Conservative Group Runs McCain Attack Ad in N.H.

In a mark of the rising temperature in the Republican presidential race, a leading conservative group has launched an independent television advertising campaign in New Hampshire attacking Sen. John McCain of Arizona over his support for campaign finance reform legislation.

The ad, by the grass-roots conservative group Americans for Tax Reform, follows a series of attacks on McCain from Texas Gov. George W. Bush over the same issue in the last 10 days. Grover G. Norquist, the group’s president, says it will spend $100,000 to run the 30-second ad on New Hampshire’s WMUR-TV over the next three weeks and may air the spot in other primary states if it can raise enough money.

In the ad, which began running Wednesday night, the group maintains that the campaign finance legislation backed by McCain would hurt the GOP and conservative causes. “Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Big Labor all endorse his top legislative priority,” the ad charges.

McCain’s campaign responded by releasing a statement from its New Hampshire chairman, Peter Spaulding, denouncing the ad and Norquist.

“You can judge a man not only by his friends but also by his enemies,” Spaulding said in the statement. “It is clear that John McCain has upset the lobbyists and status quo establishment in Washington with his calls to clean up our political system.”

The first editions of the ad, which ran this week, end by “morphing” a photo of McCain into one of President Clinton; concluding that might be too provocative, the group says it will ship new versions of the ad without that effect by early next week.

Publisher Steve Forbes’ campaign, meanwhile, accused Bush of orchestrating the conservative group’s ad campaign. Earlier, Forbes’ campaign accused Bush of orchestrating an ad campaign against Forbes in New Hampshire by another GOP group, the Republican Leadership Council. Both Bush and the leadership council denied the earlier charge.

“The more these coordinated attacks continue, the more the Bush operation creates a campaign finance scandal that will dwarf the Clinton-Gore campaign scandal of 1996,” Forbes campaign manager Bill Dal Col charged in a statement. On Thursday, both the Bush campaign and Norquist denied any collusion in the anti-McCain ad. Norquist said that, although he has praised Bush on occasion, he is officially neutral in the GOP race. He said a report in the Washington Post that he had endorsed Bush was inaccurate.

A Bush campaign spokesman also denounced the Forbes accusation. “It’s another reckless charge by the Forbes campaign, and we note, with some skepticism, they had nothing to say about the attacks launched against us by groups like NARAL [National Abortion Rights Action League] and the Sierra Club,” the spokesman said.

The ad continues a drumbeat of criticism against McCain’s campaign finance reform proposal from conservative groups. In September, Norquist and five other leading conservative groups--including the Christian Coalition, the American Conservative Union and the National Rifle Assn.--held a news conference in New Hampshire to denounce the proposal. The groups maintain that banning unlimited “soft money” contributions to the national parties--the core of McCain’s proposal--would leave the GOP at a disadvantage because labor unions could still spend unregulated sums to activate their members and Democrats would enjoy more favorable access to the national media.

In the ad, that complaint translates into a charge that McCain is “helping Democrats pass a campaign finance bill that would keep the Republican Party from fighting the liberal national media . . . [and] would leave labor unions, trial lawyers and pro-abortion groups free to attack Republicans.”

McCain has argued that soft money contributions to the parties are actually preventing the implementation of a conservative agenda. And he has said he would support legislation to prevent unions from using their members’ money for campaigns without their express permission. But McCain has opposed conservative efforts to tie such legislation to the soft money ban, fearing it could prove a “poison pill” that kills the entire package by forcing Democrats to vote against it.