Bush Campaign Lawyer Resigns

WASHINGTON —  The senior legal advisor to President Bush’s reelection campaign resigned today, citing the controversy stirred by his dual role of representing the president’s political organization and the advice he gave to a group of veterans that has challenged Sen. John F. Kerry’s military record.

The campaign’s national counsel, Benjamin L. Ginsberg, said in a letter to Bush that while his advising the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth “was entirely within the boundaries of the law,” he did not want the fact that he helped the group to “distract from the real issues upon which you and the country should be focusing.”

Federal campaign law prohibits a candidate’s campaign organization and independent groups supporting candidates from coordinating their activities. Kerry filed a formal complaint last week with the Federal Election Commission alleging that there had been illegal coordination in connection with the veterans’ advertising.

Ginsberg, 53, an expert on election finance law and a veteran of Republican campaign work who was one of Bush’s attorneys during the Florida recount on which the 2000 election hinged, said his presentation of advice to the veterans group “was done so in a manner that is fully appropriate and legal.”

He said his tie to the group was “quite similar to the relationships” his counterparts at the Democratic National Committee and Kerry’s presidential campaign had established with such organizations seeking Bush’s defeat as Moveon.org, the Media Fund and Americans Coming Together.

The organizations are known as “527s” for the section of the tax code that regulates their activities.

Marc Racicot, the Bush campaign’s chairman, accepted Ginsberg’s resignation and said, “For the past five years, he provided the president with first-rate campaign legal advice. There is no better legal mind in America on election law issues.”

Blaming news coverage of the independent organizations, and the attention focused on the Vietnam veterans group — stirred up largely by its aggressive advertising campaign challenging Kerry’s record, Ginsberg said his work for Bush was becoming a campaign distraction.

“Unfortunately, this campaign has seen a stunning double standard emerge between the media’s focus on the activities of the 527s aligned with John Kerry and those opposed to him,” Ginsberg wrote to Bush. “I cannot begin to express my sadness that my legal representations have become a distraction from the critical issues at hand in this election.”

Kerry’s campaign manager, Mary Beth Cahill, said in a statement that Ginsberg’s resignation “doesn’t end the extensive web of connections between George Bush and the group trying to smear John Kerry’s military record.”

“In fact,” she said, “it only confirms the extent of those connections.”

“Now we know why George Bush refuses to specifically condemn these false ads. People deeply involved in his own campaign are behind them.”

The Swift Boat group, made up largely of veterans who, like Kerry, served aboard the small Navy craft fighting the riverine war on Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, launched its attacks on the Massachusetts Democrat shortly after the Democratic National Convention four weeks ago.

It challenged the accuracy of accounts of combat for which Kerry was decorated and chastised him for criticism he voiced about the war upon his return to the United States. However, several other veterans have since come forth to support Kerry’s accounts.

The advertising effort appeared to set the Kerry campaign off its stride, forcing it to engage in a protracted defense of a war record on which it had been banking to build up the candidate’s credentials as a potential commander in chief.

And the veterans group appeared to be scoring some points: While the Democrat’s defense, slow to get off the ground, sought to answer the allegations point by point, his standing among veterans began to drop — 18 percentage points in a recent CBS News poll.