Thompson Once Opposed "Sham" Issue Ads

In 2003, former Sen. Fred Thompson sharply criticized the sort of "sham issue ads," ostensibly banned by McCain-Feingold bill, that the Supreme Court appeared to revive in yesterday's Wisconsin Right to Life decision.

Thompson's view of those provisions are contained in an amicus brief he filed with the Court in 2003, when it first considered the constitutionality of the Bipartisan Campaign finance Reform Act (BCRA).

Thompson wrote that "sham issue advocacy by non-party groups" was a "problem" that BCRA "addresses." Congress, Thompson wrote, "had a compelling interest in enacting the BCRA reforms. The rapidly increasing practices of raising and spending soft money (with a significant focus on sham ‘issue ads’ that unquestionably influence federal elections) fully justify the BCRA reforms.”

Thompson refers to a series of television ads run by labor unions and national parties in the 1996 presidential election, ads he believed were "highly problematic in their own right because they were used to influence federal elections and not restricted to generic party-building uses" because they were funded from general treasuries -- that is, from soft money accounts.

It's not clear whether Thompson would have considered the Wisconsin Right To Life ad, which took aim at Sen. Russ Feingold's position on judicial nominations, to be a "sham ad."

(A spokesman for Thompson said last night that he had not yet taken a position on the Supreme Court's decision).

Rudy Giuliani, who has favored generic campaign finance reform legislation in the past, praised yesterday's ruling as a victory for free speech.

The court ruled yesterday that so long as an ad can be reasonably interpreted as having some other purpose than targeting a specific lawmaker for election or defeat, the admaker should be given the benefit of the doubt.

Proponents of campaign finance reform concede that the court has opened a major loophole through which virtually any ad run by unions, corporations or non-party entities can be funded from unregulated sources of cash and can be broadcast close to an election or primary.

Thompson was an early achitect of campaign finance legislation. In a Senate press release announcing the bill's introduction, Thompson said that the politicians" must get back to winning elections not on the basis of who can raise the most money, but on the basis of the competition of ideas."

A senior aide to Sen. John McCain recalls that Thompson often telephoned McCain to plot strategy for moving the bill through Congress and that Thompson even helped to author several key planks of what later became the BCRA bill. He later served as one of the bill's chief whips on the floor.

In 1997, Thompson used a Senate government affairs committee hearing to probe the electioneering of National Right to Life and other groups, and his subpoena request for internal NRTL documents was strongly resisted by counsel -- including James Bopp, Jr., who now advises Mitt Romney.

In 2001, Thompson told National Journal's Congress Daily that he wished his "name would be mentioned more often" in discussions about the bill. And in 2002, he praised Pres., Bush for "courage" in signing the bill over Republican opposition.

For conservative donors, Republican party functionaries in the states and in Washington, and for supporters and patrons of Washington's conservative interest groups, McCain's advocacy of campaign finance reform legislation has become a synecdoche for his willingness to subordinate the financial and political health of his party to his own political beliefs. Fundamentally, they argue that most forms of campaign finance legislation restricts political speech. Thompson disagreed, telling an interviewer in 2000 that the legislation "doesn't cut down on anybody's free speech at all."

Fortunately for Thompson, campaign finance has little resonance outside the precincts of party professionals and fundraisers. Additionally, he has not acquired a reputation for bucking his party leadership or for going out of his way to anger the conservative intellectual elites who influence base opinion.

And there are signs that Thompson is backing away from his belief in the efficacy of the legislation. He told the Wall Street Journal's John Fund last month that while he wasn't prepared to renounce his earlier views, " I wonder if we shouldn’t just take off the limits and have full disclosure with harsh penalties for not reporting everything on the Internet immediately."

In private meetings with Republican donors, Thompson said he worried about BCRA's effect on the political parties' ability to compete financially with better-funded third party groups.

If he turns his around entirely, he risks being tagged as a panderer. Romney once supported stringent limits on political finance activity, although his campaign insists that he never specifically supported the thrust of BCRA.