Outside groups seek inside track to White House
Interest groups like EMILY's List trying to influence Iowa voters.
WASHINGTON -- EMILY's List is sending mailings to Democratic women in Iowa urging them to caucus for Hillary Rodham Clinton. A veteran Republican strategist is using automated phone calls to advance Mike Huckabee's candidacy in several primary states. A group affiliated with Ben & Jerry's co-founder Ben Cohen is working to get Iowans into John Edwards' camp.
Weeks before the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, outside groups such as these are flooding Iowa and other early decision states with money and people to mobilize voters and influence the course of the 2008 presidential race. Since Nov. 1, independent groups have spent nearly $2.2 million on television advertising, polling, direct-mail and turnout efforts, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) that detail last-minute political spending.
Campaign-finance experts say that captures just a small fraction of the outside spending in the White House contest — much of it by non-profit organizations that can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money without disclosing who funds their efforts or reporting their activities to the FEC.
"Wealthy donors in both parties are hungry for the White House and are willing to spend whatever it takes," said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks money in campaigns. "It looks like 2008 is going to be a banner year … for outside spending."
In Iowa, Caucus4Priorities, the non-profit group affiliated with Cohen, is spending about $800,000 to promote its call to reduce the Pentagon's budget and redirect the money to "unmet social needs," such as education and health-insurance for children. Volunteers drive a car outfitted with a massive pie chart of federal spending to underscore their point.
"Presidential candidates usually talk about how much they care about kids … but the reality is that they never put any money into it," Cohen said. "We decided to help people see how the federal budgets gets sliced up. Once they see it, they get outraged."
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