Pat Dollard | Young Americans

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama’s presidential campaign wants federal regulators to investigate fellow Democrats who are backing Hillary Rodham Clinton’s candidacy, taking intraparty discord to a new level of confrontation.

Obama’s campaign lawyer, Robert Bauer, filed a complaint Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission, accusing the pro-Clinton American Leadership Project of violating campaign finance laws by running ads against Obama.

The group is largely financed by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and is run by Democratic operatives, many of them based in California and who have past connections to Clinton or her husband. Its organizers say they are abiding by the law and a 2007 Supreme Court ruling.

Bauer, in his complaint and in a teleconference with reporters, likened the group to organizations that had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for ad campaigns in the 2004 presidential election. Among them was the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which attacked Democrat John Kerry’s service in Vietnam and his subsequent anti-war stance.

“This organization is a Swift Boat wannabe and it’s violating the law in exactly the same way,” Bauer said.

The Supreme Court in 2007 opened the door for organizations to air issue ads that mention political candidates, as long as they did not explicitly call for their election or defeat. The FEC followed up with a regulation that gave outside groups more latitude to run ads during elections.

“We have strictly and carefully adhered to every governing law and regulation, including the content of our communications and our full and timely disclosures,” said ALP Chairman Jason Kinney, a California Democratic strategist.

Bauer said the Supreme Court decision has been a “source of a great deal of confusion—the confusion that this organization is trying to take advantage of.”

Complicating matters is the FEC’s lack of a quorum to act on any investigation or regulatory matter. The six-member commission has four vacancies. Bauer asked the FEC that if it is “unable to act expeditiously” it refer the case to the Justice Department.

The American Leadership Project has run more than $1.7 million in ads, either supporting Clinton’s positions on issues or criticizing Obama’s stands. The latest ad—$700,000 worth of air time in Indiana—raises questions about Obama’s economic policies.

“Call Barack Obama and tell him to give Hoosiers a real plan to fix our economy,” the ad states.

At issue is the complicated array of federal regulations governing who can say what and how during an election campaign. Candidates, party committees and political action committees, which may only accept restricted contributions, can run ads that call for the election or defeat of a candidates.

Groups that don’t organize as political action committees can raise money in unlimited contributions from donors, but they cannot run ads that “expressly advocate” for or against a candidate. These groups have organized either as nonprofit, tax exempt groups or as so-called 527 organizations, which are named after the section of the tax code that permits their existence.

The American Leadership Project is a 527 organization.

(AP)