Etheridge, R Rep

That year, Politico named Larry McCarthy the “Attack Ads’ Go-To Guy,” noting that he was one of the largest beneficiaries of the spending spree resulting from the campaign-finance rulings. F.E.C. records for the fall of 2010 show that four organizations whose funders are secret—the American Future Fund, Americans for Job Security, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the Rove-founded group Crossroads G.P.S.—together spent nearly seventy million dollars on campaign ads. Of that sum, eighteen million was spent on commissioning, then airing, ads from McCarthy’s firm.

McCarthy became the media consultant to the American Future Fund, a conservative Iowa-based organization founded in 2007. Registering with the I.R.S. as a nonprofit “issues” group, it spent $7.8 million on ads in 2010; all were made by McCarthy’s firm, and most attacked Democrats. Names of donors have not been made public, although Bruce Rastetter, a prominent Iowa Republican, and the founder of one of the country’s largest ethanol companies, has acknowledged that he was involved. Groups like the American Future Fund “operate in the shadows,” the Sacramento Bee wrote. “The power behind them is rarely apparent.”

In the summer of 2010, the American Future Fund aired an ad, created by McCarthy, that Geoff Garin describes as perhaps “the most egregious” of the year. The ad accused Representative Bruce Braley, an Iowa Democrat and a lawyer, of supporting a proposed Islamic community center in lower Manhattan, which it called a “mosque at Ground Zero.” As footage of the destroyed World Trade Center rolled, a narrator said, “For centuries, Muslims built mosques where they won military victories.” Now a mosque celebrating 9/11 was to be built on the very spot “where Islamic terrorists killed three thousand Americans”—it was, the narrator suggested, as if the Japanese were to build a triumphal monument at Pearl Harbor. The ad then accused Braley of supporting the mosque.

In fact, Braley had taken no position on the issue until an unidentified cameraman came up to him at the Iowa State Fair and asked him about it. He said that he regarded the matter as a local zoning issue for New Yorkers to decide. In general, he said, he valued America’s tradition of religious diversity. Soon afterward, he told me, the attack ad “dropped on me like the house in ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ ” Braley, who won his seat by a margin of thirty per cent in 2008, barely held on in 2010. The American Future Fund’s effort against Braley was the most expensive campaign that year by an independent group.

Braley said of McCarthy, “He doesn’t have the courage to put his own name on a ballot and run for office, or even to put his own name on his ads. Instead, he’d rather make tons of money by anonymously demonizing people. He’s profiting from Citizens United in the lowest way.” He went on, “The corporations are laughing all the way to the bank. It’s a good investment for them. And the consultants are making tons of money. They’re the winners. The losers are the American people, and the truth.”

Representative Bob Etheridge, a North Carolina Democrat, fared worse. He was targeted by another McCarthy client, Americans for Job Security, a group that was founded, in 1997, with a million-dollar donation from the American Insurance Association. Public Citizen, the liberal reform group, filed a complaint with the F.E.C., calling it “a sham front group that would be better called Corporations Influencing Elections.” The F.E.C., deadlocked, took no action, but in Alaska state regulators forced the group to pay a twenty-thousand-dollar fine for operating as a corporate front that had “no purpose other than to cover various money trails.”*

In the summer of 2010, Etheridge, like Braley, found himself the victim of a video ambush. He was walking on Capitol Hill when two young men in suits approached him. One thrust a camera in his face and the other, holding a microphone, asked him whether he supported the “Obama agenda.” Taken aback, Etheridge demanded, “Who are you?” As Etheridge asked the question five times without getting an answer, he pushed the camera away and gripped his inquisitor.

Finally, the interviewer stammered, “I’m just a student, sir.”

“From?” Etheridge asked.

“The streets,” the interviewer answered.

Within days, a video of the confrontation, edited to make Etheridge seem unhinged, was posted on Andrew Breitbart’s conservative Web site, Big Government, under the headline “CONGRESSMAN ATTACKS STUDENT.” It went viral. Soon afterward, McCarthy inserted the video into an ad, called “Who Are You?,” in which people purporting to be from Etheridge’s district answered, “We’re your constituents,” and then accused Etheridge—inaccurately—of wanting to cut Medicare. It’s unclear who paid for the ad. Americans for Job Security avoids disclosing its funders by registering as a nonprofit trade association devoted to promoting “pro-paycheck” issues. It calls its revenue “membership dues,” and claims not to spend money on influencing elections. But, according to WRAL-TV news, in Raleigh, among the “pro-paycheck” projects its members paid for in 2010 was a three-hundred-and-sixty-thousand-dollar ad buy against Etheridge.

Etheridge narrowly lost the 2010 election to a nurse running with the support of Sarah Palin. The next day, the National Republican Congressional Committee, which had previously denied a role, acknowledged that it was behind the ambush video. It’s unclear how the video made its way into McCarthy’s attack ad, but the committee is one of his clients.

“They wanted to deceive people,” Etheridge says. “I have no idea who was behind it. You don’t know who’s doing it. There’s no name and no face.” He argues, “It really undermines people’s faith in democracy. That’s what’s sad. Everyone pays a price for the big, unregulated, undocumented money.” j mayer

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