Katherine Kersten: Dayton goes negative, from a safe distance

So Mark Dayton has called for an end to negative campaign ads. That's rich.

Dayton's pose as the White Knight of Minnesota Politics is the height of hypocrisy. While he claims the high road, his family is funding the Alliance for a Better Minnesota (ABM) below the radar screen. ABM is a sophisticated attack machine that's conducted a smear campaign against Dayton's Republican opponent, Tom Emmer.

ABM's dirty work has just begun. As of mid-July, the Dayton family had poured $851,000 into two front groups that funnel money to ABM, while Big Labor's hefty contributions to those groups brought the total to over $2 million.

If Dayton doesn't know about ABM's down-and-dirty modus operandi, he's the only Minnesota politician who's clueless on that score. ABM is a communications hub that exists to push out negative messages on behalf of DFL candidates like Dayton, so they can keep their hands clean.

ABM cut its teeth in 2006 and 2008 with blisteringly negative ads aimed at Tim Pawlenty and Norm Coleman. In crafting its battle plans, it had access to well-known national masters of negativity. That's because ABM is the Minnesota branch of ProgressNow, a national activist network with affiliates in 12 states.

ProgressNow is a vital component of a strategy hatched in Colorado in 2004 by a small group of ultrawealthy left-wing political activists. Their goal: to turn America's red states blue by creating a highly coordinated network of lavishly funded nonprofits to promote "progressive" candidates and issues.

ProgressNow's director is Bobby Clark (Howard Dean's online guru); MoveOn.org founder Wes Boyd was an early leader. The group's scorched-earth approach to politics is best summed up by an internal memo -- leaked in 2008 -- that called for defining a Republican candidate "foot on throat."

A new book, "The Blueprint: How the Democrats Won Colorado," tells the story of ProgressNow and the movement that gave rise to it. According to its authors -- Denver journalist Adam Schrager and former Colorado Republican legislator Rob Witwer -- ProgressNow CEO Michael Huttner and his group's affiliates "wake up in the morning with one question on their minds." In Huttner's words: "How do we get earned media to advance our agenda and to criticize our opponents?"

"We'll go after them [Republicans] very starkly and in a way that draws emotion," Huttner told Schrager. "It's too hard-hitting for some politicians to say these things, even if they really want someone else to say them."

The result? In Colorado, where ProgressNow is best-established, "the Democrats have outsourced the politics of personal destruction to a bunch of nonprofits," said Jon Caldara of the state's Independence Institute.

ProgressNow's fingerprints are all over ABM's anti-Emmer attack ads. FactCheck.org -- operated by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center -- labeled "false" ABM's claim that Emmer had voted against a bill to make "corporations and CEO's" pay higher taxes. The ad's claim that Emmer's vote "created" a huge state deficit is "pure nonsense," according to FactCheck.org.

Regarding ABM's "misleading" ad claiming that Emmer sponsored a bill to "reduce penalties for drunk drivers," FactCheck.org had this to say: The bill "actually sought to prevent suspected drunk drivers from losing their licenses and having their vehicles seized ... before they have been given a chance to defend themselves in court."

ABM is also using Dayton family money to wage political guerrilla warfare. It has worked to keep the boycott against Target Corp. in the headlines, allegedly on grounds that Emmer -- like Barack Obama -- does not support gay marriage. ABM bought Facebook ads targeting 57,000 Target employees, and launched a poll of Target employees and Target Facebook "fans" to stir up animosity against the giant retailer. Its goal: to bully and intimidate corporations that donate to probusiness candidates.

In his call to end attack ads, Dayton lamented "the whole attack ad approach where you try to destroy someone personally to defeat them politically." "The antidote," he said, "is for voters to say, 'No.'" Even then, "you're not going to stop some people from operating out of the sewer."

You can say that again. But what if, as in Dayton's case, "some people" includes your own family?