Is the era of the millionaire-backed attack group coming to an end?

The Federal Election Commission hit the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth with a $299,500 fine today for playing too fast with election rules. The Swift Boat Vets were a "527" organization, which has no limits on contributions, but were acting like federal political committees, the FEC charged. 527s are allowed to work for or against certain candidates, but if they have no other "major purpose," according to FEC spokesman Bob Biersack, then they should register as a committee.

That's a huge difference. Committees can only accept $5,000 in contributions per person per year. The Swift Boat Vets, by comparison, accepted $4.4 million from GOP money man Bob Perry in 2004. Perry played the same trick in this year's election, throwing $9 million at three different 527 attack groups, which used it to target dozens of Democratic congressional candidates all over the country. Democrats have also taken advantage of 527s, and two liberal groups were fined today: MoveOn and the League of Conservation Voters.

If the FEC were to really crack down on this sort of thing (the 527 loophole has been an open secret for a number of years), as they've idly been threatening to do, then 2008 would be a remarkably different election than the past two cycles.

Update: I talked to David Donnelly, the director of Campaign Money Watch, who knows a lot about this sort of thing, and he said that these fines (and the ones rumored to follow soon), probably will have a significant deterring effect in the '08 elections.

For the last few months Paul has tracked the partisan profligacy of Bob Perry, the millionaire Texas Republican behind 2004's massively successful "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" attack.

In the 2006 midterms Perry spent about $9 million on robo calls, mailers, and TV and radio ads attacking 20 Democratic House and Senate candidates. Highlights included Montana's gay-baiting TV ad "Brokebank Democrats," and his impish habit of putting the home phone telephone numbers of Democratic challengers in his ads.

Perry even took the trouble to funnel his meddling millions through three separate, generically-named "527" groups. But none of his sleight-of-hand amounted to much of anything this time around: In 14 of the 20 races, his GOP candidate lost. Four of his candidates won; they're still puzzling over the ballots in two.

For about $2 million per win, Perry annoyed the hell out of hundreds of thousands -- if not millions -- of Americans with prerecorded mudslinging phone calls, angry mailers and the like.

If, as Al Pacino's character in the movie "City Hall" observed, a man's stature is measured not by the number of his friends but by the number of his enemies, I'd say Mr. Perry is a legend in his own time, wouldn't you?

Over at Election Central, Greg has just posted the latest opus from the Free Enterprise Fund, a conservative attack group that's been running ads against Democrats in four of the closest Senate races, "Brokebank Democrats."

The Free Enterprise Fund is just one of the three groups that have been started up with cash from Bob Perry, the man who brought you the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Perry provided the bulk of the FEF's money with a $1 million contribution.

He's also almost exclusively responsible for the funding of two other groups that have been very active this campaign. The Economic Freedom Fund, whose activities we've catalogued here, received $5 million from Perry. The group has targeted six House races. Another group, Americans for Honesty on Issues, has attacked nine House Dem candidates and Senate candidate Jon Tester in Montana. The entirety of their funding comes from two contributions of Perry's totalling $3 million.

All together, that's $9 million of attack ads, courtesy of Bob Perry.

Update: Today CREW filed a complaint with the IRS against Americans for Honesty of Issues, alleging that the group had failed to file disclosure reports with the IRS, as required by federal law. Such a failure could result in as much as a $1 million fine. Lawyer Glenn Willard who represents the group told me that AHI had in fact filed with the IRS, but that the filings had not shown up on the IRS website "due to the IRS failing to provide an electronic filing password."

In increasingly tight races around the country, voters are receiving telephone "push poll" calls, a classic dirty trick designed to suppress turnout on election day. One calling firm in particular, with White House ties and an impressive ability to fire off millions of automated calls per day, is benefiting from the strategy.

Gabriel Joseph III, president of the robo calling company FreeEats.com, may be the king of the push poll, in which real-sounding questions with ludicrous premises are asked to plant negative ideas in voters' minds. His company, which is better known under its business alias ccAdvertising, has impressive Republican ties: According to a recent piece in Mother Jones, the group has, on at least one occasion, drawn on its White House ties to get business. And its founder, Donald Hodel, is a veteran of the Reagan administration and a former president of Focus on the Family.

As might be expected of an outfit that profits off of convincing people not to vote, ccAdvertising plays rough. Mother Jones reveals that Joseph once boasted of his firm's ability to "deliver a voter suppression message" to unfriendly voters. And as much as Joseph enjoys talking about the reach of his company's technology, he's not above threatening reporters: "If someone writes something that I don't like, I can make their life—I can make them understand a few things if I choose."

How would you know if you received one of the millions of calls ccAdvertising has made on behalf of clients, all Republican, in the past few months? A robo voice might have asked you, "Do you believe that foreign terrorists should have the same legal rights as American citizens?" or told you that your local Democrat "voted to allow the sale of a broad range of violent and sexually explicit materials to minors."

Not only has the Virginia-based company been making millions of calls on behalf of the Economic Freedom Fund, the GOP attack group funded by the money man behind the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth, but the firm has also worked for Common Sense Ohio, a conservative nonprofit group active in the closest Senate races.

These groups go to ccAdvertising for one reason: the company is effective. It provides tremendous but targeted reach, largely under the radar -- and arguably without scruple. You can hear recordings of ccAdvertising's work this election here (from Indiana's 9th, funded by the EFF - a call a polling expert called "egregious") and here (from Tennessee, funded by Common Sense Ohio).

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A federal judge today ruled against a right-wing attack group's contractor, upholding a state law that has barred the group from continuing thousands of illegal "robo calls" to Indiana residents for the purpose of smearing a Democratic candidate.

The company, using the trade name "FreeEats.com," had sued the state of Indiana to knock down its law against automated phone calls in the state. The group argued the law violated its constitutional right to free speech. If it couldn't do robo calls, the company argued, it couldn't reach near as many voters.

FreeEats.com was making calls on behalf of the Economic Freedom Fund, a right-wing attack group almost entirely funded by Swiftboat money man Bob Perry.

According to a press release from the Indiana Attorney General, the robocalling group "acknowledged to the court that it maintains a database of 1.7 million Indiana phone numbers and that its calling system may dial each number as many as three times." Using a real live person to make those calls would cost them $2 million more, they complained. A recent IRS disclosure by the Economic Freedom Fund shows that the Indiana calls didn't cost them much at all -- there's a single expenditure for $29,000 on surveys for both Indiana and Georgia.

But the judge didn't have any sympathy for the group's difficulty and upheld the state's law.

Starting about four weeks ago, Paige Barnes said she started getting "tons of calls a day," sometimes between ten and twenty, from angry West Virginians and Iowans, demanding that her company stop bombarding them with political calls. These people told her that the calls had been coming from "AETR, Inc." at the number (571) 522-6400.

She told them she had nothing to do with them and couldn't understand why her company's name would show up on the caller ID. That wasn't her company's number. When she tried calling that number, the call wouldn't go through. "I got really upset," she said.

She didn't know it, but Barnes was the latest victim of the GOP's newest, biggest attack machine, the innocuously-named Economic Freedom Fund.

Without her knowledge or consent, a "robo calling" firm appears to have used Barnes' company name to make thousands of negative campaign calls for EFF, attacking Democratic congressional candidates. Published reports confirm that EFF calls have gone out under "AETR, Inc." Such caller ID "spoofing," as the practice is known, may violate FCC rules.

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Now that's chutzpah.

Earlier this week, Indiana Attorney General Steve Carter (R) sued the GOP attack group the Economic Freedom Fund to stop it from harrassing residents with automated "robo calls" supporting a GOP congressional candidate.

Now a company called FreeEats.com, Inc. has fired back and filed a suit against the state of Indiana, alleging that the state's ban on automated calls violates its constitutional rights. As part of the suit, the company admits that it was the firm paid by the Economic Freedom Fund to place the calls.

Now, as we've reported here, these robo calls -- which have bombarded voters in five targeted Congressional districts -- have been the nastiest tool in Swiftboat 2.0's nasty arsenal. A polling expert, when played a recording of one of the firm's calls, called it "egregious." Factcheck looked into the call's claims and found them "misleading." And as my vain attempt to reveal the firm behind the calls showed, they clearly wanted to stay in the shadows.

But now they've come out in a big way. They didn't like being shut down in Indiana, where they were attacking Democrat Baron Hill, and now they argue that they've been deprived of their constitutional rights. To quote from the lawsuit, which was filed Thursday in federal court:

By enforcing [the state's law against robo calls] with respect to interstate telephone calls to residents of Indiana for political purpose, [Indiana] will unlawfully and substantially deprive [FreeEats.com], and the organizations on whose behalf it makes calls, of free speech rights secured by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

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So which firm is doing the Swiftboaters' dirtiest work? The short answer: they don't want you to know.

As I wrote yesterday, the Economic Freedom Fund's nastiest tactics -- tactics a polling expert called "egregious" -- come via the phone. But try and find out who's actually doing that work for them, and you're bound to come up empty.

A little investigation shows that the calls come from phantom numbers connected to non-existent companies.

Constituents in West Virginia, for instance, have been bombarded with calls from the group, but when they check their caller ID, the number, (571) 522-6400, comes up as from a company called Aetr, Inc.

Who Called Us, an online site that allows users nationwide to log instances of anonymous callers, says the number also sometimes comes up on Caller IDs as originating from "Braddock, VA," or from "ER PR."

When I tried to call the number, I got a recording saying my call "cannot be completed as dialed." I could find no records for a company called "ER PR" in Virginia. I did turn up records for a corporation called Aetr in the state -- but its license was terminated in May for failing to pay its $100 annual registration fee with the commonwealth.

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We've been following the activities of the Economic Freedom Fund, a.k.a. Swiftboat 2.0 -- and by now it's apparent that the nastiest of the group's tactics are robo calls to voters that smear Democrats in targeted districts.

"It's awful. It's egregious," said Nancy Mathiowetz, President Elect of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, after hearing a recording of one of the group's calls. In this case, the call, which attacks Dem Baron Hill of Indiana's 9th, is purportedly a poll. But "it appears they are not interested in actually collecting data, but rather disseminating a distorted view of a candidate’s record," Mathiowetz said.

In other words, it's a textbook example of a push poll, a practice which “AAPOR condems and abhors," she said.

Factcheck.org, in its first look at the organization, proclaimed the allegation in the call "misleading." Similar polls are attacking Democrats in five districts across the country.

In other calls from the group, rather than creating a fake poll, EFF simply played call recipients a recorded line of attack. You can hear one of the calls against Rep. Jim Marshall (D-GA) here, courtesy of the Peach Pundit. Hitting Marshall for his embrace of the "death tax," the caller intones, "Jim Marhsall's liberal voting record does not represent Georgia values."

In all of the group's calls, the robo caller identifies itself as from the Economic Freedom Fund. But which firm is actually doing the dirty work? I'll see if I can find out. . . .

The Economic Freedom Fund has moved on its fifth target: Rep. John Barrow (D-GA).

Starting this past Saturday, the group, which is backed with $5 million from Swift Boat Vets funder Bob Perry, started airing an attack ad against Barrow, hitting him for "[helping] trial lawyers" and "[hurting] small businesses."

You can see the group's TV ad here:

The group dropped $120,968 for nine days of the ad, which brings their known expenditures to about $1.07 million nationwide. A recent poll conducted by a Republican firm showed Barrow narrowly leading his challenger, former Rep. Max Burns.

But that ad isn't the only weapon the group is wielding against Barrow. Like the group's other ambushes, their tactics in GA-12 have also included negative fliers and misleading robo calls. Barrow spokesman Harper Lawson said that the calls, which hit the candidate on hot issues like immigration and gay marriage, campaign have prompted calls from supporters. "They're short and nasty," Lawson said of the calls, which were first reported the day after Labor Day.

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The major powers behind the 2004 Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign have reunited. The Economic Freedom Fund is solely backed by Bob Perry, the principal funder of the Swift Boat Vets. And now the group is working with the same media firm that produced those ads.

The firm, Stevens, Reed, Curcio, and Potholm, boasts a number of GOP Senate, House, and gubenatorial clients in its history, including the National Republican Campaign Committee, Sen. George Allen (R-VA), Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN), and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). This July, the group got in hot water for an ad it ran against Ohio Senate candidate Sherrod Brown. The ad, which hit Brown for being weak on national security, featured a doctored image of the twin towers with photogenic smoke hovering around them.

According to documents and local television managers in Georgia and Iowa, SRCP has been responsible for buying the airtime for the Economic Freedom Fund's television ads -- attacks against Reps. Alan Mollohan (D-WV), Leonard Boswell (D-IA), Jim Marshall (D-GA), and John Barrow (D-GA). It's not clear if the firm actually produced the ads, or was merely working with Meridian Pacific, the well-connected California consulting firm that works with the group, to get the ads placed. Neither SRCP or Meridian Pacific returned my calls to explain their involvement.

The Economic Freedom Fund has made its biggest buy of the campaign so far: $446,850* in television ads in Iowa's 3rd District.

The ad, which you can see here, hits Democrat incumbent Leonard Boswell for voting against making Bush's tax cuts permanent. Sales managers at the two local stations where the ad is running, KCCI, WHO, and WOI, said that it started running last Wednesday and will continue for three weeks.

The ad buy brings the known total expenditures of the Economic Freedom Fund to approximately $945,850 so far this election, and is further evidence that the group is aggressively targeting a select few House races (at least four). The group is also responsible for robo calls in Boswell's district.

The latest poll shows Boswell leading Republican challenger Jeff Lamberti 52-41. As I wrote Thursday, the group has chosen races where Republicans trail by a significant margin (approximately ten points), but where the GOP candidate is seen to be within striking distance.

*Update: The group's ad buy on WOI ($2,350) has been added to this piece since it first ran.

The state of Indiana sued the right-wing Economic Freedom Fund today, to stop it from harrassing residents with automated "robo calls" supporting a GOP congressional candidate. The suit, by Indiana Attorney General Steve Carter (R) seeks a preliminary injunction stopping the calls immediately.

The Economic Freedom Fund was responsible for an unknown number of calls last week in Indiana's ninth district, attacking the Dem challenger, Baron Hill. His opponent, Rep. Mike Sodrel (R-IN), who trails Hill by nine points according to the latest polls, has denied knowing anything about the calls. (For details and a recording of the call, see our story last week.)

As we reported last Thursday, Bob Perry, the money man behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth has put $5 million into a new organization to attack House Democrats. In addition to TV and print ads run in four different districts across the country, the group is behind a slew of robo calls that are in the form of push polls -- phony polls that serve to attack an opponent rather than collect data.

Staci Schneider, Carter's press secretary, said that the group notified the AG last week that they had halted the calls. But it was too late. At least seven Hoosiers filed complaints with the state, according to Schneider. The statute allows for a penalty of up to $5,000 per violation, meaning that the group could be hit with a $35,000 fine, based on the seven complaints, although the AG has not yet decided on the penalty it will seek. A hearing is scheduled for September 27th.

Update: TPM Reader DK writes: "The penalty would be assessed based on the number of violations, not just the number of complaints. So the AG could through discovery, etc. acquire the call records, billing records etc and see just how many calls were made. Never would anyone get nailed for every last call in court or in a settlement, but it means that the AG's negotiating position would start out much higher than $35,000."

More signs that Bob Perry's 527 venture is a force to be dealt with this election.

The Economic Freedom Fund (EFF) is behind robo calls in at least four states; that's in addition to heavy TV ad buys and mailers (more than $500,000 worth) that the group is funding in Iowa, Georgia, and West Virginia.

In Indiana, the group's calls attacked Baron Hill, the Democratic challenger to Rep. Mike Sodrel (R-IN). You can listen to an audio of the call here (courtesy of Taking Down Words), as captured by an Indiana man who makes it a practice to record calls from telemarketers. Indiana law bans automated phone calls, and Indiana's Attorney General says he'll investigate the case.

The caller begins by identifying himself as from "Data Research" with a "45 second public survey," and then launches in to a number of leading questions. At one point, the robo voice inquires, "Baron Hill voted to allow the sale of a broad range of violent and sexually explicit material to minors. Does knowing this make you less likely for Baron Hill?"

It's not clear which vote the robo voice is referring to, but Hill spokeswoman Abby Curran said that "Baron Hill does not support allowing the sale of such materials to minors, nor has he ever supported this."

The caller ended with "this survey was conducted by the Economic Freedom Fund."

It's a classic "push poll," a dirty campaign trick used to smear an opponent, not collect data. Notably, the caller fails to collect basic polling data about the subject (such as age and party affiliation) before launching into its questions.

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More on the Electronic Freedom Fund, the new deep-pocketed conservative 527 on the scene.

The group works exclusively with a two-year-old California consulting firm called Meridian Pacific, which, in further testament to its GOP bonafides, is headed by a onetime senior Republican National Committee official.

John Peschong joined Meridian Pacific in 2005, after seven years as the Western States Director for the RNC. Meridian Pacific recently handled a half-million-dollar series of television and print buys for the Economic Freedom Fund, a right-wing "527" group.

As a so-called 527 group, EFF is barred from coordinating its activities with specific parties or candidates. Peschong did not immediately return a phone message asking about his involvement with the group's activities.

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The man who bankrolled the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth just put $5 million behind a new 527 this campaign, according to new FEC filings.

Although only a month old, the "Economic Freedom Fund" has already been very active, dropping half a million bucks on negative TV ads against Democratic incumbents Reps. Alan Mollohan (D-WV) and Jim Marshall (D-GA). You can see the ads here.

Bob Perry the millionaire homebuilder from Houston, Texas behind EFF, has some of the deepest pockets in the GOP. He dumped nearly $8.1 million into 527 organizations in the 2004 elections, most of which ($4.45 million) went to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, where he was the single largest donor. Perry also donated $3 million to Progress for America Voter Fund, a so-called "527" group that raised more than $38 million that cycle.

527 organizations, of course, are ideal for deploying negative ads, since they are are not officially allied with parties or candidates. The organizations are tax-exempt, and unlike parties or candidates, can accept unlimited soft money contributions.

EFF says its aim is just to "Promote policies and issues favoring economic freedom, growth and prosperity of the economy, to the benefit of the people of the United States." But its early activities show it's up to much more than that. And the group's relative anonymity -- only one person is officially allied with the group, Charles H. Bell Jr., a lawyer from California -- means they can attack with abandon. (Bell also happens to be the General Counsel for the California Republican Party.)

Perry's $5 million puts EFF securely in the top ten biggest 527s this cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics Massie Ritsch -- alongside biggies like The Club for Growth.

More soon....

Update: We'll have the FEC filings up soon in our document collection.

Late Update: Here they are.