Edwards Pushes Spending Limits
Candidate tests campaign finance laws by spending millions on campaign ads
DES MOINES, Iowa, Dec. 29, 2007 — -- Former senator John Edwards and his supporters are exploiting legal loopholes in campaign-finance regulations to remain competitive in Iowa's ad wars, as he seeks to hold his ground against better-financed opponents in the closing days before the caucuses.
In exchange for taking federal matching funds for his primary campaign, Edwards must comply with spending limits that apply to each state. In Iowa, where the first presidential nominating contest will be held on Thursday, he is prohibited from spending more than $1.5 million -- a sum that would quickly disappear in the state's overheated television advertising environment.
But the Edwards campaign has found legal ways to spend perhaps four times that amount in Iowa, including more than $2.7 million on television advertising alone. And outside groups that are supporting Edwards are spending at least another $2 million boosting Edwards' candidacy in the Hawkeye State.
In managing its own funds, the campaign is taking advantage of various exemptions and accounting maneuvers -- allowed for in a complex series of Federal Election Commission regulations -- to stretch its dollars in Iowa, said Joe Trippi, a senior Edwards adviser.
"You really have to be an expert at the arcane sort of formulas," Trippi said. "We haven't played any games. The rules are exactly what they are. The games were all played years ago when the FEC said, 'You can do this, you have these exemptions.'"
Those exemptions have allowed Edwards to stay on the airwaves on the eve of the caucuses despite predictions that the spending limits would leave him badly outgunned in the early-voting states.
Trippi said the campaign will still be significantly outspent in Iowa by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. But the Edwards campaign's intense focus on Iowa means Edwards, D-N.C., has to try to spend all that he can in the state, in accordance with the law.
"We have to perform in Iowa and do very well," Trippi said. "How can we go forward if we don't win or place a close second? If we take third, it's problematic for anybody, and it's very problematic for us."
