Feb 2, 2005 5 min read

WASHINGTON (AP) – All the tactics of a political campaign – TV ads, grass-roots organizing, town hall meetings and polling – are being tapped to influence opinion and pressure lawmakers in the explosive debate on Social Security. Together, advocates on both sides plan to spend tens of millions of dollars, perhaps as much as $100 million, before the year is out. That’s less than Social Security pays out in benefits every two hours but still a lot for a legislative campaign.

“Social Security is the kind of issue you can knock on anyone’s door and talk about. It’s made for campaigning,” said Tom Matzzie of the liberal group MoveOn.org, which put up its first TV ads this week opposing President Bush’s plan.

Republicans and their allies, including well-funded groups backed by business, are trying to build support for Bush’s plan to divert some of the Social Security payroll taxes into private accounts that could be invested in stocks, bonds and the money market. Democrats and their allies, including AARP and labor unions, are trying to stop them.

Some of the money boosting the plan is coming from Wall Street firms that could make money managing the private accounts and employers who prefer such accounts to raising taxes, another option for solving Social Security’s long-term financial problems.

Beyond these direct interests, the campaign’s intensity reflects a deep philosophical divide over the role of government.

Bush will make the case himself in his State of the Union speech tonight. He’ll then embark on a campaign-style swing through five states, all represented by Senate Democrats who the GOP thinks might be pressured into supporting the Bush plan.

Opponents plan to meet Bush at each stop with demonstrators and, in many cases, with Democratic members of Congress who oppose his plans.

The Republican National Committee is treating Social Security as an extension of the presidential campaign, tapping into its network of donors and its e-mail list of 7.5 million.

It also has set up a “war room,” with a daily conference call to ensure that its allies are delivering the same message. Media outside Washington, bloggers and talk radio shows are being targeted. And 1.6 million volunteers are being mobilized to write letters.

“We’re going to have an operation here employing campaign-style tactics and election-year intensity,” said Brian Jones of the RNC. “It’s a full-throttle effort right now.”

Working with the RNC are a pair of business-backed organizations: The Alliance for Worker Retirement Security is lobbying members of Congress inside Washington, and the Coalition for the Modernization and Protection of America’s Social Security, or COMPASS, is working from outside Washington to pressure lawmakers.

COMPASS plans television ads targeting lawmakers, town hall meetings, direct mail and mass phone calls, said Derrick Max, executive director of both groups. Max said their cost will easily run into the tens of millions of dollars.

Also backing Bush is Progress for America, a GOP-connected group that helped Bush win re-election. It plans to spend “well above” $10 million on the Social Security campaign, said Brian McCabe, the group’s president.

On the other side, the Campaign for America’s Future is leading a coalition of 20 organizations traditionally aligned with the Democratic Party: labor unions and advocacy groups for civil rights, women, senior citizens and the disabled. The coalition plans to spend at least $30 million on TV and radio ads and grass-roots organizing, said co-director Roger Hickey.

“This is going to come down to maybe 30 congressional districts and five or six states where senators are up in the air,” Hickey said.

AARP has already conducted extensive focus groups and polling and is trying to build opposition to Bush’s plan among its 35 million members. So far about 200,000 of them have contacted members of Congress, said David Certner, AARP’s chief lobbyist.

“The key to this obviously is the battle over public opinion,” Certner said.

The AFL-CIO hopes to mobilize its 13 million union members and their families against the Bush plan. It already has targeted financial services companies, which have said little publicly about the issue but in some cases have donated money to groups supporting the president’s proposal. Union members picketed Charles Schwab offices in Boston and San Francisco last week and generated more than 400,000 e-mails to the company.

MoveOn.org, which campaigned heavily against Bush in the presidential race, began airing this week what it says is the first in a series of television ads on Social Security. One spot criticizes Rep. Allen Boyd of Florida, the lone House Democrat to sign onto a Social Security bill that includes personal accounts.

“We want to make it clear for the rest of the Democratic caucus there will be as much a price to pay for them as for any other privatizer,” said Matzzie, MoveOn’s Washington director.

“We’re going to put the electricity back in the third rail,” he said, referring to Social Security’s reputation as the one issue that can destroy a politician’s career.