Politifact:
It isn't often that U.S. campaigns venture into Latin American retirement policy, but the knock-down, drag-out battle for a Nevada Senate seat has done just that.
It came up in an ad run by the Patriot Majority PAC, an obscure Washington-based group that appears to be spending big money on campaign advertising this year, primarily against Sharron Angle, the Republican who's challenging Senate Majority Harry Reid, D-Nev. [Emphasis added]
Sounds nefarious and shadowy, this PAC does. Just how "obscure" is it?
Not too, it turns out.
In March of this year, Huffington Post outlined its founder, its purpose, its methods and even its targets:
Patriot Majority PAC, a group created last year by Democratic Party strategist Craig Varoga, has a new mission -- make sure the U.S. House and Senate stay Tea Party free....
Varoga's PAC hopes to combat the influence of the Tea Party by targeting 12 to 15 races involving candidates from the conservative movement and launching an independent counter-attack of television, radio and online ads, according to Cillizza.
Go to the FEC database and you can easily find the funders (unions), amounts contributed and dates of donation.
If Politifact wants to write about "obscure" Washington-based groups who are trying to influence the political landscape, perhaps they shouldn't have picked a group whose founder, donors, amount of contributions, purpose, and targets are easily found with a few minutes of googling -- not to mention readily available in public records.
Instead they might consider how much time and effort New York Times reporter Mike McIntire went to trying to figure out who was behind the group running an anti-"Obamacare" ad he happened to catch.
Reporters are paid to try to get around these barriers, and we have resources at our disposal that the average person does not. I’ll get on a plane if necessary to go confront someone, meet a source or check out an address. News organizations subscribe to public records databases, and go to court to try to force disclosure of important information.
To see just how hard it is to crack the secrecy that shrouds the vaguely named groups bombarding the airwaves, I went looking for one that seemed typical of the trend. The Coalition to Protect Seniors, with its attention-grabbing ads and middle-of-the-pack spending — about $400,000 as of last week — fit the bill.
After phone calls, domain searches, leads given by consultants, checks of incorporation filings, and searches for lawsuits, tax liens and property records, he finally finds in an expenditure report the name of a Florida consulting firm, the Fenwick Group, that received money from the coalition. Turned out though, the phone number provided was answered by an insurance company and McIntire was sent to the voicemail of a Jay Handline, asking for a call-back that never came.
I tried the Fenwick number again, and this time Mr. Handline picked up. He said he was not a member of the coalition and only placed its television ads, adding that he got the job through someone in the health care field for whom he had done similar work in the past. He would not name the person.
“But they’re not a member of the coalition either,” he said.
So who are the members?
“I really can’t give you any details.”
He took down my number and said he would see if anyone in the coalition wanted to talk about it. No one did.
I suppose I could keep nosing around by traveling to Delaware, or better yet, Florida (I haven’t grooved to the music in a long time). It may yet come to that.
At any rate, it is clearly going to take a lot more work to see through an organization that is about as transparent as a dirty diaper.
McIntire never does find out anything at all about the "Coalition to Protect Seniors." That's "obscure." And let's not even get started on trying to figure out who's behind all the U.S. Chamber of Commerce money swamping this election cycle.
For Politifact to label "obscure" the Patriot Majority PAC -- with its donors, amount of contributions, purpose, targets all out there not only in public records, but with its founder giving interviews -- is a joke, and not worthy of its touted fact-checking capabilities.
Call it false equivalency, call it fair and balanced. But don't call it fact-checking.