Reply #58: Center for Public Integrity: Political Mugging in America, March 2004 [View All]

[madfloridian]

So much outrage against the Swiftboat vets 527. So little about this one against our own.

http://www.public-i.org/report.aspx?aid=194&sid=200

SNIP.."On November 7, 2003, a strange new group no one had ever heard of called "Americans for Jobs & Healthcare" was quietly formed and soon thereafter began running a million dollar operation including political ads against then-frontrunner Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean. The commercials ripped Dean over his positions or past record on gun rights, trade and Medicare growth. But the most inflammatory ad used the visual image of Osama bin Laden as a way to raise questions about Dean's foreign policy credibility. While the spots ran, Americans for Jobs—through its then-spokesman, Robert Gibbs, a former Kerry campaign employee—refused to disclose its donors."

SNIP.."The most stunning single fact to emerge—which should have been covered more heavily nationwide and was first broken by the Web site PoliticsNJ.com—was that disgraced former Senator Robert Torricelli, severely admonished for his unsavory campaign finance practices and forced to leave the Senate, had quietly donated $50,000 from his old Senate campaign account to Americans for Jobs. Torricelli reportedly also is a fundraiser for Senator Kerry's presidential campaign..."

SNIP.."Americans for Jobs was a street rumble after dark, in which donors or fundraisers for the major Democratic presidential candidates then overshadowed by Dean—Kerry, Rep. Richard Gephardt, and retired General Wesley Clark—all piled on. Labor unions that had publicly endorsed Gephardt accounted for a fifth of the money—the International Longshoremen's Association ($50,000), the Laborers' International Union of North America ($50,000), the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers ($100,000), the International Association of Ironworkers ($25,000) and the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers ($5,000). A former Dean donor, former Slim-Fast Foods businessman S. Daniel Abraham, gave $200,000. Past Kerry donor Bernard Schwartz, chairman of Loral Space and Communications—the tenth leading donor to the Democratic Party, giving $5.3 million over the years—chipped in $15,000. A top money chaser for Wesley Clark, Alan Patricof, also donated to this shadowy group...."
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