The GOP's Answer to Union Money

Achieving parity with the Democrats in campaign spending would be no small feat. Yet it appears possible.

By Fred Barnes
WSJ.com

When Steven Law was deputy secretary of labor in the George W. Bush administration, he routinely scrutinized the disclosure forms of labor unions. Unions had recently been required to report new details about how they spent their members' dues money. Mr. Law discovered that organized labor was contributing millions to a variety of liberal groups—environmentalists, gay-rights advocates and left-wing blogs, among others.

For Mr. Law, it was a revelation and a lesson. He concluded that the labor movement had enlarged and strengthened the coalition that helped produce Democratic landslides in 2006 and 2008.

Now, as president and CEO of the independent pro-Republican group American Crossroads (AC), Mr. Law is preparing to fund seven or eight conservative organizations and create a broad front of support for Republican candidates in 2012. As a trial run, AC gave $3.7 million to the National Federation of Independent Business, $4 million to Americans for Tax Reform, and $1.5 million to the Republican State Leadership Committee in last year's midterm election campaign. Republicans won a massive victory, and Mr. Law decided it was money well spent.

"Funding the right," as AC calls it, isn't the only political tactic Republicans are swiping from Democrats for use next year. Another is focusing on early voting in the weeks before Election Day, a tactic that helped Democrats capture both houses of Congress in 2006 and the White House in 2008. AC tested an early-voting operation in a special House election in Nevada in September. Republican Mark Amodei won a majority of early voters and was elected handily.

The organization has also embraced two other tactics that have been applied more effectively by Democrats in recent elections than by Republicans. One is "stretching the battlefield," as a Republican consultant describes it, to make the Republican presidential candidate competitive in normally Democratic states—Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, for example. The other would expand the issue environment by raising subjects, such as the Solyndra solar-subsidy scandal, that voters may have heard of but failed to understand.

American Crossroads is an "independent expenditure" group or "super PAC" which operates as a tax-exempt organization under section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code. It is committed to boosting Republican candidates, mostly with TV ads, but it is legally barred from coordinating directly with their campaigns. It has an all-star team of unpaid advisers including former George W. Bush aides Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour.

Its goal in 2012—and the goal of Republicans in general—is parity with Democrats in campaign spending. That would be no small feat, as Democrats have gained a significant edge in recent elections, and overall Democrats and pro-Democratic groups remain in the lead. Yet parity appears achievable.

Mr. Obama raised $751 million in the 2007-2008 cycle. For 2011-2012, the president and the Democratic National Committee have a goal of $1 billion. More likely his campaign will have to settle for roughly $700 million to $750 million. This is due in part to a decline in wealthy donors.

Meanwhile, a pro-Obama group, Priorities USA, is off to a slow start in reaching its goal of $100 million. Run by Bill Burton, formerly a White House spokesman for Mr. Obama, it was designed as a Democratic version of American Crossroads. But it lacks the fund-raising prowess supplied by AC's big guns like Messrs. Rove and Barbour.

In contrast, AC, which spent $71 million in the 2010 campaign, is well on its way to collecting $300 million in cash and pledges. And because it has overhead of roughly 1%, nearly all the money will be spent on campaigns.

One of its biggest tasks in 2012 will be to protect the eventual Republican presidential candidate from being demonized by the Obama campaign. The fear is that the GOP nominee, having exhausted his own funds during the primary season, would be helpless against a wave of attack ads by the Obama campaign in the months before the GOP convention in August. Absent a full-blown counterattack, the candidate could fall behind by an insurmountable margin.

American Crossroads is prepared to fill the gap and spend millions of dollars on a TV blitz defending the Republican candidate and criticizing Mr. Obama to ensure that "the candidate remains viable," as a Republican operative told me. Then, in the final weeks of the campaign, AC aims to help nullify the usual Democratic advantage. That's when Democrats spend the most. Creating a balance in late spending is included in AC's playbook.

AC won't be alone in all this. The group is part of the Weaver Terrace Group, named for the location of Mr. Rove's residence (although he's since moved) where two dozen groups gathered last year to share their plans for the midterm election. Now they convene monthly in Mr. Law's office in downtown Washington.

AC will concentrate on the presidential race and a few tight House and Senate contests. The American Action Network, which was active in the 2010 campaign, is targeting House races. The new Young Guns political action committee plans to support Republican House candidates. Americans for Prosperity, funded by the Koch brothers, stirs grass-roots activism.

A participant in the Weaver Terrace sessions describes them as "a meeting of equals." AC is not in charge, but its leaders have the highest profile. First as a Washington operative, then as head of the Republican Governors Association, Mr. Barbour was renowned for his fund-raising ability.

Federal election law prohibits the Republican National Committee (or, for that matter, the GOP nominee's campaign) from having any involvement with independent expenditure groups such as American Crossroads or the American Action Network. The RNC, rather, has the traditional role of providing the indispensable "ground game." It funds state Republican parties, conducts voter-registration drives, works closely with the presidential nominee's campaign, and organizes the 72-hour plan to get voters to polls on Election Day.

American Crossroads and its allies are the critical new players in the Republican campaign. Their coalition didn't exist during the 2008 presidential race. In 2012, they'll have a huge impact and not only on individual races. Labor unions, by bonding with liberal groups, have moved the country to the left. Pro-Republican groups like AC hope to move America to the right.

Mr. Barnes is executive editor of the Weekly Standard and a commentator on Fox News Channel.