CAMPAIGN FINANCE CRIME
BAUER, BOB
Correspondence CAMPAIGN FINANCE CRIME ALLISON R. HAYWARD knows a good deal about election law, and she writes with verve and wit, making good entertainment of what is often the...
...BOB BAUER Washington, D.C...
...If the facts are allowed to speak for themselves, the story is scarcely one of constitutional heroism and brutal political oppression...
...The Federal Election Commission fi ned him for twice exceeding the aggregate cycle limit on federal contributions: once in 1989 and once in 1990...
...This is where the sudden emergence of this organization and the hard fact of its conducting only electionrelated activity slips stealthily from Hayward’s account...
...So Hayward has rewoven these threads into a tale far nobler than the participants deserve...
...He displays what I see as a disdain for big business...
...If this would cheer her, Allison R. Hayward might consider the Obama campaign’s gesture of bipartisanship: assisting John McCain with the enforcement of the law he has championed, the most recent amendment to which was signed into law by President Bush...
...should raise red fl ags (“Would You Hire Barack Obama...
...After all, if the ad closes with “Paid for by Harold Simmons and not authorized by any candidate or candidate committee,” the next question is: “Who is Harold Simmons...
...Bob Bauer is a student of campaign fi nance regulation of the highest order...
...If I headed up a law fi rm, I would have to think three times before extending Obama a job offer...
...Why, in Hayward’s words, he “undeniably has the right to spend his own money on a campaign ad berating Barack Obama...
...ATTACKING BIG BUSINESS I’M ENCOURAGED BY Senator McCain’s changing opinion on drilling as reported by Stephen F. Hayes (“To Drill, or Not to Drill,” August 25...
...This is not simply a new name...
...3. And more from Hayward: “AIP declares that it was formed to promote political ideas, but that campaign advocacy is not its major purpose” (emphasis in the original...
...The reason, one might assume, is that he and his partners like the ring of the “American Issues Project,” passed off as a “social welfare” organization, and that it would serve his interests to have the public hearing the ad imagine that it is the collective effort of “citizens”—not the pet political project of a fabulously wealthy fi nancier with a—to put it politely—exotic business and political past...
...The charges against AIP and Mr...
...ISHARE DEAN BARNETT’S opinion that Barack Obama’s r?sum...
...DuPont is huge...
...I have had the misfortune to be the one to fi re people like Obama from a couple of different companies I have worked for in the past...
...Correspondence CAMPAIGN FINANCE CRIME ALLISON R. HAYWARD knows a good deal about election law, and she writes with verve and wit, making good entertainment of what is often the dreariest subjects...
...August 2008, the same month that the ads in question began to run...
...He may recall that one impediment to the full enforcement of campaign fi nance laws prior to the 1970s was the fact that violations were punished as crimes...
...That this scheme was clumsy, and that the AIP clan will eventually have to answer for their violations, does not thrust them suddenly into a sympathetic light, and that the Obama campaign intends to see this through, to enforcement, does not make it an oppressor...
...Rather, if it does well at the box offi ce and encourages sincere thinking, I believe it will be successful...
...I hope for the best for all of the people associated with the fi lm...
...This is Hayward’s characterization of this group’s purchase of an identity...
...BRETT BUTLER Springfi eld, Ill...
...In THE WEEKLY STANDARD, she turns these talents to the task of defending the American Issues Project and its fi nancier, Harold Simmons (“Shut Up, They Explained,” September 8...
...Objections to this conduct strike Hayward as “campaign fi nance hyperformalism”— too much fussing about the proper choice of paperwork...
...Simmons are merely, she writes, “campaign fi nance hyperformalism,” by which she means that AIP and Simmons are guilty, at most, of fi ling the wrong “paper” with the government...
...GENE GUFFEY Sch?nau-Geb?g, Germany THE HOLLYWOOD RIGHT I NEVER KNEW THE MEN featured in Stephen F. Hayes’s article “Hollywood Takes on the Left” (August 11 / 18) were conservative, but how could I? An American Carol shouldn’t be burdened by the hope of creating a sea change in perception...
...By any measure, the organization’s purpose—whether it is “a” or “the” major purpose—is electionrelated: This electioneering is all it has to show for an existence of barely a month’s time...
...There is no way that I would vote for him as president, a job that requires tough and important decisions to be made on a daily basis...
...Simmon’s unlimited money and avoid various requirements of the law...
...Whatever one’s frustrations with the pace of FEC or IRS enforcement, I wouldn’t think he would choose those days over today...
...They are highly intelligent, but lack the drive to complete the work or project...
...These are legal conclusions he reaches with the facts he has in hand, not, as he would have it, “facts” representing the whole picture...
...OBAMA’S R?SUM...
...Note: The undersigned is the general counsel to Obama for America, responsible for what Allison refers to, critically, as the “campaign’s lawyering priorities...
...I bet big Kevlar doesn’t get complaints from McCain, either...
...The date of this identity heist...
...Not only has his career been strange for a lawyer, but it also lacks any important achievements...
...And he, it is fair to speculate, prefers not to have the question asked...
...To respond briefl y to his points, and at the risk of alienating every reader who isn’t already a campaign fi nance geek: Bauer disputes that AIP is a new name for an old group, observes that it may not properly be administered as tax-exempt, and declares that AIP’s purpose is “election related...
...Simmons sisters dispute donations in their names,” Dallas Morning News, May 4, 1997...
...But this is not a case where a collection of average citizens stumbled into a regulatory problem, no fault of theirs...
...ALLISON R. HAYWARD RESPONDS: I enjoy Bob Bauer’s spirited defense of the Obama campaign’s steps against AIP...
...This letter also appears on his website, www.moresoftmoneyhardlaw.com...
...What enrages me about McCain, though, is that he says he associates with independent California petroleum producers because “they’re not ExxonMobil...
...The organization has yet to release its records, which it is obligated by law and has pledged to do: We shall see what these papers show, but unless Hayward failed to mention it, she has not yet seen them...
...I’ll vote for them with my wallet...
...Before long, she has repackaged this little political start-up and pronounced it a tax-exempt “social welfare organization,” and the multibillionaire Harold Simmons becomes, at the touch of her magic keyboard, a mere victim of laws ambiguously drafted and now put to dastardly partisan misuse...
...September 1...
...They went about their business with the determination to steer around legal limits and fund their election-related activities just as they chose...
...But she also complains about the lack of “clear standards” in the law...
...2. Again, Hayward: “The American Issues Project is a tax-exempt social welfare organization...
...Bauer agrees that Harold Simmons would have the right as an individual to spend his own money in unlimited amounts on this same ad, and so he must agree that the crux of the issue is whether, by giving that same money to AIP, he committed a crime...
...Recall that the Obama legal strategy is not one limited to civil enforcement...
...It seems that she should choose one defense or the other: The law is either fatuously formal, clear but silly in the lines it draws, or the lines are not clearly drawn...
...Thereafter, his daughters alleged in legal action against him that he had drawn on a family trust fund for additional contributions in their names that they neither knew about nor approved (“family feud shows how rich spread political gifts...
...Simmons’s innocence in this matter is belied by his history with political money...
...But, does he complain about the fabrics made for pilots that come from DuPont...
...All skillfully done, and the effect Hayward achieves is in large measure owing to her careful management of the facts...
...Can you measure “purpose...
...That is precisely the point I felt worth making...
...Whether the money comes from Simmons or Soros, it seems like “hyperformalism” to recognize the one type of spending as protected First Amendment activity and the other as criminal...
...Bauer is contending that AIP/Simmons is in “knowing and willful” criminal violation...
...DAVID SHOWS Columbia, Miss...
...Simmons...
...They are, by the way, conclusions typically left to federal administrative authorities in the context of civil enforcement...
...This “group” is three people, one of whom has the money, donning the identity of an organization long out of business, and their purpose is to put on this disguise so that they can run political ads as a “social welfare organization” with Mr...
...1. “AIP is a new name for an older tax-exempt group...
...She is seeing here only what she wishes to see...
...4. And the unfortunate, much pickedupon Mr...
...it is a new “group,” two individuals with a plan and a third with the money to fund it, who are nesting within an operation, long defunct, that it is borrowing for the present purpose...
...This is not clear at all: If there is a “new name” and “new management,” it may be what it appears to be: a new organization, and its taxexempt purpose is asserted, not shown...
...Hayward wonders, then, why we should care whether he does so independently, as an individual, fi ling reports in his own name, or simply puts up the case for the fi ctitious “AIP...
Vol. 14 • September 2008 • No. 1
