My long-time friend and current client Floyd Brown is featured in a story today in the New York Times on his efforts to raise funds, produce commercials, and get the public focused on Barrack Hussein Obama’s awful record and policy positions.  Floyd is no stranger to California.   He served in Santa Barbara as Executive Director of the Reagan Ranch for four years a few years back, where I had the opportunity to work with him again when I was on the Board of Young America’s Foundation.  Floyd also serves with me on the American Conservative Union Board, and with me and your publisher Jon Fleischman as a Director of the annual  "Western Conservative Political Action Conference," which will be held again October 10/11, 2008 in Newport Beach.   (Information: www.westerncpac.com.)

     Behind the scenes, Floyd has been meeting with Orange County conservative leaders over the last couple of months and assisting Assemblyman Chuck DeVore with the establishment of "Citizens for a Safe and Prosperous America," an issue advocacy committee, whose intent is to focus on educating on Obama’s poor record on crime, national defense, and taxes, and to urge citizens right here in California to tell Obama exactly what they think.

     Floyd has also started a great website loaded with facts on Obama at www.exposeobama.com.  Below are some excerpts from the article from today’s New York Times, which I thought readers would find of interest.

June 21, 2008
Ready to Attack Obama, if Some Money Arrives
By MICHAEL LUO

UNIVERSITY PLACE, Wash. — A Bible verse taped to a whiteboard in Floyd
Brown’s office that he uses to track his efforts to attack Senator
Barack Obama reads, "That is why for Christ’s sake I delight in
weakness, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties."

Mr. Brown, 47, a 6-foot-6 bear of a man is perhaps best known for his
involvement with the Willie Horton television advertisement that
helped sink Michael S. Dukakis’s candidacy in 1988. Mr. Brown has had
much in his career to be delighted about as the source of scores of
conservative assaults on Democrats that have earned him their lasting
enmity.

Mr. Brown is back to his trade of bludgeoning a Democratic candidate
for president, producing an innuendo-laden advertisement that is being
televised this week in Michigan, albeit sparsely on cable, questioning
Mr. Obama’s religious background.

The Obama campaign singled out Mr. Brown on Thursday as emblematic of
the threat that independent groups on the right posed to him. On
Friday, Mr. Obama, at a news conference in Jacksonville, Fla., again
named Mr. Brown while defending his campaign’s rejection of public
financing for the general election.

Yet if Mr. Brown’s struggles are any indication — he has so far failed
to raise much money — it is not clear that Republicans will be able to
repeat their successes in 2004, when independent groups like the Swift
Boat Veterans for Truth had a significant role in undermining Senator
John Kerry’s campaign.

"It’s all about reaching a tipping point," Mr. Brown said. "Swift
Boats achieved the tipping point. I was part of a team that reached
the tipping point in 1988. In 1992, we didn’t reach it. We might not
this time. But that doesn’t mean we’re not going to try."

No major independent effort to help Senator John McCain’s campaign has
materialized. Although Republican operatives say something will
eventually develop, alarm has spread among many, especially after Mr.
Obama’s announcement on Thursday on public financing, raising the
prospect that he will wield an enormous financial advantage over Mr.
McCain in the fall.

Many reasons explain the absence of a serious independent effort at
this point, Republican strategists said. Many wealthy donors who might
be in a position to finance a 527 group, named for the Tax Code
section that covers them, or a similar independent effort that is free
to accept unlimited contributions are wary this time because of the
legal problems that dogged many such groups after the 2004 election.

Major donors are said to be uncertain of Mr. McCain’s chances as
Republicans face a decidedly unfavorable climate in the fall.
Lingering, as well, is the possibility that they may anger Mr. McCain,
who has a record of campaign finance reform and has in the past been
critical of such groups.

Perhaps in recognition of financial realities, the McCain campaign has
softened its statements on such groups, repeatedly saying it cannot be
expected to "referee" them.

Steve Schmidt, a senior adviser to Mr. McCain, said Friday that
although Mr. McCain had made clear his objections to such groups, he
also recognized that a number of them were poised to work on Mr.
Obama’s behalf. Mr. Schmidt said Mr. McCain understood that "people
who want to participate in the process because of what’s going on on
the other side are going to participate in the process."

"He’s not going to be a unilateral referee," Mr. Schmidt added.

Enter Mr. Brown, who says it is his calling to tread where the
campaign is unwilling to tread in finding malicious gossip on a
Democratic nominee.

Several Republican strategists interviewed voiced skepticism about Mr.
Brown’s chances of operating at anything other than the periphery of
the general election this year, citing the amount of money needed, the
difficulty of spreading a message that incites the grass roots and
stricter regulation of independent groups.

"There’s a lot of people who are trying to catch lightning in a
bottle, but there’s very few people who have," said Chris LaCivita, a
Republican strategist who helped organize the Swift Boat effort.

Mr. Brown conceded that his operation was in its infancy, showing
$40,000 in the bank between two committees at the end of March for its
first-quarter filing with the Federal Election Commission.
Nevertheless, he appears to be at least mounting a serious effort that
offers a glimpse at the challenges for such groups, as well as their
potential.

At the heart of the effort is a Web site, ExposeObama.com, that has
featured two Web advertisements, one on Mr. Obama’s record on crime
and the other on his religious background.

The second spot highlights a Roman Catholic elementary school roster
from Indonesia showing that Mr. Obama registered as a Muslim. The
campaign said that the notation was probably made because Mr. Obama’s
stepfather was nominally a Muslim but that the candidate had never
been a Muslim. He is a committed Christian.

The site has helped Mr. Brown raise $100,000 in a month and a half. On
Friday, after Mr. Obama’s announcement, Mr. Brown received 400
contributions, more than the usual weekly figure, totaling more than
$15,000.

Mr. Brown is spreading the word about his videos through an e-mail
list that he said had 2.5 million names. His goal is to produce at
least one Web advertisement every two weeks, spread the word with
e-mail and hope they catch on.

Mr. Brown is also using two conservative direct mail businesses to
raise money, Response Dynamics and the Richard Norman Company, which
ran the mail campaign for the Swift Boat effort, as well as two
telemarketing businesses.

Although he said he was mostly in the testing phase with the mailings,
Mr. Brown has put out 700,000 pieces and collected more than $600,000
by mail this year, a vast majority in the last two months. That period
is after his last campaign finance filing.

Mr. Brown has also created a network of organizations that he can use
to attack Mr. Obama, including two political action committees, the
National Campaign Fund and the Legacy Committee, that are governed by
strict limits on campaign donations, as well as a 527 group, Citizens
for a Safe and Prosperous America.

Mr. Brown’s financial limits were obvious with his most recent
advertisement, questioning Mr. Obama’s religious background. He spent
$5,000 to broadcast it. A cable company in the Detroit area approved
it. Another kept Mr. Brown in legal limbo.

With most big-money conservative donors remaining cautious, Mr. Brown
is focusing more on his political action committees. That could limit
his ability to raise large sums. The maximum donation to such entities
is $5,000.

Political action committees are much freer to attack candidates than
527s, which are technically limited to advocating on issues and cannot
expressly call for a candidate’s election or defeat.

For conservatives hoping to repeat the Swift Boat effort, Federal
Election Commission rulings after the 2004 election put such
advertisements, which questioned a candidate’s character and fitness
for office, off limits to 527s specifically.

Mr. Brown, a gregarious evangelical churchgoer, said that he merely
enjoyed the interchange of ideas and that there was nothing personal
about his attacks. He said he earned a living as an investment writer
and speaker, working in politics part time.

But there are boundaries even Mr. Brown is unwilling to cross. He said
many potential large donors had lost interest after he explained to
them that certain harder-hitting advertisements that they favored were
not possible through a 527.

His estimates of what he might be able to raise by the fall, assuming
that he does not reach his imaginary "tipping point," are in the $8
million range. That would be hardly consequential, especially in the
face of the expected advertising onslaught from Mr. Obama.

Mr. Brown is hopeful, however, that major donors will step forward.
"The vehicle will be there," he said. "The talent will be there.
Everything’s prepared."

 

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 21st, 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.