Greater Spending Focuses Attention On Issue Ads Ads Are Legal And Common Practice By Both Parties, Democratic Leader Says

Hundreds of thousands of dollars poured into Washington state last year for television commercials that allowed state Democrats to blast congressional Republicans.

State Chairman Paul Berendt said it was more money than the state party had ever spent on such commercials, known as issue ads because they promote a cause rather than a candidate.

But the ads were legal, and common practice by both parties, Berendt said Thursday.

“It’s like nuclear proliferation,” Berendt said. “I want to see campaign finance reform. But I’m not going to unilaterally disarm.”

The U.S. Justice Department and a Senate committee are reportedly looking at the contributions. The question is whether the Democratic National Committee skirted campaign spending limits by paying the states to run ads that praised President Clinton and criticized GOP challenger Bob Dole.

The New York Times reported Thursday that investigators from both organizations are re-examining some $32 million in contributions from the DNC to state party organizations.

Reports filed with the Federal Elections Commission show the DNC gave the Washington state party more than $630,000 in the two years before the 1996 presidential election.

That was part of some $2.6 million the state party got from various national Democratic sources, Berendt said.

The money was split between issue ads, voter registration, mailings and voter drives. But the bulk of it went for issue ads, he said.

In Idaho, the state party received just under $47,000 from the DNC, according to elections commission records.

“We didn’t really count as a state that was key to anything,” said state chairwoman A.K. Linehart-Minnick.

Former Idaho state chairman Bill Mauk said he didn’t think any of the money was used to pay for the national party’s issue ads, although residents of North Idaho would have seen the commercials on Spokane television stations that were purchased by the Washington party.

Berendt said the Washington party had a chance to review all commercials, and state party leaders picked the ones that would be broadcast.

The most memorable ad may have been one that blasted Dole and Rep. Newt Gingrich over Medicare, and included a comment that the House speaker made about allowing Medicare to “wither on the vine.” Gingrich later argued that he was talking about the Medicare bureaucracy, not the program itself.

The ads did not urge viewers to vote for or against either candidate.

The commercials are often confused with another set of issue ads sponsored by the AFL-CIO, which used the same Gingrich comment as they targeted House Republicans.

Such issue ads have been used for years. But their use is increasing because federal law does not limit the amount that can be spent on them if they remain separate from a candidate’s campaign.

Part of the investigation by the Justice Department and Senate investigators, according to the New York Times, is whether the Clinton campaign helped raise the money and develop the ads.

Berendt said the state party’s lawyers reviewed the ads before they were broadcast.

“They’re legal, and we have been doing this for years. So have the Republicans,” Berendt said. “What no one foresaw was how much money would be dumped into it.”

, DataTimes