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Text File | 1993-04-08 | 5.1 KB | 109 lines

                                                                                COVER STORIES, Page 31

Baby Huey on the attack


As the dean of the nasty commercial, Floyd Brown has you-know-who
in his sights

By LAURENCE I. BARRETT/WASHINGTON -- With reporting by Wendy
Cole/New York


    Colleagues in the conservative movement have cuddly
nicknames for Floyd Brown -- Boy Scout, Buckwheat, Baby Huey --
because of his deceptively gentle mien and innocent face. So it
was hardly unusual last week, as he unveiled a feral TV ad
attacking Bill Clinton's character, that Brown said in a
mournful tone, "It's a sad state of affairs, but these are
things the people have to know about." If neither the press nor
the Bush-Quayle campaign will hound Clinton anew about his past,
Brown said, someone must.

    The 60-second spot recalls in lurid terms Gennifer
Flowers' allegations about a 12-year love affair. "Get to know
Bill Clinton the way Gennifer Flowers did," the voice-over
promises viewers who call Brown's phone bank. Callers get 12
minutes of stale talk about sex, draft evasion and marijuana
use.

    Brown's work descends to a new low in attack commercials,
which means that they could damage his candidate, George Bush,
even more than Clinton. Many voters, already sour about ad
hominem assaults, will think that Bush's agents produced the ad.
The G.O.P. campaign will doubtless engage in its own tough
tactics, but it wants to calibrate its messages. Bush denounced
Brown's work as "the kind of sleaze that diminishes the
political process." The Bush-Quayle campaign tried to hit
Brown's operation in the pocketbook last month by obtaining from
the Federal Election Commission the names of 362 large donors
to Citizens for Bush, a project of Brown's Presidential Victory
Committee. A letter to each contributor pointed out that Brown's
enterprises are not part of the Bush effort; those who had the
wrong impression were encouraged to ask for their money back.
Only a dozen did so.

    Brown's freebooter status stems from a provision of
campaign-finance law that allows "independent expenditure"
operations -- I.E.s in the trade -- outside normal restrictions
on fund raising and spending. An I.E. group such as Brown's can
spend as much money as it wants, praising its candidate or
knocking his rival. There is one critical proviso: the group
cannot coordinate its effort in any way with the beneficiary.

    When the technique began in the late 1970s, right-wing
ancestors of Brown's organization had some success in using
savage advertising against liberal Senate candidates. But 12
years of Republican Presidents and the end of the cold war have
drained enthusiasm -- and money -- from the conservative
movement, particularly where helping Bush is concerned. Some of
the most spirited groups of 15 years ago have become dormant.

    Though only 31, Brown has stature among devoted
conservatives that almost matches his physical heft (6 ft. 6 in.
and 240 lbs.). A onetime officer of Young Americans for Freedom,
Brown in 1988 served as field director for Bob Dole in the
Midwestern states, where the Kansas Senator beat Bush. That won
him good marks as an organizer, particularly among younger
right-wing populists who still view Bush as too moderate.

    Fresh from the debris of Dole's primary campaign, Brown
exploded into the I.E. game with the most prominent of the ads
citing the Willie Horton case. It was Brown's spot that showed
the face of Horton, a black felon serving a life sentence who
raped a white woman while on a furlough from a Massachusetts
prison. Though Brown spent only $300,000 airing the commercial
on cable TV, network-news coverage provided a megaphone effect.
"We got about $2 million of free airtime," he says. Michael
Dukakis suffered accordingly.

    Another Brown opus that attracted wide coverage attacked
three Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee
during the confirmation hearings on Clarence Thomas. But even
with that record, Brown is hard pressed to finance an encore.
Contributions are much lower than in 1988. That problem, as much
as Brown's knack for innovation, prompted him to add a
long-distance phone number to his new ad, coaxing viewers with
credit cards to call the "Bill Clinton Fact Line" at a fee of
$4.99. He clears $2.50 on each call.

    One part of Brown's strategy worked: the ad got free
publicity on TV news shows and in newspapers. But the spot's
scheduled debut last Friday on a New York City cable-TV system
(owned by Time Warner) was canceled by the cable company, which
decided the campaign was "inappropriate" after hearing Bush's
complaint about it. Brown denounced this as the "rawest form of
political censorship." While shopping for other outlets, Brown
was planning his next venture: an attack on Ross Perot. "All I
can say to Ross," he observed, "is that he ain't seen nothing
yet." Brown issued this threat in the calm, civil tone of one
taking on a nasty but necessary job. After all, he likes the
idea that some of his pals still call him Baby Huey.