Carter Wrenn says 527s are the latest chapter in "an old story."
The longtime Republican political consultant says that attempts to keep major donors from influencing campaigns have just led to new ways of soliciting money.
After Watergate, Congress passed campaign finance reform that limited direct contributions to candidates, so donors began giving to political action committees. Then money went to segregated funds run by the national parties.
Now, it goes to so-called 527 organizations, which can't explicitly call for the defeat of candidates, but can run ads attacking their positions or their records, but cannot coordinate with opponents' campaigns.
Wrenn said the legal restrictions on coordination are much looser than they used to be. When he ran the Congressional Club, he had to take care not to hire the same pollsters or consultants as Ronald Reagan, whose candidacy he was promoting.
Despite the ban on coordination, independent ads are often closely in sync with campaigns.
"You have people who have come out of the same political school, so they tend to look at things the same way," Wrenn said. "Still, you always sort of suspect that maybe in the back rooms in the dead of night there's a little bit of communication going on."
Blog RSS feed
