ACORN Battle Intensifies

It's not everyone who gets accused by a presidential candidate of "maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."

That's how John McCain described the grassroots group ACORN in last Wednesday night's debate. The next day, two officials from the Justice Department leaked details of an FBI multi-state probe of ACORN.

And now the Obama campaign shoves back, hard. Campaign lawyer Bob Bauer said this afternoon that the McCain campaign and DOJ have formed "an unholy alliance of law enforcement and the ugliest form of partisan politics." Their goal isn't to stop ACORN, said Bauer, but to suppress the vote that ACORN is promoting. "It's a war on the voters," he said.

Those would be the 1.3 million young, low-income and minority voters registered by ACORN -- the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now -- and the reason the group has been knocked around for months by Republicans.

Thousands of registration forms gathered by ACORN canvassers have turned out to be bogus. Critics say the group plans to turn out droves of illegitimate voters on Election Day. The Republican National Committee calls ACORN "a quasi-criminal organization." On Friday, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said he has "concerns of rampant voter fraud in registrations."

The group's defenders say that a few canvassers cheat, and ACORN identifies fraudulent forms -- but by law in most states, it has to submit all of the forms it collects. There are investigations in about 12 states, although they seem to be targeting individual canvassers, not ACORN as an organization.

The GOP wants to hang the tainted ACORN on Obama's shoulders, while the Obama campaign has found another way to link McCain with the Bush administration....

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5:19 PM ET | 10-17-2008 | permalink

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ACORN's Money Tree Has Many Branches

Conservatives are on the march against the community organization ACORN, accusing its massive voter registration effort of fraud and faulting Obama for having any connections to the group. As we reported this morning, ACORN doesn't necessarily mind the attention.

But what exactly is ACORN? Actually, it's many, many things. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now has dozens of affiliated entities, from a home-buying assistance corporation to community radio stations to liberal research and training institutes. The giant web of ACORN organizations, primarily based in Louisiana, has been funded by a mix of labor union money, government grants (which really drive conservatives crazy) and charitable contributions from large foundations. See below for a breakdown of funding sources.

Plus, Project Vote -- the voter mobilization organization that works closely with and draws its leadership from ACORN -- paid ACORN and an affiliate $5.4 million in 2006. But where does Project Vote get its money? Normally it's hard to tell, but we obtained a 2006 tax return showing the nonprofit's funders, including: $4.5 million from the charitable trust of the investment management firm Vanguard; $425,000 from the Bauman Family Foundation, which also gives to the People for the American Way; and $396,000 from the liberal phone company Working Assets.

The breakdown on ACORN comes after the jump.

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9:14 PM ET | 10-15-2008 | permalink

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