A week after undercover videotapes made it the butt of a national joke, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now is launching a three-pronged effort to rebuild its reputation and try to hold on to the millions of dollars in funding it gets each year from the federal government.
First, ACORN’s top officials have been on a media apology tour and have dismissed the wayward employees in the infamous pimp video as bad apples who shouldn’t diminish the important work the group does in housing and low-income assistance. Then on Wednesday afternoon, ACORN went on the legal offensive, suing conservative filmmakers James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles for secretly videotaping in their office.
And finally, the group is launching a charm offensive on Capitol Hill, as its Washington lobbying shop has been quietly meeting with sympathetic congressional offices, reminding them that ACORN’s services help low-income residents of urban areas.
“We were just as shocked and horrified as the American public was” over the pimp video, ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis said in a conference call with reporters Wednesday.
But even as the group launched this rehabilitation effort and promised internal investigations, ACORN suffered more setbacks on Wednesday. The Internal Revenue Service cut off ties to the group, ending its volunteer tax services. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) — a key supporter — hurt the organization even more Wednesday when he backpedaled and said he would have voted to cut off the group’s funding, after initially saying he would retain tax money for ACORN.
ACORN officials would not say which congressional offices they’re lobbying, but an ACORN official characterized the group’s efforts as knocking on doors on Capitol Hill “very lightly,” telling Democratic leaders that it would be unwise to stop the flow of all federal funding to the group.
One ACORN staff member said that legislative staff is just “2.5 people” and unable to reach as many offices as they’d like. But they’ll need a lot more manpower than that to change minds in Congress at this point.
The mere word “ACORN” is politically toxic, and even some of the most liberal Democrats in both chambers of Congress have voted to cut off funding. The ACORN backlash has also put Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in a jam within her own caucus. She can’t look weak regarding corruption in a liberal organization — and the moderates in her caucus who are vulnerable in 2010 are being targeted by Republicans back home regarding ACORN funding.
An ACORN staffer said the Congressional Black Caucus is still supportive of the group, but while standing outside the CBC Foundation’s Legislative Conference on Wednesday, Rep. Kendrick Meek (D-Fla.) said ACORN’s actions on the video were “very disturbing.” He said he thinks ACORN does a lot of good in urban communities, but he took a hard line.
“We want to make sure no taxpayer dollars are going toward the activities reported. Period,” said Meek. “And until we know, I’m in support of stopping it all until we know it’s not widespread.”
An ACORN government relations staffer said offices have been “pleasant, cooperative, and both sides recognize this is a temporary storm.”
ACORN officials say this recent PR and lobbying blitz is less about ensuring the continued flow of federal funding and more about correcting the public perception of the group’s activities, after undercover videos showed staff members offering advice on how to run a brothel and evade taxes.
The public relations effort is not limited to the Hill. ACORN announced last Wednesday that it would suspend its free tax clinics nationwide. ACORN’s Lewis and former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger are joining in on the PR campaign in Washington and reached out to reporters Wednesday afternoon in a conference call, saying they would take their internal investigation seriously.
“My name is on the line and so is the name of the firm, so we will call them as we see them,” said Harshbarger, the senior counsel at Proskauer Rose LLP who is running the investigation.
Leading Democrats are also trying to slow the ACORN implosion, vowing to examine charges closely before formally ending the group’s federal funding. Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) has called for the Congressional Research Service to investigate all claims and report back immediately.
Conyers, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, met one on one — sans staff members — with Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), a longtime ACORN opponent, on Tuesday to negotiate a possible congressional investigation.
Democrats have long brushed off criticism of ACORN. Conyers once vowed to investigate, then reversed that promise. But the videos portraying a fake pimp asking for tax advice, however, were hard to ignore. They have been a viral sensation in Washington and nationwide — even prompting comment from President Barack Obama during his Sunday television blitz. O’Keefe and Giles, conservative filmmakers funded by Andrew Breitbart, posed as an aspiring politician and his prostitute girlfriend, who said they planned to use brothel earnings to fund a future political campaign. ACORN employees were shown in the video giving advice, ranging from burying the money in a tin can in the back yard to registering fictitious company names to legitimize the enterprise.
But while politicians and pundits publicly dump on ACORN, there are a few very dim glimmers of hope for the group.
House Democratic leaders are making no promises that the defunding measures will actually make it into the final version of the housing appropriations bill.
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) says he would wait for “the facts” before making any determinations. And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) Tuesday sent a letter to Louisiana Sen. David Vitter and other Republicans, saying he would not ask committees to investigate ACORN, as it could distract from issues such as the health care overhaul, cyberthreats and the war in Afghanistan.
A Pelosi aide said the speaker is not focusing on killing ACORN funding but, rather, on an investigation into the group to reveal who in the organization should be held responsible. The aide noted, however, that Pelosi is “leaning toward” ending federal funding.
Republicans, meanwhile, plan to keep offering amendments to appropriations bills to ensure that ACORN does not get funding and the videos do not drop out of the public consciousness.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20090923/pl_politico/27503
Topic: ACORN fights back (Read 479 times)