Anti-Senn ads funded by U.S. Chamber of Commerce

By Beth Kaiman
Seattle Times staff reporter

Deborah Senn

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The contribution, received Aug. 27, was used to buy nearly $1 million in TV air time in advance of tomorrow's primary, said Bruce Boram, executive director and sole member of the Voters Education Committee, the Seattle-based group that received the Chamber's money.

Boram, who until yesterday had declined to talk about who provided the money, said he first tried to solicit donations from several sources in the state for ads against Senn. He didn't have much success, he said, and in talks with the United States Chamber of Commerce about business interests in Washington state, a deal for the contribution was struck.

He said he could not recall whether he or the Chamber had suggested the donation.

No one from the U.S. Chamber could be reached for comment last night.

Boram, who separately heads a pro-business group called United for Washington, said yesterday since he founded the Voters Education Committee two years ago, he has been "trying to grow the organization."

The commercials focused on Senn's tenure as insurance commissioner. Controversy over them and over the committee's refusal to reveal its backers even after the PDC demanded disclosure of the group's finances prompted some television stations to stop airing the ads late last week. Boram then pulled all the ads off the air.

The commercials criticized Senn's handling of the state's share of a national $1 billion settlement with Prudential Insurance over sales practices, and the fact that the office lost accreditation from a national group during her tenure.

The business community has long opposed Senn's policies and personal style. The former two-term state insurance commissioner has built a reputation around challenging big business.

But why the national Chamber chose to spend so much in her Democratic primary race against former Seattle City Attorney Mark Sidran wasn't clear yesterday.

The 90-year-old organization, based in Washington, D.C., is the nation's leading business-advocacy group.
 
It represents more than 3 million businesses through nearly 3,000 state and local chambers, 830 associations and more than 90 American Chambers of Commerce in other countries, according to the organization's Web site.

While insurance commissioner, Senn opposed tougher prescreening for health-insurance policies and refused to compromise when insurance companies complained that individual coverage plans were becoming too expensive to underwrite because of state requirements. Several companies stopped selling individual policies when she was commissioner.

During this year's campaign, Senn has said that as attorney general she would fight for lower prescription-drug prices and lower gasoline prices.

Don Brunell, president of the Association of Washington Business, the U.S. Chamber's state affiliate, said he first learned of the national group's involvement in a telephone message left for him by the Chamber Friday evening

Brunell's group has endorsed Sidran and Republican candidate Rob McKenna, a Metropolitan King County councilman, in the primary. McKenna's primary opponent is Seattle attorney Michael Vaska.

The U.S. Chamber has been involved in recent media campaigns elsewhere. In South Dakota, for instance, the Chamber planned to spend $400,000 for two weeks of ads targeting Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., for defeat in his re-election bid, The National Journal reported.

Yesterday's disclosure came after the state went to court Friday to pressure the Voters Education Committee to reveal who was paying for commercials that have run hundreds of times on TV stations around the state.

Before a hearing could be held, the committee agreed to provide the information by 5 p.m. yesterday.

The state has also filed a lawsuit against the committee, alleging election-law violations. The committee has filed its own suit, saying the PDC's action violates the group's free-speech rights.

Boram said his committee didn't have to disclose its backers to the state because the television ads did not explicitly tell viewers to vote against Senn and did not contain personal attacks on her character.

The committee has maintained it is following the rules for what it says is an "issue ad" and for its status as an independent political committee known as a 527, a name derived from the part of the Internal Revenue Service code that governs those committees. Boram has said the group planned to report its finances to the IRS, as required, next month.

Though she and Sidran mostly agree on consumer-protection issues, Senn has campaigned as the stronger consumer advocate. She said yesterday it's hard to say whether the negative ad campaign, and the revelation that business interests were behind it, will help or hurt her chances tomorrow.

Sidran said the attention paid to the ads diverted attention from his campaign and a slew of newspaper endorsements he won in mid- to late August. Like Senn, he had urged disclosure of the ad campaign's backers.

"In the last critical days of this campaign, it distracted the voters from the messages of the campaign and what we (Senn and Sidran) have to offer," Sidran said.

Seattle Times staff reporter Cara Solomon contributed to this report. Beth Kaiman: 206-464-2441 or bkaiman@seattletimes.com