Independent Groups Pump Up for Big Role as Presidential Primary Voting Begins

WASHINGTON — If it's not already tough enough to keep track of the presidential contenders as the real voting begins Thursday with the Iowa caucuses, now we have another layer of players: independent groups, looking to take a major role in the 2008 elections.

These groups have already laid out more than $4 million for political ads, flyers and phone calls either to undercut candidates they oppose or boost the ones they favor.

No one can be sure whether such efforts could tilt the final outcome. In the last presidential election, Democratic nominee John Kerry was attacked — and by most accounts damaged — by ads from the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth, a group of Republicans who tried to smear his record as a Vietnam war hero.

With new federal limits on donations to political parties, big political contributors are expected to shower even more largesse on similar outside groups this year.

In the early going, Democratic contender Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York has drawn the most attention from outside groups — with more than $1.5 million reported spent by those that support her and nearly $333,000 spent to oppose her.

Among the efforts:

— Emily's List, an abortion rights group that supports women candidates, has launched a voter education campaign aimed at bringing out Iowa women who will go to the caucuses and "stand in Hillary's corner."

— The political arms of two unions — the American Federation of State County & Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the American Federation of Teachers — have mobilized independent campaigns for Clinton.

Anti-Clinton groups are also mobilizing:

— The anti-abortion group Life and Liberty PAC Inc. has spent the most, $207,000, according to Federal Election Commission reports filed late last week.

— A small and modestly funded liberal group, Democratic Courage, has also made its mark, chiefly by running an Internet ad depicting Clinton as a cardboard cut-out that falls over when challenged by a Republican competitor.

Democratic Courage has reported spending just $57,200 on the anti-Clinton effort, according to FEC data late last week. But the Web ad reached a substantial viewership thanks to news coverage.

And looming on the horizon is an old Clinton nemesis, Citizens United, a group led by former Republican congressional aide Dave Bossie, who began investigating President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary in the 1990s.

Citizens United is promising to release a highly critical documentary titled "Hillary: The Movie" and has posted a trailer is on its Web site. The group this month filed a lawsuit asking the Federal District Court in the District of Columbia to permit the airing of the trailer and the movie on national TV, despite campaign financing laws that ban such "electioneering communications" by groups that accept corporate donations and decline to disclose their donors.

Citizens United plans to sell individual copies of the film in the near future but has not disclosed when it will be available.

All presidential candidates disavow ties to such independent efforts, which by law cannot be coordinated with official campaigns.

But few candidates are as outspoken as Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, who has been the target of some of the outsider attacks, including more than $156,000 spent on ads by the pro-Clinton AFSCME forces. Obama condemned the independent campaigns as "just another part of the same broken system that turns people off from the political process."

Making the attacks a rallying cry for his campaign, the Illinois lawmaker e-mailed supporters: "The Washington establishment is throwing everything at us to try and block our path" and appealed for $25 contributions.

Former Sen. John Edwards, the North Carolina Democrat who has run an anti-establishment presidential campaign, has been a major beneficiary of efforts by labor union activists, who have spent nearly $1.3 million to tout him in broadcast ads.

On the Republican side, the outside groups have been less visible, although the anti-tax, pro-business Club for Growth has launched an all-out assault on the tax record of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who has recently surged in his long-shot presidential bid.

Club for Growth's political arm, which can accept unlimited donations, has announced a $550,000 ad buy through next week for an anti-Huckabee ad, now being aired in Iowa and South Carolina.

Much of the group's 2008 primary effort is underwritten by Houston builder Bob Perry, who recently donated $200,000 to Club for Growth, and who in 2004 was one of the major underwriters for the Swiftboat group's attacks on Democrat nominee Kerry.