527's raise important issues concerning the conduct of campaigns (long)

[bluestateguy]

527's have always been legal, but they are now proliferating under the McCain-Feingiold law. Now that 527's will play an important role in campaigns for the foreseeable future, the question that repeatedly will arise is just how much should we hold a candidate responsible for the content of ads aired by 527's supporting his/her candidacy.

Remember that federal law prohibits 527 from collaborating with parties or campaign organizations. On the other hand, it's pretty easy to create a revolving door between a 527 and the campaign org./party: a loophole in the law allows someone to quit their membership in a campaign organization or party and join a 527 campaign; in fact they can go back and forth, as long as their is no collaboration.

When a candidate runs a negative ad, we know who to hold responsible because the ad will say "I'm X and I approved this message". 527's can make up innocuous sounding, shrewed names that make it hard for the less informed viewers to hold any particular candidate responsible. But let's just say, hypothetically speaking, the Ku Klux Klan formed a 527 and aired a virulently racist ad attacking John Kerry and supporting "The White Man's President" George W. Bush. Let's also assume Bush, his campaign and the RNC followed the law and had nothing to do with the ad. Nor did they have anything to do with the leaders of the organization during previous campaign activities. Are they obligated to denounce the ad or to ask that it be taken off the air? If the answer is yes, then we are saying that candidates should be held responsible for every public statement made by their supporters, even if they play no role in the campaign organization or the political party. I'm not so sure we want to saddle candidates with that kind of burden. Indeed, if a campaign formally contacted a 527, either directly or even through an intermediary, the argument could be made that they are collaborating, and thus breaking the law. And back to my hypothetical example again, what if the campaign publicly denounced the ads and asked that they be pulled, but the organization (the Klan) said "No"? We might say that that then absolves the campaign of responsibility, but I'm not so sure many voters will make those careful discriminations. Both sides have unflattering groups of supporters who mainstream supporters would just as soon consign to a closet, only to be let out on election day to go and vote.

I should close this post by saying that the Swift Boat ads attacking Kerry raise questions because there seems to be prima facie evidence of actual collarboration between Team Bush and the group. That would be illegal, to say nothing of the sleaziness and inaccuracies of the ads.