Conservative Group Begins Low-Budget Ad to Defend Bush

Washington Post, March 11, 2004

While liberal advocacy groups are spending millions of dollars on television ads attacking President Bush, David N. Bossie has launched a far more modest venture in the president's defense. Bossie's group, Citizens United, began running a 30-second spot this week making fun of Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.).

But while the Media Fund, a group led by Clinton White House aide Harold Ickes, is spending million on its initial anti-Bush ads criticizing "corporate greed," Bossie's budget is a little more than 0,000. "We're a conservative group with a lot of small donors around the country," Bossie said. "We don't have big pockets."

The ad, running in at least 10 states, takes aim at Kerry's wealth: "Hairstyle by Cristophe: . Designer shirts: 0. Forty-two-foot luxury yacht: million. Four lavish mansions and beachfront estate: over million. Another rich, liberal elitist from Massachusetts who claims he's a man of the people: priceless."

Said Bossie: "We decided to use humor as opposed to the hate-filled speech and vitriol used by left-wing organizations against George Bush."

Why is Bossie advertising when the Bush camp is beginning to tap a 0 million war chest? "The president's campaign is not going to be able to answer every single attack that is false or misleading or just plain nasty," he said. "I plan on being on offense in defining who John Kerry is to the American people."

Bossie stirred controversy when he investigated President Bill Clinton as a staff member for the Senate Whitewater Committee and Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.). Bossie resigned in 1998 amid a controversy over the selective editing of transcripts of former associate attorney general Webster L. Hubbell's prison conversations.

Citizens United's board chairman is Floyd G. Brown, executive director of the Young America's Foundation and perhaps best known for making the Willie Horton ads against Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis in 1988.

The Club for Growth, a free-market group that ran ads against Howard Dean, says it has raised nearly million for anti-Kerry ads that will begin in the next few weeks.

"We like to play the role of attack dog," said the group's president, Steve Moore. "One thing we can do that Bush can't do is be politically incorrect." His first ad, he said, will laud the president's response to the 2001 terrorist attacks and "probably bring howls of protest from the left."