Soft-money political groups making changes

A bid for younger voters
Neitzel said PAC status “allows us a lot of free speech. We can’t say, ‘vote for’ or ‘vote against,’ but we can do a lot of lobbying, we can talk about candidates in relation to the issues. It’s worked really well for us.”

Neitzel also said Music for America will conduct the first text-messaging voter registration drive in the United States, with the goal of registering 50,000 people through text messaging for the fall election.

The text-message registration drive starts in June; MfA plans to use it at concerts and other events popular with its under-25 demographic (The group has partnerships with several top musical acts, including Green Day, Usher and Death Cab for Cutie). Other strategies include member Weblogs, member endorsements of candidates and creation of online voter guides, Neitzel said.

A different 527 heard from
The conservative Club for Growth, a Washington-based 527 group that supports pro-growth economic policies, finds itself in the unlikely position of siding with Democrats on defeating the 527 bill, on grounds of protecting free speech.

“We are engaged in an effort to persuade senators that they really ought to support the First Amendment, and they shouldn't make an effort to shut down organizations that happen to disagree with them,” said Pat Toomey, president of the club, which claims 30,000 members and a rate of growth that has tripled its membership rolls in two years.

Toomey said there was “a reasonably good chance” that the bill will fail in the Senate. “The Democrats will oppose it on pragmatic grounds and I hope there are enough Republicans to oppose it on grounds of principle,” he said.

“Most Republicans opposed McCain-Feingold,” Toomey said. “This is a far broader, far more onerous restriction on First Amendment rights. One would hope there will be enough support from Republicans to join the Democrats and kill it.”

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