Today's New York Times brings an issue that new media on the left, and Rachel Maddow, have been highlighting for years: the outsized influence of super-rich individuals, like the Koch brothers, on behalf of Republicans through astroturf groups which are created as nonprofits in order to avoid campaign finance laws and to keep their donor lists secret. The article focuses on one of the most shadowy and influential of these groups--Americas for Job Security. The Times put a number on that influence in this post-Citizens United election.
With every election cycle comes a shadow army of benignly titled nonprofit groups like Americans for Job Security, devoted to politically charged "issue advocacy," much of it negative. But they are now being heard as never before — in this year of midterm discontent, Tea Party ferment and the first test of the Supreme Court decision allowing unlimited, and often anonymous, corporate political spending. Already they have spent more than $100 million — mostly for Republicans and more than twice as much as at this point four years ago.
None have been more active than Americans for Job Security, which spent $6 million on ads during the primary season. This week, emboldened by the court ruling, the group paid close to $4 million more for ads directly attacking nine Democratic candidates for Congress. That made it among the first to abandon the old approach of running ads that stopped just short of explicitly urging voters to elect or reject individual candidates.
(One of those nine Democrats targeted by AJS has successfully fought back at least for the near term, by getting misleading ads pulled. Virginia's Rep. Rick Boucher got the local ABC affiliate to pull an AJS add because it made false and misleading claims. But that's limited victory. AJS spent only $416,000 for this ad in this district, barely a drop in the $4 million directly targeted at these nine Democrats.)
The Times explores the close ties between AJS and Republican operatives, noting that "[w]hile its public address is a drop box at a United Parcel Service store in Alexandria, Va., [executive director] Mr. DeMaura actually works out of space that is sublet from a Republican consulting shop, Crossroads Media, whose other clients include the national Republican Party, the Republican Governors Association and American Crossroads, a Karl Rove-backed group raising millions to support Republican candidates."
Crossroads Media is run by Michael Dubke and David Carney, who along with several business groups helped start Americans for Job Security in 1997. Mr. Carney had been political director for President George Bush, and Mr. Dubke was the first executive director and then president of Americans for Job Security until April 2008, when Mr. DeMaura, recruited by Mr. Carney, took over.
The office space in Alexandria that the group shares with Crossroads Media — Suite 555 at 66 Canal Center Plaza, overlooking the Potomac — is home to at least three other political consulting firms, including the Black Rock Group, which Mr. Dubke runs with Carl Forti, a longtime Republican operative who is political director for American Crossroads.
As for Mr. DeMaura, it turns out he is the sole employee of Americans for Job Security, a 25-year-old former executive director of the New Hampshire Republican Party who cut his political teeth as an undergraduate by starting an anti-Hillary Clinton Facebook page.
The article details other evidence of direct connections between Republican operative and AJS activities: the NRCC, "a sometime client of Mr. Dubke’s," distributing an AJS announcement and transcript of an attack ad against Rep. Michael Acuri to local reporters; an "ad attacking a labor-backed Democrat in an Arkansas Senate primary, Bill Halter," which was placed by Crossroads and "produced by another Republican-connected company in the office suite, WWP Strategies"; and this:
And in Texas in 2008, while Mr. DeMaura’s office mates were consulting for the state Republican Party, he requested records from the Nueces County sheriff’s office on an incident in which a woman ran naked from the home of a prominent Democratic donor, who was arrested after flashing a phony badge at the police. The disgraced donor was soon featured in a Republican Party television ad linking him to Democratic candidates for the Texas legislature. Mr. DeMaura said his request was not connected to the ad, but would not explain why he had sought the records.
The reporter also looks at the means by which the organization keeps its donors secret--reporting all of its revenue as membership dues, and reviews the organization's tax records, finding "membership revenue fluctuating wildly depending on election cycles — similar to the fund-raising of political committees that escalates during campaign season."
"Membership dues and assessments" totaled $7 million in the 2004 presidential election, and dipped to $1.2 million the following year before climbing back to $3.9 million for the 2006 midterm elections. Then, in 2007, they plunged to zero before shooting up to $12.2 million for the 2008 presidential race.
Asked how it could have collected no dues in 2007, neither Mr. Dubke nor Mr. DeMaura offered an answer. Mr. DeMaura said that there is no set membership fee and that members are not required to pay annually.
The AJS was investigated by the state of Alaska for its involvement in a referendum there largely on behalf of and financed by Robert Gillam, a local financier "whose private fishing lodge could be affected" by the proposed mining activity the referendum was intended to halt. Gillam testified that he paid $2 million in "membership fees" to AJS "and that he 'had high hopes' the money would be used to oppose the mine."
"Americans for Job Security has no purpose other than to cover various money trails all over the country," the staff of the Alaska Public Offices Commission said in a report last year.
The AJS has flown under the media radar for years, but they have attracted the attention of watchdog groups. In 2007, Public Citizen filed a complaint with the IRS, which was never answered. In 2008, staff lawyers with the Federal Elections Commission recommended an investigation, but the FEC Commissioners--dominated by Republican--killed the investigation and any enforcement action.
The AJS, and plenty more like it, aren't new to the political scene and aren't a result of Citizens United. But that decision, and the complete freedom it provides to corporate America, is going to make elections from here on out corporate free for alls.