PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN

SOROS HAS DONATED $26M IN EFFORT TO DEFEAT BUSH Billionaire investor George Soros has committed at least $26 million to defeating President Bush, according to recently released figures.

On October 8, Mr. Soros gave $5 million to a joint fund-raising committee for two organizations opposing the president, America Coming Together and the Media Fund. The donation and some smaller gifts brought the magnate’s total contribution to anti-Bush groups to about $23.6 million. Mr. Soros is also spending about $3 million on his own personal campaign to defeat the president, an aide to the businessman said.

In June, Mr. Soros said he did not expect a “substantial increase” beyond the $15 million he had already pledged or given to liberal political groups.

A spokesman said last night that Mr. Soros upped his ante because “the program was starting to have an effect.”

One of Mr. Soros’s friends, the chairman of Progressive Insurance, Peter Lewis, has donated more than $22 million to many of the same groups.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

KERRY HOLDS SLIGHT EDGE IN CAMPAIGN CASH IN LAST WEEKS OF RACE

Senator Kerry started the final two weeks of his general-election campaign with a slight cash edge over President Bush, though each has less than a third of his $75 million budget left.

Mr. Kerry had just over $24 million on hand as of mid-month, compared with $22 million left for Mr. Bush. Both spent around $14 million in the first two weeks of October, pre-election campaign finance reports they filed yesterday showed.

The $150 million in general-election spending by Messrs. Bush and Kerry is a fraction of the overall election cost. Total spending in the presidential and congressional races will approach an estimated $4 billion, nearly $1 billion more than the 2000 elections, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks campaign finance.

In the presidential race, Messrs. Bush and Kerry can also get help from their parties, which can each spend roughly $16 million in coordination with its nominee and unlimited amounts independent of his campaign. As October began, the Democratic National Committee had used up at least $7 million of that total. The RNC had just over $4 million in coordinated spending as of midmonth, its most recent figures available.

In all, the RNC had nearly $53 million on hand as of midmonth, according to a report it filed Thursday. It raised $24 million in the two-week period, including $12.7 million in leftover money from Mr. Bush’s primary campaign, and spent nearly $43 million. The Democratic committee had about $42 million as of October 1, its most recent report showed.

– Associated Press

FILMMAKER SUES SINCLAIR IN NEW YORK OVER ANTI-KERRY DOCUMENTARY

Filmmaker George Butler sued Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. yesterday, saying its documentary showing a one-sided view of presidential candidate John Kerry’s anti-war activities violates his copyrights by using pictures and film without permission. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, seeks unspecified damages and a halt to any use of the material Mr. Butler has created in the more than three decades he has documented Mr. Kerry’s life.

Mr. Butler said in the lawsuit that Mr. Sinclair infringed upon his copyrights by the unauthorized reproduction of pictures and film for its documentary “Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal.”

The 42-minute Sinclair film consists largely of interviews with American prisoners of the Vietnam War who survived torture in Hanoi and became enraged at Kerry and others for suggesting they had suffered for an unjust cause.

Messages left for comment with lawyers for Sinclair, based in Hunt Valley, Md., were not immediately returned. Mr. Butler has taken at least 6,000 pictures of Kerry since he began documenting his life in 1969, convinced he eventually would be president. Some of the photos were published in a book, “John Kerry: A Portrait.”

– Associated Press