MoveOn.org’s Ads
A friend of mine asked how the McCain-Feingold Incumbent Protection…I mean, “Campaign Finance Reform” affects MoveOn.org’s anti-Bush ads.
Frankly, I have no idea. It’s been a while since I looked at the details of that monstrosity, and I need a refresher. Anybody have an opinion on the matter?
UPDATE: Heh. It appears that it’s currently OK for 527s to run these ads:
Sen. John McCain threatened Wednesday to go to court to force the Federal Election Commission to crack down on mostly Democratic fund-raising groups called “527s,” which he said are circumventing campaign finance laws by using massive “soft money” contributions to run TV ads attacking President Bush.
Assuming, of course, that MSNBC has the facts straight.
On a side note, my spell checker wants to change “.org” to “orgy.”
March 11th, 2004 at 3:31 am
According to the statute, soft money contributions to Section 527 organizations aren’t supposed to be used to “influence” the election of an individiual to public office.
Seems awfully vague to me (probably intentionally so). Does this mean that Moveon can’t run ads condemning Bush’s deficit spending? Mentioning Bush or Kerry at all? Under a super strict interpretation of the law, one might argue so. But these so-called non-partisan outfits have been getting away with this “issue” advocacy for years. Are they going to stop it now?