PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

Club for Growth grooms Toomey for Presidency
by Jeff Miller Tuesday, Mar. 30, 2004 at 12:09 PM
jmiller@tribune.com 202-824-8216

Club founders Richard Gilder (a former Goldman Sachs partner), Larry Kudlow (CNBC financial host), Thomas Rhodes (president of the National Journal), and Stepehen Moore (CATO) are helping Toomey's candidacy with an eye towards the future.

Anti-Specter ad lands a right hook

GOP group called Club for Growth says senator too liberal. It backs Toomey.
The Morning Call, March 30, 2004


WASHINGTON -- A new attack ad, set to the tune "Pop Goes the Weasel," portrays Sen. Arlen Specter as a clownish jack-in-the-box who votes blithely for tax increases.

But the 10-second spot doesn't come from his Republican primary opponent, Rep. Pat Toomey of Allentown. It's the work of a maverick political group that calls itself the Club for Growth, which stands to boost its own clout if successful in Pennsylvania.

If Toomey wins, he'll owe a huge debt of gratitude to the club, which says it has helped him raise nearly $1 million for his Senate bid and has spent about the same amount on anti-Specter ads.

"Toomey's campaign is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Club for Growth," said Specter campaign manager Christopher Nicholas. "Without the club -- which we call the Club for Toomey -- Toomey wouldn't have much of a campaign."

Toomey campaign manager Mark Dion dismissed the criticism, saying Toomey espoused the same principles as the Club for Growth long before it showed interest in his candidacy.

"They want to see a senator who believes in the values of lower taxes and less government spending, and Arlen Specter is not that man," Dion said. "Just because Arlen Specter carries water so often for the labor unions, does that mean he's a wholly owned subsidiary of them?"

The club considers itself the conscience of free-market conservatism and preaches the gospel of supply-side economics. What sets it apart from other Republican groups is its eagerness to take on GOP incumbents who stray from its philosophy.

Specter, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania's first four-term incumbent senator, is the club's No. 1 target this year. Stephen Moore, an economist, senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute and the club's president, has said he wants Specter's scalp for his office wall.

Overheated rhetoric aside, Moore is deadly serious about bagging what he calls a RINO -- a Republican In Name Only. "For us it will be huge in the sense that it basically would make the club a force to be contended with in races around the country," Moore said. "This race would not only rid the Senate of a prominent RINO, it would put the fear of God in the 15 or 20 other RINOs in the Senate. You would see a dramatic change in the way the Republicans vote because now they would say, 'We don't want to go through this."'

The club was formed five years ago after Moore took the reins of an earlier group called the Political Club for Growth. He remodeled it along the lines of Emily's List, which solicits political donations and bundles them to women Democratic candidates who support abortion rights. In the same way, the Club for Growth has harnessed the financial might of wealthy investors and business types to support "pro-growth" candidates it recommends.

The club raises both "hard dollars," which are subject to donation limits, and unlimited "soft money." Groups like the club are well positioned to reap the benefits of the new campaign finance law that prohibits political parties from taking soft money.

The club's founders included investor and philanthropist Richard Gilder, a former Goldman Sachs partner; CNBC financial host Larry Kudlow; and Thomas Rhodes, president of the National Journal, which has heavily promoted Toomey's candidacy.

Daniel Searle, former head of a pharmaceutical company that once had Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as its chief executive officer, has been the club's largest donor, giving more than $1 million. Gilder has contributed $625,000. The club has received $75,000 from Richard Scaife, publisher of the conservative Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. It also has a number of smaller donors.

Along with cutting taxes and government spending, the club supports privatizing Social Security, eliminating inheritance and capital gains taxes and instituting school vouchers.

In its short lifespan, the club has steadily increased both its membership and fund raising. It now claims about 10,000 members and has set a goal of spending $15 million on political campaigns this year.

The club has helped a number of Republicans win House and Senate seats and was instrumental in Toomey's re-election campaigns for the 15th Congressional District in 2000 and 2002. But it has yet to take down a Republican incumbent.

The closest it came was in 2000, when Scott Garrett came within 4 percentage points of defeating moderate Republican Rep. Marge Roukema of New Jersey. Garrett won the seat in 2002 after Roukema retired.

Moore's group has taken on a number of Democrats, including Howard Dean and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle. But it's also run ads chastising Republican senators for failing to line up behind Bush's tax cuts.

The tactics have earned the club a number of Republican enemies. Moderate Republicans contend the club is weakening the party and threatening its congressional majorities.

"Why is this group that calls itself 'good Reagan Republicans' both attacking and trying to defeat fellow Republicans?" asked Sarah Chamberlain Resnick last year when her group, the Republican Main Street Partnership, announced its support for Specter in the primary.

"Reagan's 11th Commandment of not attacking your own is being ignored by the club and ultimately costing fellow Republicans millions of dollars that would be better utilized defeating Democrats and maintaining GOP control of the House, Senate and White House."

The partnership has run two radio ads attacking Toomey and said recently that it's prepared to spend more on Specter's behalf leading up to the April 27 primary. But its spending won't match the club's contributions to Toomey's campaign.

Moore, who calls Toomey "a rising star" in Congress and sees him as potential presidential material down the road, doesn't care about the criticism. "We're in business to be the fiscal conscience of the Republican Party," Moore said.

Along with the jack-in-the-box ad, which first appeared last week, the club ran an ad comparing Specter to Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, saying the two voted together 70 percent of the time. "And that makes Arlen Specter 100 percent too liberal," the ad said.

Specter's campaign called the ad "misleading." It noted that in 2002, Kerry also voted with President Bush 72 percent of the time, compared to 89 percent for Specter.

"They're trying to be cute," Nicholas said, "but they're really disingenuous."

Specter's campaign has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission charging that Toomey and the club are illegally coordinating their advertising. Nicholas asserts that Toomey -- who has raised one-fifth the amount that Specter has -- has stopped advertising while the club ads are on the air.

Dion denied the charge, and Moore called it "frivolous." The FEC could take more than a year to rule on the complaint.

www.mcall.com/news/local/

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