Founded 2008 Website leadership-project.org | Type 527 group | |
The American Leadership Project (ALP) is an unincorporated association organized under section 527 of the IRS code formed in February 2008 in order to highlight issues of importance to the American middle class, such the economy, jobs, the rising cost of health care, and the mortgage crisis. The ALP intended to communicate issue-specific messages during the 2008 Democratic presidential primary elections and presently for the general election. The ALP does not coordinate with any candidate or any candidate’s committee. The ALP's messages were used preceding primary elections in the states of Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana. The ads had been pro-Hillary Clinton and anti-Barack Obama. Since the conclusion of the Primary season, with Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee and John McCain as the Republican candidate, the organization has run several ads against McCain.
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As of March 5, the group had raised US$1.2 million, including a one million dollar contribution from AFSCME, a labor union backing Clinton.
Their first television advertisement stated, "If speeches could create jobs, we wouldn't be facing a recession," mirroring Clinton, who has argued that Obama's eloquence would not lead to real policy change.
Spending
The group had been rumored to plan to spend around $10 million on ads in Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania in the lead up to those U.S. state's 2008 Democratic primaries. The group actually aired $833,000 worth of pro-Clinton television ads in Texas and Ohio and had $300,000 left in the bank according to FEC filings on March 5.
As a 527, ALP is required to disclose their donors quarterly to the IRS and have done so. Because they engage in electioneering communications, they are also required to disclose their donors and expenditures to the FEC within 24 hours of new communications.
Questions of legality
Jason Kinney, a California political consultant that helped develop the group, said it relies on "a new and developing area of the law, but we've taken every step and are as confident as we can be that we are adhering to all of the regulations." Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a campaign finance reform group, said of ALP, "This pop-up 527 group clearly has been created to spend unlimited soft money to influence the presidential election. As far as the duck test goes: It looks like a campaign ad; it sounds like a campaign ad; it's a campaign ad."
Subodh Chandra, a lawyer in Ohio and Obama supporter filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, calling on them to open an investigation, shut down the organization and seek criminal penalties against its directors and donors. He said the new organization allows Mrs. Clinton's backers to "cheat the system" by paying for their own ads for Mrs. Clinton even through they have already donated the maximum $2,300 allowed by law to her campaign. It took three years for the FEC to settle similar complaints lodged against independent political entities operating in the 2004 election.
Democratic presidential candidate Senator Mike Gravel filed his own lawsuit against the ALP in Ohio federal court, requesting that the organization be barred from airing a television ad in Ohio before the Ohio primary.
Ads during Texas primary
The group premiered two ads during the Texas Democratic primary comparing the opposing candidate's health care plans. Factcheck.org, who was quoted in the first ad, claimed it misrepresented what they had said about Clinton's plan. The group also criticized the second ad for selectively quoting an editorial from the Washington Post authored by Steven Pearlstein in a way that made the quote appear to be the paper's own editorial opinion.