The group stands accused of a grand scheme - of registering Mickey Mouse in Florida, and Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo in Nevada - all in an effort to elect Sen. Barack Obama as president.
ACORN, a 38-year-old community organizing group active in low-income housing, voter registration and minimum wage issues, is now in the crosshairs of a nasty presidential campaign, with operatives for Sen. John McCain accusing it of voter fraud and even of causing the subprime mortgage crisis.
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ACORN’s leaders have vigorously disputed the allegations, which they say are politically motivated since most of the voters they register are young and from minority groups.
“Rumors of ACORN’s voter fraud have been greatly exaggerated and to a large extent manufactured,” Bertha Lewis, the organization’s interim chief organizer, or chief executive, said Monday in a conference call to announce the organization had registered 1.3 million people to vote.
Still, the accusations come at a difficult time for ACORN, formerly known as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which is still reeling from revelations this summer that a brother of the group’s founder, Wade Rathke, embezzled almost $1 million from the organization which the group failed to disclose for eight years.
Dale Rathke remained on ACORN’s payroll until June 2, when disclosure of his theft by foundations and other donors forced the organization to dismiss him. On the same day, Wade Rathke stepped down as ACORN’s chief organizer, and was replaced by Lewis, who had headed the New York ACORN.
Wade Rathke, who is now chief organizer for ACORN International LLC, told the New York Times that the decision to keep the matter secret was made not to protect his brother, but because word of the embezzlement would have put a “weapon” into the hands of enemies of ACORN, which has long been a target of conservatives.
After the scandal, the group’s board hired Sidley Austin LLP, the Chicago law firm where Barack and Michelle Obama once worked, to review its procedures.
Now, the accusations of voter registration fraud have thrust Lewis, the onetime executive director of New York ACORN, into the spotlight. She has gone on the offensive, noting that it was ACORN itself that informed state officials of incomplete or suspicious registration cards collected by former employees and said the group had terminated the workers involved.
In a statement, she said that “groups threatened by our historic success” have gone after ACORN because of whom the group registers: As many as 70 percent of the new voters are minorities, and half are younger than 30.
Obama’s relationship to ACORN, whose political action committee endorsed him, has also been an issue.
McCain’s Campaign Manager Rick Davis told reporters that Obama once worked as ACORN’s lawyer and conducted training events for its leaders. He also noted a payment the Obama campaign made in February to an ACORN affiliate, Citizens Services Inc.
The record suggests those assertions are overstated. Obama did represent ACORN in a lawsuit against the state of Illinois in 1995, working with both the U.S. Justice Department and the League of Women Voters.
In a brief news conference yesterday, Obama acknowledged he had worked as an attorney for ACORN’s Chicago affiliate in a suit seeking to have Illinois implement the so-called “motor voter” law, which enables people to register to vote at motor vehicle departments.
As for the training events, the campaign said they involved about two hours of work in the late 1990s, also for ACORN’s Chicago affiliate, campaign officials said He was not paid for the work.
The Obama campaign did pay Citizen Services Inc. more than $832,000 for get-out-the-vote efforts in several states - of which about $80,000 went to ACORN. ACORN insists the group is independent, but records show that Citizen Services Inc. is located at the same New Orleans address and has worked in campaigns in which ACORN is also involved.
Obama sought to put the registration fraud allegations in a larger context yesterday, saying they were unlikely to lead to voter fraud
“This is typically a situation where ACORN probably paid people to get registrations and these folks, not wanting to actually register people because that’s actually hard work, just went into a phone book or made up names and submitted false registrations to get paid,” he said.
“It’s doubtful Tony Romo is gonna show up in Ohio to vote.”
Meanwhile, ACORN leaders fired back at the McCain campaign, releasing a 2006 video of the Arizona senator delivering a keynote speech at a pro-immigration rally in Miami that the group co-sponsored.
“Maybe it is out of desperation that Senator McCain has forgotten that he was for ACORN before he was against ACORN,” Lewis said in a written statement.
UPDATE 10/16: The New York Times reports today that ACORN is working on a deal to sever ties with founder, Wade Rathke, whose brother embezzled almost $1 million from the group.
The Associated Press reports that the FBI is looking into whether ACORN helped foster voter registration fraud across the country.
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