporation. Such organizations are allowed to air political ads, provided the federal government determines that the group's primary purpose is not political.
The group filed a document with the Federal Election Commission last week identifying Texas billionaire Harold Simmons as the lone financier of the ad, contributing nearly $2.9 million to produce and air it. Simmons is a fundraiser for John McCain and was one of the major contributors to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which aired ads in 2004 against John Kerry.
The confrontation pits two of Washington's prominent campaign finance lawyers against each other ? Robert Bauer for Obama and Cleta Mitchell for the American Issues Project.
"This is an organization with no known other activities, no known financial support of any significance," Bauer wrote.
Mitchell replied: "The majority of AIP's annual expenditures are not political expenditures but are devoted to grassroots lobbying and education on issues, public policies and other communications, activities and programs appropriate to a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization in accordance with all applicable provisions of the Internal Revenue Code."
AIP spokesman Christian Pinkston said the group has raised what he called "significant" sums of money from a number of individual donors to carry out its lobbying and education functions. He said the group formed last year but did not have any financial activity until this year. A 501(c)4 corporation is not required to divulge the identity of its donors except when it airs a political ad.
"They're going all of these routes ? through threats, intimidation ? to try to thwart the First Amendment here because they don't have an argument on merit," Pinkston said.
Bauer also argued that if Simmons' $2.9 million contribution was for political purposes, then he exceeded federal contribution limits. He urged the Department of Justice to intervene because the ads "violate the law in both directions ? both in the raising and the expenditure of the funds."
Mitchell wrote in response: "Surely we have not come to a point where the government and its agencies are used to protect presidential candidates from citizens' speech, essentially destroying the very purpose, meaning and historical essence of the First Amendment."
As the fight escalated, the University of Illinois at Chicago released documents about Obama's work for a school reform group linked to Ayers, but details about their interactions were scant in minutes from some early board meetings.
Ayers, who teaches at the university, has a controversial past that some McCain supporters want to highlight because of his past work with Obama. Ayers helped found the Weather Underground organization that took responsibility for a series of bombings, including nonfatal blasts at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol four decades ago.
Obama and Ayers both attended some 1995 board meetings of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which Ayers was instrumental in starting and Obama chaired in the 1990s.
The organization's meeting minutes show that during a June 1995 meeting, Ayers was credited with having "worked diligently" to support the board and the collaborative. But more than a year later, Obama pushed the group to be bolder in its reforms. Minutes from an October 1996 gathering show Obama raised questions about what the group should be doing.
"At the end of five years, will we have broken the mold? Not much seems to be bubbling up that is inspiring or substantive," the minutes say, paraphrasing Obama.
The Associated Press was among several news organizations reviewing the records released by the university. UIC set up appointments for more than a dozen journalists who wanted to review them.
Obama has said he "deplored" what Ayers did in the 1960s and that "by the time I met him, he is a professor of education at the University of Illinois. We served on a board together that had Republicans, bankers, lawyers, focused on education."
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