[EL] Crossroads Issue Ad

[Steve Gold]

A few weeks back, Crossroads GPS (the 501(c)(4) portion of the Crossroads
family) began running a high profile
ad<http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tNxez4ddpa0>against
Elizabeth Warren's campaign for Senate.  The ad is formulated like
an issue ad, talking about the Occupy movement and Warren's take on it,
criticizing her for not focusing on creating jobs.  There are no words of
express advocacy in the ad, and at the conclusion of the ad a phone number
appears on the screen, presumably for the viewer to contact Warren and tell
her to focus on jobs.

My question is whether this is an issue ad or the functional equivalent of
express advocacy, and whether such an issue ad against a challenger is
novel.  Obviously, Crossroads isn't concerned that Warren hasn't been
focusing on job creation while teaching her 1L contracts class.  Her
comments about the Occupy movement were taken from an interview about her
campaign, and the phone number that appears on the screen connects to her
campaign headquarters.  It's hard to imagine what the viewer is supposed to
do to get Warren to create jobs other than not vote for her.

It isn't a violation for American Crossroads to run such an ad, but I
wonder if this was intentional.  Does Crossroads think that this ad buy
will count as an expenditure for their primary purpose of social welfare
advocacy, or is it express advocacy consciously dressed up as an issue ad
because it's likely to be more effective that way?  Is this something we
should expect to see more of from non-profits?  Why not simply come out and
say, don't vote for Warren?

--
Steven Gold
General Counsel
ActBlue
steve at actblue.com
617.517.7636
www.actblue.com
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