KELO 1320 AM radio is reporting that the Daschle campaign is admitting that it violated campaign laws (namely the new Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act) with its attack phone calls last Friday and yesterday made to practically everybody in the state. The phone calls did not have the disclaimer at the end saying "I'm Tom Daschle, and I approve of this message." All political communications are required to have this disclaimer. You can read more HERE. I'm not buying the argument that this was an "inadvertent oversight" as the Daschle camp is claiming. That they didn't tack on the disclaimer to the phone call helped the Daschle camp immensely. If people were told that Tom Daschle had approved this phone call, the whole purpose of the call would have backfired. People's ire would be directed at Tom Daschle instead of John Thune. It's unsurprising that this "oversight" cut in favor of the Daschle campaign.
The disclaimer provision is not some extremely technical and complicated part of BCRA, as the Daschle campaign is disingenuously trying to argue. The Daschle campaign has run millions of dollars of radio and television ads that have the disclaimer on them. Obviously, the campaign is very familiar with the disclaimer reqirements. Also, Tom Daschle was a huge proponent of BCRA. BCRA was one of his priorities when he was the majority leader of the Senate, and Daschle was the major force behind the passage of BCRA in the spring of 2002. It's ridiculous to argue that he would have "overlooked" the disclaimer. The disclaimer provision was a big deal when BCRA was being debated. The bottom line is that the Daschle campaign has engaged in a strategy of breaking the law in order to benefit politically.
Now it remains to be seen whether the Argus Leader will report this story in tomorrow's edition. Greg Belfrage is reporting that they will be.
On February 11th of this year, almost three months ago, the Argus Leader ran a 922-word front page story (1A) headlined "Thune spending questioned" written by Mike Madden and David Kranz. (I've discussed this story HERE.) The story was about MERE ALLEGATIONS that John Thune had broken campaign laws. In the story, variations of the phrase "Thune broke the law" were used three times. Now that Tom Daschle has ADMITTED that he broke campaign laws, will the Argus Leader use multiple variations of the phrase "Daschle broke the law" at all? Will the story be on the front page (1A) of the AL? Will it be nearly 1000 words? I think this February 11th negative story on John Thune will be a good standard to compare what the AL reports on Daschle breaking the campaign laws tomorrow.
Kudos to Greg Belfrage for doing the legwork on this story.
UPDATE: DVT has more.
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