Citizens Pay for Negative Campaigning

Floyd Brown and David Bossie: Back in the Swift Boat captain’s chairs

Two longtime practitioners of negative campaigning are mainstreaming attacks on Clinton and Obama. 

Floyd Brown and David Bossie have spent a good part of their political careers making life miserable for Bill and Hillary Clinton. Unlike Richard Mellon Scaife, the billionaire financier who was unremitting in his efforts to take the Clintons down during the latter part of the twentieth century and whose newspaper endorsed Senator Hillary Clinton prior to the Pennsylvania primary, neither Brown nor Bossie have had a pro-Hillary conversion.

These days, however, Brown’s new organization, The National Campaign Fund — which launched a new website “ExposeObama.com” — and Bossie’s Citizens United have added Sen. Barack Obama to the mix.

Brown recently told Time magazine that “he had established several other front groups to fund a long-range effort to erode Obama’s support, including a second PAC, called The Legacy Committee, a 527 organization called Citizens for a Safe and Prosperous America and a so-called “social welfare” 501(c)4 nonprofit called the Policy Issues Institute.”

Bill Berkowitz, mediatransparency.org