Gore Gets Crime Victims’ Message Out in Two Ways

As Al Gore the candidate showcased his support for crime victim rights at a Tennessee college Tuesday, Al Gore the TV star was sounding the same message in a television commercial being broadcast in 17 other states by the Democratic National Committee.

Political parties are forbidden from coordinating their message with a candidate, under federal campaign finance rules.

Tuesday, with a Democratic Party ad espousing the same theme and some of the same phrases that Gore was speaking on the campaign trail, some watchdog groups said the latest episode is a troubling sign for the current election.

“It’s a sham, and it’s a clear violation of the campaign and election laws,” said Scott Harshbarger, director of Common Cause. “It’s being done blatantly and without apologies.”

He said the party-funded ads were indistinguishable “from the candidates’ own ads or the campaign’s message.”

Democratic Party officials and the Gore campaign said the ad and the campaign speech Tuesday were legal. They said they are allowed to feature individual candidates if the ads do not specifically ask voters to support that person.

“In terms of coordination, everything we’ve done is entirely appropriate and in keeping with the law,” said Gore spokesman Chris Lehane.

DNC spokeswoman Jenny Backus said that “the purpose of Democratic issue ads is to help elect Democrats, from president down to local county officials. . . . Al Gore and Bill Clinton have been talking about a crime victims’ bill of rights for years.”

Gore’s news release Tuesday regarding his speech on victims’ rights included a phrase almost identical to the language in the commercial: “I’m not satisfied when accused criminals have all kinds of rights, but victims don’t have rights that are always protected and guaranteed.”

In the ad, which has been on the air for about a week and includes video of Gore giving a similar speech to another audience, Gore says, “Accused criminals have all kinds of rights, but the victims of crimes do not have rights that are always protected and guaranteed.”

Reform advocates say, effectively, there is nothing to stop either the presidential aspirants or their parties from openly strategizing together.

“I think they’re coordinating left and right,” said Kirk Jowers, an election law expert at Wiley, Rein & Fielding, legal counsel to the failed campaign of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). “Their consultants [at the party and the campaign] are often the same people. Because the FEC has chosen not to enforce [the law on] even the egregious coordination, there really is no standard right now.”

Two well-known Democratic media consultants, Bob Shrum and Bill Knapp, are crafting ads for both the Democratic Party and Gore’s campaign. On the GOP side, Republican adman Alex Castellanos is coordinating the party’s ads while his firm National Media is buying air time for Texas Gov. George W. Bush.

Two years ago, federal auditors recommended that both major candidates in the 1996 presidential election--Democrat Bill Clinton and Republican Bob Dole--be fined millions of dollars for illegally running their parties’ advertising. But the Federal Election Commission rejected the idea.

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Times Washington Bureau Chief Doyle McManus contributed to this story.