Howard Dean contended Wednesday that Democratic front-runner John Kerry supported a “politically corrupt” secret group that aired harsh negative ads in three early primary and caucus states in an attempt to destroy the former Vermont governor’s presidential candidacy.
And in another sign of an increasingly acrimonious campaign between Dean and Kerry, the former Vermont governor said he thought that another rival, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, would be a better contender in the general election against President Bush.
“My fear is that [Kerry] actually won’t be the strongest Democratic candidate,” Dean told CBS News.
For his part, Edwards appealed to Wisconsin’s independent streak and said that Dean was “a very wise man.”
Making a brief appearance in Milwaukee before departing to Vermont, Dean skewered Kerry for television ads aired late last year and earlier this year in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina by a group called Americans for Jobs, Healthcare & Progressive Values. The group was backed by organizations and individuals with ties to Kerry and former contender Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.).
“I have not heard of a case where other candidates have their supporters contribute to a secret political action group to run ads . . . with pictures of Osama bin Laden and so forth, unattributed ads, attacking another candidate. I have not heard of that happening before,” Dean said. “I’m sorry to see Sen. Kerry introduce those techniques to the Democratic Party.”
Group’s chief scoffs
David Jones, executive director of the group, said, “Howard Dean’s words are the last gasp of a desperate, dying campaign.” Jones said there was no coordination between his group and the Kerry or Gephardt campaigns in airing the ads.
Dean’s comments came as he took a break to attend a high school hockey game involving his son in Burlington, Vt. He is to return Thursday to campaign in Oshkosh. Wisconsin’s primary is Tuesday.
The last week has been tumultuous for the Dean campaign. Last Thursday, the campaign told supporters that it expected to end its bid unless Dean won in Wisconsin. But after raising $1.3 million, Dean decided to continue on regardless of what happens in Wisconsin on Tuesday. Dean is winless in 14 state contests, and his second-place standing in the delegate count is close to being eclipsed by Edwards.
Edwards again emphasized his positive campaign, going out of his way not to mention by name or even by suggestion any Democratic rivals. The closest he came to addressing Kerry and his increasingly solid front-runner status was to begin virtually every speech throughout Wisconsin by imploring voters to demand “an election, not a coronation.”
In Wisconsin, Edwards’ campaign speech, which he had delivered with barely a change since Iowa, took on a new character, aimed squarely at the slumping manufacturing economy in Wisconsin.
Where Edwards once talked about a 10-year-old little girl who routinely went to bed hungry, he spoke of an anonymous blue-collar worker who has to tell his children that he has lost his job because his factory is moving its operation overseas.
More than Edwards’ speech, however, it was Dean’s favoring of him over Kerry that was notable on Wednesday.
“I think what it means is that Gov. Dean has been in the race a long time,” Edwards said. “He knows what the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates are. He wants to beat Bush. He knows that to anyone who looks at the empirical evidence of this primary it’s obvious that I’m attracting a group of voters–independents and people that we’ll have to attract to win in the fall–which make me the stronger candidate in this race.”
Trying to light fire
In denouncing Kerry, Dean was trying to rekindle the insurgent fervor that propelled him to the top tier of candidates before the Iowa caucuses.
The television ads critical of Dean, which cost about a half-million dollars, included one using a picture of bin Laden. The ads began airing in December in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. They attacked Dean for lacking foreign policy experience and for past positions in support of free trade and cuts in Medicare benefits.
Records show that among the contributors to the group was former Sen. Robert Torricelli of New Jersey, who is helping raise funds for Kerry’s bid. Torricelli donated $50,000 out of his campaign fund to the group, financial disclosure reports show. Torricelli came under an ethics cloud in the Senate two years ago for his fundraising activities and declined to seek re-election. Other donors were unions that had backed Gephardt’s ill-fated presidential bid.
When the commercials ran, officials of the group refused to disclose their donors, although the organization was viewed as an effort to halt Dean’s progress as the front-runner. Dean complained about the commercials when they aired and asked that his competitors denounce them.
Jones, the group’s executive director, who worked for Gephardt as a fundraiser in the 1990s, has now released fundraising records detailing supporters’ ties to the former Missouri congressman and to Kerry, a Massachusetts senator.
“The goal of our organization was to point out that Howard Dean had no foreign policy experience in a year when foreign policy experience is a top concern,” Jones said.
But Dean said the ads and the group’s relationship with Kerry made the senator “more like President Bush than I ever imagined.”
“We now see Sen. Kerry is not only supporting the Bush agenda on the war, supporting the Bush agenda on No Child Left Behind [an education act], but Sen. Kerry apparently also supports the kind of politically corrupt fundraising mechanisms that George Bush has also employed,” Dean said.
Dean has maintained a steady attack on Kerry’s fundraising in the Senate, contending that the Massachusetts senator is receptive to taking money from the special interests that Kerry criticizes on the stump.
Tax-exempt status
Americans for Jobs, Healthcare & Progressive Values is a 527 organization, a description in the federal tax code referring to the tax-exempt status that allows such groups to operate without the normal financial restrictions and disclosure rules for political action committees. To maintain their tax status, such groups cannot expressly advocate for or against the defeat of a candidate.
Unlike PACs, 527 organizations can accept unlimited financial donations but cannot run ads later than one month before an election. They also cannot coordinate their activities with any political candidates.
Under one major change in federal law adopted in 2001, the groups must file quarterly reports detailing their donors. The group, which was formed in November, filed its first quarterly report this month.
