Special Interests Rewriting Political Script

Billy Tower is no politician, but he is in the vanguard of a political trend transforming congressional races this year from contests between local candidates into clashes of national interest groups.

Tower, who owns Barnacle Billy’s restaurant in a tiny coastal resort town south of here, went on television earlier this year, pleading with viewers to ignore “cheap-shot attacks” that unions and other liberal groups were making on freshman Republican Rep. James B. Longley Jr.

That 30-second spot, financed by the National Restaurant Assn., was one of thousands of political ads that have rained down on voters around the country this year as interest groups have found a powerful new way to inject their views--and their money--into this fall’s battle for control of Congress.

In Longley’s district and other closely fought races, interest groups are spending tens of millions of dollars on what amounts to their own campaigns for favored candidates or issues--efforts that in some cases have nearly overshadowed the candidates’ own campaigns.

This is a sharp departure from the days when interest groups spent most of their political money the old-fashioned way: by giving contributions to candidates. More and more, special interests are charting a new course, channeling money into independent expenditures and “issue advocacy” ads to bring their own issues to the foreground and perhaps tilt the balance in some races.

“There has been an explosion of issue ads,” said Lisa Rosenberg, a campaign finance expert at the Center for Responsive Politics. “It’s almost like a shadow campaign, not just a competition between two candidates.”

The granddaddy of these initiatives is the AFL-CIO’s $35-million campaign of ads attacking vulnerable House Republicans. But a similar script is being followed by many other groups--the Chamber of Commerce, Handgun Control and the Sierra Club, to name three of the big ones.

While liberal groups have been the most visible at the strategy so far this year, conservatives are credited with starting the trend. In 1994, the National Rifle Assn. and the Christian Coalition mounted big campaigns that helped defeat House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) and other Democratic incumbents.

Defenders of the practice say their campaigns are constitutionally protected forms of political debate and that they give voters a new way to make sure campaigns address issues of concern to them.

But the spending could increasingly begin to overwhelm the more traditional parts of the political process. While direct donations to candidates are limited to $5,000 for political action committees and $1,000 for individuals, independent expenditures by groups either for or against candidates are unlimited. The only requirements are that the money be reported to the Federal Election Commission and that the group not coordinate or consult with the candidate about the expenditure.

This year, the AFL-CIO and other groups have taken advantage of a similar but even wider loophole: “issue advocacy” advertising, which does not even have to be reported so long as the ads do not explicitly call for the election or defeat of a candidate and are not coordinated with any candidate.

“Every year the bar keeps going up in terms of what people do,” said Tanya Metaksa, a lobbyist for the National Rifle Assn., which in 1993-94 reported $1.5 million in independent political expenditures. “Everybody’s trying to find a way around campaign spending limits.”

It is hard to say how much is being spent since the “issue advocacy” ads do not have to be reported.

But the AFL-CIO’s $35-million ad budget alone dwarfs the $5.2 million in independent expenditures reported by all groups to the FEC in 1993-94. The League of Conservation Voters is planning a $1.5-million campaign that by itself matches the money spent last election by the gun lobby. And the Coalition, an amalgam of business groups formed to counter labor’s onslaught, has already raised about $4 million for issue ads.

In California, the influx of national interest-group ads and money has been an important element of many races, including the reelection campaign of Rep. Andrea Seastrand (R-Shell Beach), who has been hit especially hard on environmental issues.

Throughout the country, at least 54 incumbents have been the target of issue advertising by at least one interest group, according to a study by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication.

Longley’s district--covering the southern, most populous, third of Maine--provides a clear picture of the impact. The Sierra Club has run radio spots criticizing Longley’s early votes to ease environmental regulations. The League of Conservation Voters named him one of its “Dirty Dozen” incumbents targeted for defeat. Handgun Control slapped billboards onto Portland buses criticizing Longley for opposing the 1994 ban on certain types of assault weapons.

But the biggest blow has come from the AFL-CIO, which in October 1995 began a series of 11 ads criticizing his record. Since April, the AFL-CIO says it has spent $440,000 in Longley’s district--more than the $375,000 Longley himself had raised by mid-October.

Longley has bitterly denounced the labor campaign as a distortion of his record, and the GOP has filed a lawsuit charging that the labor ads nationwide amount to an illegal use of union dues to influence elections.

Longley’s allies last spring began striking back with their own ads, though with a fraction of the resources poured in by his opponents. In addition to the restaurant association ad, spots defending Longley were aired by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Coalition and the National Republican Congressional Committee.

“I’ll take all the help I can get,” Longley said.

As Longley traveled around his district one crisp fall morning recently, he often portrayed himself as a victim of out-of-state interests bent on demonizing him.

But even with some voter backlash against the influx of out-of-state interests, some of Longley’s supporters concede that deep damage has already been done.

“I think it’s going to hurt him,” said Tower, the restaurant owner turned political pitchman. “Jim Longley’s got a hard battle ahead of him.”