Tom Andrews, national program director for the “watchdog” group Citizen Action, stood on a platform at a Washington hotel last March brandishing a broom. Under a banner that read “Campaign for Clean Elections,” the former Democratic congressman from Maine unveiled for reporters Citizen Action’s reform plan to “stop the endless and out-of-control money chase of office holders for private special-interest money.” Making a couple of awkward swipes with the broom at a laundry bag stuffed with fake dollars, Andrews declared: “This organization is committed to sweeping this system clean!”
Citizen Action could start the process by opening its own books to public inspection. With brazen hypocrisy, the self-styled consumer group has raked in hundreds of thousands — and possibly millions — of dollars from the very same “special interests” it purports to oppose, interviews and documents show.
