Obama expedites solar and wind projects
Obama to raise money with Michael Jordan, other hoops stars

Americans for Prosperity plans $27M ad blitz against Obama

By Aamer Madhani, USA TODAY
Updated

Updated: 5:40 p.m.

Americans for Prosperity is planning a massive ad buy in 10 battleground states and Minnesota that will strike against President Obama for the rising national debt.

The group, which has already poured millions into advertisements against Obama, will spend approximately $7 million in the next week and up to $20 million more over the next three weeks on television ads as well as social media and Internet promotion, according to Levi Russell, communications director for AFP. It is the largest ad buy yet by the conservative group, Russell said.

The first ad that will begin airing in television markets Wednesday starts with video of President Obama announcing a pledge to cut the nation's deficit in half by the end of his first term in office. The national debt stood at about $10 trillion early in Obama's term, but has risen to more than $15 trillion.

The 30-second spot includes footage of an interview in February 2009 with NBC's Matt Lauer in which the president says, "If I don't have this done in three years, then there's going to be a one-term proposition."

The advertisement closes with the image of a rolling debt counter, and this text: "Let's make this a one-term proposition on Nov. 6."

The ads will air in Minnesota, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Besides criticizing Obama on the economy, AFP, which has been largely funded by billionaires and oil magnates Charles and David Koch, has spent millions on advertisements in swing states hammering Obama for his administration's handling of loan guarantees to clean energy firms, including the now bankrupt solar panel manufacturer Solyndra.

With the new ad campaign, AFP is also heading into a murky area of the campaign finance law.

The ads mark the first time that AFP has gone beyond "issue advocacy" to "express advocacy," or explicitly calling on voters to not vote for Obama. Under IRS rules, social welfare organizations, or 501(c)(4) groups, such as AFP, face restrictions on advocating for the election or defeat of a candidate.

And under current Federal Election Commission rules, social welfare groups also aren't obligated to reveal who their donors are.

But as a result of a federal court ruling earlier this year, outside groups such as AFP conducting issue advocacy are now required to reveal the identity of donors who funded the ads in the month before the political conventions as well as the weeks before the primary and general election. That is something AFP and other 501(c)(4) groups have been unwilling to do.

But AFP and other groups, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have found a loophole, said Paul Ryan, senior Counsel at the Campaign Legal Center in Washington. AFP will now spend its money on what is known as independent expenditures, ads that expressly promote or attack a candidate and aren't included in the new FEC rules for social welfare groups.

And since the express advocacy against Obama's reelection will not be the primary activity of AFP and it will spend less than half of its funding on the ads, AFP is making the case that it is not in violation of its status as a social welfare group, Ryan explained.

"Their motivation is quite clearly to avoid sharing with the voting public who is bank-rolling their ad campaigns, but they may be buying themselves a tax-law problem in the process," Ryan said.

Tim Phillips, president of AFP, said the group's lawyers and officials had been weighing the move for months after it became clear they would not be able to run issue ads for most of the final months of the presidential campaign without disclosing their donors.

"It's not a decision that we easily took," Phillips said. "It's not murky at all. It's pretty clear—there are clear limits to what you can do, dollarwise."

PREVIOUS
Obama expedites solar and wind projects
NEXT
Obama to raise money with Michael Jordan, other hoops stars
To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.
USA TODAY is now using Facebook Comments on our stories and blog posts to provide an enhanced user experience. To post a comment, log into Facebook and then "Add" your comment. To report spam or abuse, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box. To find out more, read the FAQ and Conversation Guidelines