Help From a Silent Partner

By James Carney

In certain Oklahoma churches this fall, the Christian Coalition is handing out voter guides that contain information about the positions held by the two candidates for the state's open U.S. Senate seat, James Inhofe and Dave McCurdy. Outwardly unbiased and factual, the voter guide says McCurdy, a Democrat, supports "banning ownership of legal firearms," a fairly misleading statement based on McCurdy's vote for the crime bill, which included a ban on 19 types of assault weapons.

Such veiled tactics are spreading. Unlike traditional spending, in which organizations explicitly support a candidate, voter guides and get-out-the- vote campaigns are ostensibly nonpartisan, meaning the amount spent does not have to be disclosed to the Federal Election Commission. As a result, official spending calculations can be misleading. In September, eight-term Representative Mike Synar, also in Oklahoma, narrowly lost a Democratic runoff primary to Virgil Cooper, a retired principal. Cooper's victory seemed all the more astounding since Synar, the well-funded incumbent, had outspent him by a huge margin. But in fact, if all the money invested in supposedly nonpartisan voter-education efforts by interest groups opposed to Synar were added to Cooper's total, Synar may have been outspent. The increase in this kind of spending is coming mostly from organizations on the political right. "What you have is interest groups with an agenda trying to influence the process," says Charles Lewis, head of the Center for Public Integrity. "But there is no accountability."

With reporting by Laurence I. Barrett/ Washington