By DANIEL ALTMAN
WASHINGTON, July 9 — A small, secretive group that used television advertisements to attack George W. Bush during his campaign for president has re-emerged to point to links between oil companies with questionable accounting practices and the Bush administration.
The group, American Family Voices, paid for a 30-second commercial that will be shown until Thursday on cable news programs here and in New York. The commercial calls President Bush "sly like a fox" for talking down his dealings with Harken Energy, an oil company on whose board he once sat.
Twelve years ago, Mr. Bush sold stock in Harken just before it reported a $23.2 million loss, and he reported the sale to the Securities and Exchange Commission eight months late. The commercial also criticizes Vice President Dick Cheney for ties to Halliburton, an oil services company that the S.E.C. is investigating.
The commercial even suggests that the commission's chairman, Harvey L. Pitt, is unfit for the job because he was once a lawyer for several accounting firms, including Arthur Andersen.
American Family Voices said the commercial was timed to coincide with Mr. Bush's speech on corporate responsibility. Michael Lux, president of the group, said it wanted to reach "opinion leaders" in New York and politicians in Washington.
Mr. Lux, a consultant who works for American Family Voices under contract, would not say who donated the money for the television time. But the group and its advertising agency, the Glover Park Group, have significant links to the Clinton administration. Mr. Lux was an aide to President Bill Clinton, and the partners at Glover Park include Joe Lockhart, who was once Mr. Clinton's press secretary, and Carter Eskew and Michael Feldman, two advisers to Al Gore's unsuccessful campaign for president in 2000.
Mr. Lux said 12 donors responded to a request for money, and he hinted that the contributors included a trial lawyer, an executive in high technology and a prominent person in Hollywood.
Mr. Lockhart would not say how much American Family Voices paid the agency to create the advertisement, but he said the broadcasting time cost about $100,000.
Jennifer Palmieri, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee, said the committee had nothing to do with the commercial. But Ms. Palmieri said that James Carville, once a top campaigner for Mr. Clinton, was involved with American Family Voices.
The absence of direct involvement by the Democratic Party did not assuage the White House. "Given the source of the ads, given that they come from James Carville," said Anne Womack, a White House spokeswoman, "they represent the most partisan of partisan attacks."
In the last year, from a sea-green brick building in Washington, American Family Voices has criticized Mr. Bush's tax breaks for corporations and has sponsored a Web site called The Daily Enron, which chronicles corporate accounting scandals.
The group was formed in 2000 with money from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. It has four employees, led by Mr. Lux. It has Section 501(c)4 tax status, which means it cannot run advertisements mentioning specific candidates within 60 days of a general election or 30 days of a primary. The status also lets the group keep the identities of its backers a secret.
American Family Voices
1224 M Street NW
Washington, DC 20005
Mr. Lux said 12 donors responded to a request for money, and he hinted that the contributors included a trial lawyer, an executive in high technology and a prominent person in Hollywood.
My guess is Peter Angelos- top democratic donor, trial lawyer and owner of the Baltimore Orioles, Vinod Gupta and Barbara Streisand. Care to bet on this one?
The daily Enron's web site appears to be down. Tsk, tsk. But, here's a cached version. Under the "know thy enemy" heading, here is another site of this group: Check For Yourself.
Michael Lux's biography as a partisan hack for democrats.
Glover Park Group
The September 11 attacks mortally wounded network television ad sales. So it was no big surprise when NBC, a unit of General Electric, announced it was closing time for its 50-year-long ban on liquor ads at the end of last year. What is surprising, however, was which firm Diageo Plc, the United Kingdom-based spirits company that owns popular brands like Guinness, Smirnoff and Johnny Walker, went to in order to produce its prime-time commercial for NBC: Instead of going with a glitzy Madison Avenue agency, Diageo hired Washington insiders Joe Lockhart, Mike Feldman and Carter Eskew to get the drink-Smirnoff-but-drink-safely message across.
The three Democratic spinmeisters joined forces this summer and launched the DC-based Glover Park Group, a small communications-consulting firm that specializes in issue advertising. At the time, Lockhart, a Clinton White House press secretary; Feldman, who was a senior advisor to Vice President Al Gore; and Eskew, chief strategist for Gore's presidential campaign, were all taking some time off. "We all decided it was time to get serious," says Lockhart, who quit his job as press secretary to flack for Oracle's Larry Ellison - but returned to DC in May 2001 because he said he found bisexual life to be too grueling. (Couldn't possibly have had anything to do with Larry Ellison being too grueling, we're sure.)
The nascent firm has already created ads for Bob Dole and Bill Clinton's philanthropic collaboration; eBizJets, a Boston, MA-based airline; and various do-gooder groups. But Diageo's name is conspicuously absent on the "Who We've Worked With" section of the Glover Park Group's website.
Asked about the controversial prime-time liquor campaign, Lockhart says, "We are referring all calls about that to Guinness…. We are not discussing that campaign." Lockhart adds that there are at least three new deals that his firm is working on but is similarly unable to talk about them. "Clients are funny that way," he says.
FYI, some other names on Lockhart's client list include WorldCom & Andersen.
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