By
MARSHA MERCER
President
Barack Obama is converting his campaign apparatus to a tax-exempt organization aimed
at pushing his agenda. It’s a bold but risky
move.
The
newly created Organizing for Action will accept unlimited contributions from
individuals and corporations.
The
strategy could be a way for Obama to assure his legacy through legislative
accomplishments and beat the second-term curse, a supposed phenomenon of the
modern era that says most re-elected presidents have less –than-successful
second terms.
Or the strategy could backfire and bring disillusionment to
the idealistic young people Obama hopes to motivate. That would be more than a
setback to his progressive agenda. That would be a curse that could damn
Democrats in future elections.
Fred
Wertheimer, a leading campaign finance reformer, was among the first to sound
an alarm.
“It opens the door to opportunities for
government corruption by allowing corporations and individuals to provide
unlimited amounts of money to directly benefit the president’s interest and
potentially to receive government benefits and favors in return,” Wertheimer,
president of Democracy 21, said in a statement. His group describes itself as working
to eliminate the undue influence of big money in American politics.
“This
would take President Obama about as far away as he could possibly get from the
goal he set in 2008 to ‘change the way business is done in Washington,’” said Wertheimer.
The
last thing Democrats need is to alienate the fans Obama brought out in droves
in 2008 and 2012. Organizing for Action does plan to disclose names of donors, even
though the law doesn’t require it. Aides told the New York Times they were unsure
whether individual amounts would also be released. It would help if they just said yes to full
transparency.
The
new group is the successor to Organizing for America, the Obama campaign arm that
operated as part of the Democratic National Committee. Organizing for Action is
separate from the national party and is being chartered as a 501(c)(4) organization, which must operate exclusively
for the promotion of social welfare. These groups may lobby. Donations are generally
not tax deductible as charitable contributions.
Obama’s
position on corporate contributions evolved as he faced competition from
well-funded Republicans. Wertheimer noted that Obama had refused corporate
contributions for his 2009 inauguration. Planners of the 2012 Democratic
National Convention initially refused corporate cash but later reversed themselves
and accepted $20 million from banks and other sponsors. Obama accepted corporate
contributions for his 2013 inauguration, including $250,000 from ExxonMobil.
The
Organizing for Action is being run by some of Obama’s closest political
advisers. Michelle Obama announced the new grassroots effort in a video three
days before the inauguration. Typical of their firm grasp of the obvious, news outlets
mostly focused on her new hairstyle.
It’s
“the next step in our grassroots movement and will be crucial to finishing what
we started,” the president wrote in a note on the Organizing for Action
website.
Organizing
for Action plans a grassroots structure with local control while running
expensive, campaign-style TV ads.
Let’s
assume that supporters are not turned off by the potential fat cat influence on
the second term. Does that mean it’s smooth sailing for Organizing for Action?
Not exactly. Some Democrats worry that the group will drain energy and support from
the party.
“We need a unified organization that will bring about victories in 2013
and 2014, and we don’t need to be splitting our efforts,” Fred
Hudson, vice chairman of the Virginia Democratic party, told Beth Reinhard of the National
Journal.
“It’s a recipe for how to lose an election. We’ve
been told there will be no competition for fundraising, but that’s difficult
for me to accept, and there will certainly be competition for staff and
volunteers,” Hudson said.
Jim
Messina, Obama’s 2012 campaign manager and Organizing for Action’s chairman, said
before the inauguration the group will focus on gun control, immigration and
climate change.
Traditionally, a second-term president has a short time to accomplish
anything. By the second year, attention shifts to the midterm congressional
elections, and by the third, the next presidential campaign is underway. The
lame duck president may find himself not only fighting irrelevancy but scandal,
as Nixon and Clinton did.
In
his inaugural address, Obama emphasized “collective action.” He used the word “together”
seven times and “we” five dozen times in 15 minutes. You might say he was organizing for action or
for a strategy that holds both promise and peril for his second term.
©
2013 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
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