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Republicans for Clean Air

527

LEVER

..,

ARCHIVAL NEWS FOOTAGE:President Clinton today insisted the Lincoln Bedroom in the White House was not for sale. The Lincoln bedroom was never sold. That was one more false story we have had to endure. But White House documents, some in the President’s own handwriting indicate the Lincoln Bedroom was at least on the market to major political donors.

DAVID:Not surprisingly, the public was aghast. Polls from that time period showed that 90 percent of Americans thought campaign finance regulation should be overhauled or better enforced. Seizing the moment, McCain and Feingold introduced another version of their bill in January 1997. Senator Mitch McConnell — who public interest groups had taken to calling the Darth Vader of campaign finance reform — took a special interest in the bill. McConnell saw money as instrumental to success in politics; he’d said as much in lectures he gave when he taught law back in the 1970s. More money meant an increased chance at winning and McConnell liked to win. He also borrowed from the playbook of master planners Ralph Winter and John Bolton, who argued in the Buckley case that money was a constitutional freedom — and that restrictingmoney was the same as restricting speech.

...

[camp fin pop on stump in NH? v pioneers]

DAVID:For as much money as Bush was raking in, he was also spending like crazy to keep the McCain campaign at bay, after McCain’s anti-corruption message had powered him to a huge upset victory in the New Hampshire primary. By the time that debate in Los Angeles took place, the Bush campaign had already blown through close to $70 million, just to win the Republican nomination. And that didn’t include the money that other groups were covertly spending on Bush’s behalf. Here’s Trevor Potter again.

TREVOR POTTER:There was a group called Republicans for Clean Air that was a phony organization. A couple of Texas billionaires established an entity which then ran ads with pictures of belching smokestacks, saying that John McCain was in favor of pollution…

...

Campaign Reform Act of 2001 — or BCRA. Really rolls off the tongue…

Among other things, BCRA prohibited political parties from raising or spending any money that wasn’t subject to the federal limits laid down by FECA. It also required campaigns to disclose where their money came from and where it was spent. And it put limits on when those scammy issue advocacy ads could be run. In short, it pushed for all the things the master planners hated — radical things like “disclosure” and “spending limits”.

And the master planners were pissed.

......

Republicans for Clean Air (RCA) was a front group created by supporters of George W. Bush in his 2000 presidential primary campaign against John McCain. According to an April 6, 2000, article in the Dallas Observer,Rob Allyn was a key player in the George W. Bush campaign to discredit his rival and was paid $46,000 to help create the ad described below. [1].

Beginning in February 2000, RCA spent $2.5 million to run television ads in the key primary states of California, Ohio and New York. The ads showed McCain's face superimposed on a backdrop of smokestacks belching dark clouds, accused McCain of voting against solar and **:{renewable energy}:** and claimed that then-Governor Bush was responsible for improving air quality in his home state of Texas.

In fact, as Texas-based columnist Molly Ivins observed, "Texas has very dirty air. According to the North American Commission on Environmental Cooperation set up by NAFTA, we pollute more than any other state or Canadian province. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Texas is No. 1 in overall toxic releases, recognized carcinogens in the air, suspected carcinogens in the air, developmental toxins in the air, cancer risk and 10 other equally depressing categories." **[2]**

The Center for Public Integrity noted that RCA "had neither an office nor a phone number, just a post office box in northern Virginia. The news media and McCain's campaign scrambled to identify the group's directors and backers". **[3]** They noted that less than a week after the ads ran and McCain had been defeated on "Super Tuesday", were the sponsors identified.

The money came from Dallas billionaires Sam and Charles Wyly, investment bankers and friends of Bush. Charles Wyly was a Bush "pioneer," one of an elite group that raised $100,000 for Bush's 2000 presidential campaign.

Initially, RCA concealed its funding, using a loophole in Section 527 of the U.S. tax code, which requires political parties and political action committees to report their work to the Federal Election Commission. Under the loophole, groups involved in "issue advocacy" rather than explicit campaigning for candidates candidates were allowed to use the 527 status without reporting to the FEC, enabling groups like RCA to operate as what came to be called "stealth PACs."

In response to the ads, the McCain campaign filed a complaint with the FCC about the RCA's anonymity of Republicans for Clean Air. Bush himself defended the ads. "That's part of the American process," he said. "That's what freedom of speech is all about. This allegation that somehow I'm involved with this is just totally ridiculous. It is uncalled-for. There is no truth to it."

After the Wylys' role in funding RCA became public knowledge, the **Sierra Club** issued a news release noting that the Wylys "have given hundreds of thousands of dollars to anti-environmental politicians who have voted to weaken the Clean Air Act." Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope stated that the ads were "polluting the airwaves with false information about George W. Bush's terrible environmental record. 'Republicans for Clean Air' should pull these ads that paint a false picture of Gov. Bush's poor record governing the most polluted state in America." **[4]**

Following public controversy over the role that RCA and other stealth PACs played in the 2000 election, Congress subsequently passed legislation requiring 527 organizations that engage in issue advocacy to publicly report their financing.

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