


John Edwards is enjoying some free advertising from the sort of outside group he has repeatedly criticized on the campaign trail. The Alliance for a New America - a so-called independent organization linked to the Service Employees International Union - has run television and radio advertisements promoting the Democratic presidential candidate in Iowa.
Edwards has said that he has no connection with the group, and he has called for the ads to be taken down. He "is the only candidate in this campaign who has never accepted one dime from any Washington lobbyist or PAC and has been vocal and consistent in repudiating 527 groups and the corrupting influence of money in politics," said Edwards spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield.
But Democratic rival Barack Obama has seized on the group's activities. Referring to the ads in Iowa, Obama said last week that "all of us have to try to practice what we preach," according to the New York Times. Yesterday, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe sent out a fundraising e-mail citing the Alliance for a New America and alluding to an outside group working on Democrat Hillary Clinton's behalf. "The case has never been clearer - this kind of politics needs to end," the e-mail said.
A New Hampshire subplot to the spat emerged yesterday, after the Times reported that SEIU officials circulated an e-mail message in October discussing their support for Edwards, and also detailed the possible creation of a so-called 527 group. According to the Times, the e-mail message was obtained by a rival campaign.
Among the recipients of that e-mail was Gary Smith, according to a copy of the message posted on the political blog The Page. Because the e-mail was distributed among SEIU officials, it appears that the Gary Smith listed on the message is the same Gary Smith who is president of New Hampshire's local SEIU.
The e-mail was sent Oct. 8, about three weeks before the New Hampshire branch of the SEIU, also known as the State Employees Association, endorsed Edwards.
Rather than serving as a celebratory photo opportunity, the announcement of the SEA's backing prompted some union members to question the endorsement's legitimacy. At the time, two union board members who support Obama told the Monitor that the board voted 7-5 on Oct. 23 to endorse the Illinois senator. But Smith later deemed that vote improper and called for another one, which Edwards won 9-8, the board members said.
Smith was away from Concord yesterday and didn't return a telephone call.
Just because Smith was on the e-mail list doesn't mean that he backed Edwards weeks before the union decided which candidate to endorse, said SEIU Political Organizer Jay Ward. "I can't answer that for him, but I will say that there are people on this e-mail distribution from states that have not endorsed at all," said Ward, who thought that Smith was on the list because he's on the union's international executive board of directors.
"I believe that he'd gotten calls and possibly e-mails from states that had been Obama supporters also at the same time," Ward said.
The e-mail provided the notes from an "SEIU for Edwards" meeting that apparently took place Oct. 8 and was sent by David Rolf, the president of a Washington local of the SEIU. The message details plans to "spend this week moving the maximum number of states into a pro-Edwards position," and names New Hampshire as one of about 20 state "targets for an early round of endorsements."
The message goes on to say that SEIU officials planned to "discuss with the Edwards campaign what specific sort of support they'd like to see from us, given our new state-based strategy."
Later, the e-mail discusses hiring "a full-time staff person to coordinate our efforts and plan the campaign" and says that "there was general agreement that the campaign will likely involve fundraising, field work in early states, media in early states, and require full time staffing and a serious 527 legal structure for any communication beyond our membership."
Candidates are not allowed to "coordinate" with 527 groups. There are no restrictions on the amount of money those groups can raise and spend, although 527s cannot overtly advocate the election or defeat of a candidate.
In this campaign, "I suspect that where we will see (527s) pushing the boundaries and we will see them running ads that are less blatant candidate attack ads, and instead heightening the issues," said Paul Ryan, an attorney at the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center.
Bedingfield, the Edwards spokeswoman, said that there was no coordination between the campaign and SEIU officials about the 527 group.
The e-mail "has nothing to do with the Edwards campaign," Bedingfield wrote in an e-mail. "Apparently . . . SEIU officials were having two separate conversations - one with the Edwards campaign to discuss perfectly legal member-to-member activities and another one internally about their own independent activities - to try to link the two conversations together is false and misleading.
"As soon as SEIU officials informed us, later on, that some of their staff would no longer able to communicate with us about the campaign, we immediately stopped all conversation with them, as we legally had to," Bedingfield added. "We found out the existence of this outside group the same way everyone else in the public did, and we stand by our position that 527s should not be involved in the political process."
Ward said he hadn't seen the SEIU e-mail before he was contacted by a reporter yesterday. As for the SEIU-affiliated 527, "the reason why I hadn't seen any of this is because we had nothing to do with them," he said.
The group - which is run by Nick Baldick, who managed Edwards's 2004 campaign - has spent more than $750,000 to reserve television ads in the run-up to Iowa's presidential caucuses, according to national news reports. An ad that began airing this week promotes Edwards's positions on, among other issues, trade deals and banning campaign money from lobbyists. Alliance for a New America - which, according to the Times, was established by an SEIU local - also paid for radio ads. The group hasn't run ads in New Hampshire, but it has distributed mailers.
"I don't think there's a legal issue here," said Wayne Lesperance, associate professor of political science at New England College. "There's a political issue, though. He has railed against these kinds of activities and organizations."
Shortly before the SEIU e-mail was distributed, Edwards announced he would accept public financing for his primary campaign, a decision that subjected him to spending limits. Edwards described the decision as one of principle, not financial need: "Washington is awash with money," he said at the time, adding that "the system is corrupt," according to news reports.
Obama, meanwhile, has questioned Edwards's commitment to getting the 527 ads off the air. "My attitude is that if you can't get your former campaign manager and political director do what you'd like, then it's going to be hard to get the insurance companies and drug companies to do what you want," Obama said in Iowa, according to the Washington Post.
As the presidential nominating contests near, outside groups are playing an increasingly large role in the campaign. Obama backers formed a group called Vote Hope 2008 to support Obama's candidacy by getting out the vote. At the time, an Obama spokesman said that Obama disapproved of the group, according to the Times.
And the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees recently endorsed Clinton and has since advocated her candidacy. In New Hampshire, AFSCME has paid for a mailer attacking Obama's health care plan as a "band-aid solution." Unlike Edwards and Clinton, Obama wouldn't mandate that individuals obtain insurance. The mailer doesn't mention Clinton and quotes Edwards commenting on Obama's plan.
"The difference is that Hillary hasn't really been very vocal on the 527s," Lesperance said. "I don't think she suffers the same level of criticism."
(concordmonitor.com)