Loophole a Spigot for E-Mail

Advocacy Inc.'s Roger Alan Stone, who is not Republican media consultant Roger Stone, explained in a note to clients and associates why he is expecting a surge in revenue: "A wealthy individual could purchase all of the e-mail addresses for registered voters in a congressional district . . . produce an Internet video ad, and e-mail it along with a link to the campaign contribution page," he wrote. "Not only would this activity not count against any contribution limits or independent expenditure requirements; it would never even need to be reported."

Stone said that he is in discussions with representatives of wealthy individuals as well as state party officials about expanding their use of e-mails this year. He has contracted with at least three wealthy groups that e-mailed massively for primary campaigns this month.

Other political consulting groups are also feeling the impact of the FEC exemption. "We are hiring a new programmer or campaign specialist every three days," said John Aristotle Phillips, chief executive of Aristotle International Inc., which provides software and data services to electoral campaigns.

Voter Contact Services, which compiles lists of registered voters and matches them with e-mail addresses, expects its e-mail sales to double this year to more than 20 percent of its business, up from more than 10 percent in 2004.

The only impediments to growth, VSC chairman Bill Daly said, are increasingly sophisticated systems that block electronic spam and the dearth of middlemen to sell e-mail addresses for political uses. Campaigns can buy e-mail addresses for about 12 cents per name, retailers say.

"The e-mail loophole will be the vehicle that large donors will use at the last minute to get their message out this year," Fose predicted. "After they've put money everywhere else, the Internet will be the place where they will pour their funds at the end of the campaign season."

The election two years ago was the first in which a national list of registered voters was cross-referenced with multiple listings of e-mail addresses collected from magazine subscribers, catalogue shoppers, and online poll participants. As a consequence, lawmakers, candidates for office and interest groups were able to sell more than 25 million e-mail addresses of registered voters, and contact them at will.

SonicWall Inc., a California-based Internet security provider, estimated that more than 1.25 billion unsolicited political e-mails were sent to registered voters in 2004, up from virtually none during the presidential contest in 2000. SonicWall said it is too early to accurately predict the growth for this year, but for the presidential race in 2008, "there could be an exponential increase in the number of unsolicited political e-mails," SonicWall spokeswoman Mary McEvoy said.

With the FEC loophole, "everybody is looking at new ways to use the Internet to communicate," said R. Bruce Josten, executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "Not just us, but the unions and every interest group you can think of."