Edwards "discourages" 527 spending on his behalf - former Edwards campaign mgr runs pro-Edwards 527

[Adelante]

An independent group linked to Senator John Edwards is planning a burst of more than $750,000 in planned television spending, according to details from a rival campaign.

-snip

The “Alliance for a New America” is said to be funded by the Service Employees International Union and is run by a longtime close aide to John Edwards, Nick Baldick.

It’s one of several 527s playing in Iowa this cycle, and while the groups can compromise a candidate’s reformer status, the money is basically too good to turn down.

That’s certainly the case with Edwards, who has based his campaign on a kind of fierce purity, particularly with relationship to his own campaign’s finances: He refuses to take money from lobbyists or PACs.

He also disapproves, officially, of the outside spending on his behalf.

”The way the law exists today is you have no control,” Edwards said Thursday. ”You’re not allowed by law to have contact or to coordinate with 527s. So can you discourage it? Yes, and I do.”

He hasn’t discouraged it so energetically to keep Baldick, whose firm, S&B Public Solutions was on campaign payroll as recently as the second quarter of this year, from running one.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1207/A_527_twofer.html