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February 1, 2005 |
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Left allies
regroup for battle
By Alexander
Bolton |
Liberal groups and allies of the Democratic
Party are structuring a coalition to defeat President Bush’s plans
to restructure Social Security, a collaboration akin to the
so-called shadow Democratic Party forged in an effort to oust Bush
from office in the November election.
Business groups with
the ability to spend tens of millions of dollars on the other side
to promote particular Social Security reforms have yet to mobilize.
That is because the administration has yet to push a specific plan
and because business views other issues, such as tort reform, as
more pressing.
The anti-Bush coalition has brought together
30 core groups, including the AFL-CIO, MoveOn.org, the NAACP, the
National Organization for Women, the Alliance for Retired Americans,
the Campaign for America’s Future, USAction and the Center for
American Progress, a liberal think tank.
Organizers said the
coalition plans to raise at least $30 million to be spent on TV
advertising and door-to-door campaigning to defeat Bush’s expected
proposal to create individual savings accounts and trim government
payouts.
Organizers have yet to come up with a name for the
collaborative effort or formalize its membership, but they are
laying ambitious plans and meeting frequently. They are discussing
hiring a campaign manager, establishing a war room and creating a
joint fundraising committee, said strategists familiar with the
discussions.
“There is a serious plan being put together,”
said Tom Mattzie, the Kerry campaign’s former director of online
organizing, who recently became MoveOn.org’s Washington director.
Some liberals view the effort as a response to the permanent
GOP campaign for which the new Republican National Committee (RNC)
chairman, Ken Mehlman, recently called.
The RNC has begun
soliciting contributions from its supporters to advance Bush’s
agenda, of which Social Security is the centerpiece.
Mattzie
said: “2004 saw more people get involved than ever before, and
they’re not disengaging after the election.”
He said Bush’s
opponents have realized that they “have to be involved for the long
haul and stay involved. Social Security is first battle in that
fight.”
The effort is likely to affect Republicans from
centrist districts and conservative Democrats who will cast the
swing votes to decide the fate of the Republican-endorsed
plan.
Starting today, MoveOn.org will air television ads in the
districts of Reps. Allen Boyd (D-Fla.), Chris Chocola (R-Ind.) and
Jim Gerlach (R-Pa.) criticizing what the group calls benefit cuts
supported by the administration.
MoveOn.org plans to raise
$500,000 for the issue campaign by the end of the week, but Mattzie
declined to offer a total fundraising goal. Last year, MoveOn.org
raised $10 million from its members for issue campaigns.
One of
the coalition’s principle organizers is Roger Hickey, head of
Campaign for America’s Future. Another is Jeff Blum of USAction,
which by its own estimates mobilized 20,000 volunteers to register
and turn out low-income minority voters.
Hickey said the
purpose of the coalition is to “look at members of Congress that
need persuading and disseminate research and information from think
tanks.”
Blum predicted that hundreds of groups would join the
coalition.
The battle over Social Security brings into
“possible sharpest relief” one of the undercurrents of the 2004
campaign, the question of whether “America cares about all of its
citizens and cares about opportunity for all” or “do we believe in
the role of government in the country is to get out of the way of
private entrepreneurial activity and let the chips fall where they
may?” he added.
AARP has pledged to spend $5 million on a
media campaign opposing the administration’s expected Social
Security proposals. It is working with Rock the Vote, a
self-proclaimed nonpartisan group that has in the past mostly
confined its efforts to getting young people to the polls. However,
that group now intends to warn young Americans about the dangers of
what it says are benefit cuts that the Bush administration supports.
Rock the Vote plans to raise “seven figures” for the effort,
according to Hans Riemer, its Washington director.
But two
of the Democratic Party’s strongest allies in the last presidential
campaign have yet to decide what role they will play, if any.
The Media Fund, headed by former Clinton adviser Harold
Ickes, is temporarily shut down, according to a former spokeswoman
who recently conferred with Ickes. And America Coming Together,
which managed most of the party’s get-out-the-vote operation in
2004, will make its plans for this year in a board meeting Feb. 14.
Various groups supporting Bush have pledged to spend tens of
millions of dollars to advance his reforms, which have yet to be
unveiled in detail.
Progress for America, a
Republican-allied 527 organization, has set aside $9 million to
spend on Social Security, according to press reports.
Club
for Growth, another GOP-allied group, has plans to raise and spend
$10 million to $15 million on the Social Security fight, said the
group’s executive director, David Keating.
But most of the
lobbying punch on Social Security is expected to be provided by a
coalition of about 40 business groups and corporations. They have
formed two coalitions, the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security
(AWRS), founded in 1998, and the Coalition for the Modernization and
Protection of America’s Social Security (COMPASS), founded in 2002.
AWRS will focus its efforts inside the Beltway, primarily
lobbying lawmakers, and COMPASS will work on educating the public
across the country through direct-mail, grassroots and media
campaigns.
Derrick Max, the executive director of both
coalitions, would not reveal his budget, but his liberal opponents
expect the business community to spend between $50 million and $150
million to promote Social Security reform.
But an official
with one member of the business coalition said that it has yet to
mobilize in any meaningful way and that it will likely wait until
Republicans reach consensus on a reform proposal. The official said
that business was more concerned pressing outstanding priorities
such as tort reform.
Max acknowledged the lack of frenzied
activity.
“In one sense, the business guy is right: It’s
hard to lobby for something that doesn’t exist,” he
said.
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