Dreier Nurtures Richest Campaign Fund in Congress

Rep. David Dreier (R-La Verne) ended his successful 1984 reelection campaign with more than $600,000 in unspent contributions.

Two years later, his war chest has grown to almost $1 million, more than that of any other congressman in the country and almost $900,000 more than either of his two opponents in the November election.

Dreier has amassed this huge sum by steadily collecting more than most of his colleagues and spending comparatively little to retain his seat in the Republican-dominated 33rd Congressional District. During the 18-month period ending June 30, Dreier raised $387,116, and spent $88,006, winding up with a total of $905,594, according to the Federal Election Commission.

Other congressmen raised more money during the same period. Rep. Ronald V. Dellums (D-Berkeley), who solicits donations nationwide from activists in anti-nuclear, civil rights and other causes, raised $821,510 during the 18 months. But he spent $794,926, mostly on direct-mail pleas for more money, leaving him with just $122,524 in the bank.

Dreier’s mid-1986 total surpassed the campaign funds of such notables as House Minority Leader Jim Wright (D-Texas) by more than $200,000, and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.) by more than $320,000. Rep. Fernand J. St Germain, (D-Rhode Island), chairman of the House Banking Committee, ranked second to Dreier among U. S. congressmen in campaign cash with nearly $740,000.

Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.) had less than $95,000 in his campaign treasury as of Aug. 20, but raised and spent about $2.3 million in the previous 20 months. Kemp has a separate political action committee called Campaign for Prosperity that raised and spent another $2.3 million, but had less than $100,000 at mid-year.

In the San Gabriel Valley, Dreier’s cash on hand at mid-year of $905,000 compares with $377,000 for Rep. Carlos J. Moorhead (R-Glendale); $200,000 for Rep. Edward Roybal (D-Los Angeles); $125,000 for Rep. Esteban Torres (D-La Puente) and $50,000 for Rep. Matthew G. Martinez (D-Monterey Park).

By comparison, Dreier is running in November against opponents who are almost penniless.

The Democratic nominee, Monty Hempel, said he has collected less than $10,000, barely enough to require that his contributions be reported to the Federal Election Commission. And Mike Noonan, who is running on the Peace and Freedom ticket, said he has raised less than $1,000.

Hempel finds the disparity in campaign financing between incumbent and challengers more than unfair. “It’s obscene,” he said.

Hempel said his own fund-raising efforts are hampered because potential contributors sense the futility of giving money to a candidate whose opponent has a fortune to spend. Nevertheless, Hempel said, he is finding enough donors to make him hopeful about the campaign.

“We raised $1,200 yesterday,” Hempel boasted two weeks ago. “People are giving us money.”

Of course, Hempel could raise $1,200 a day for two years and still fall short of the amount already available to Dreier.

Hempel said that it takes only about $200,000 for a congressional candidate to reach his constituency, and spending more amounts to campaign overkill, making it pointless for Dreier to have nearly $1 million.

But Dreier said there are at least three good reasons to have a sizable amount of cash on hand.

First, he said, having a huge war chest keeps Democratic leaders from searching out strong candidates to run against him. As a result, Dreier said, he has faced “not terribly strong opposition” in recent elections.

Second, he said, although his district now appears safe, congressional districts are reapportioned at least every 10 years and there always is the chance he will be thrown into a tough political battle. That happened in 1982, Dreier said, when reapportionment forced him to run against fellow Republican Wayne Grisham. Dreier said he started that campaign short of cash and has vowed never to get caught in that situation again.

Finally, Dreier said, there is the chance that he might want to run for another political office. In fact, he said, some of his supporters wanted him to run for the U. S. Senate this year.

Democrats in Minority

Dreier, 34, has been in Congress since 1980, when he ousted Democrat Jim Lloyd. His 33rd Congressional District, which includes most of the eastern San Gabriel Valley and extends southward to Whittier and La Mirada, has nearly 12,000 more Republicans than Democrats.

Dreier said he has managed to raise campaign contributions without staging fund-raising events in Washington or conducting elaborate, computerized mail solicitations. He does write letters to contributors asking for more money, he said, but the effort is low-key. Some money comes from the special interests represented by political action committees, but most is from individual donors, a number of whom can be counted upon for $250 to $1,000 every year.

For example, Ira Norris, an Upland builder who has given $3,000 to Dreier since 1983, according to campaign reports to the Federal Election Commission, said he does not have to be prompted to donate. “Nobody woos me,” he said. “I let David know when he’s running that I’ll contribute. He happens to be a nice guy, a caring guy. We need more congressmen like David.”

Some money comes from well-known Republican contributors such as auto dealer H. F. Boekmann of Encino, manufacturer Julian A. Virtue of Rolling Hills and homemaker Margaret Brock of Los Angeles.

Meeting in Bakersfield

Some of the donors live far from the district. Frederick C. Porter, a Bakersfield geologist, gave $1,000 in 1984 and $500 in 1985 and in 1986 on the strength of a favorable impression Dreier made at a meeting with potential contributors. Porter said he was among a group of people in the oil industry who were called together by a friend to meet with Dreier in Bakersfield a few years ago and they heard Dreier say things that pleased the oil industry.

Porter said he has continued to support Dreier but was unaware that the congressman had accumulated so much money. “I’m against that myself,” Porter said. “I didn’t realize that Mr. Dreier had that much.”

Dreier’s accumulation of money prompted a Washington-based group called the Citizens Against PACs to run an advertisement in newspapers in Dreier’s district a year ago urging voters to write Dreier and ask him why he took so much money from special interest groups with no particular ties to the 33rd District. Citizens Against PACs said that about one-fourth of Dreier’s contributions in 1983-84 came from political action committees.

The ad backfired, Dreier said. No one wrote to him to complain about his campaign finances, he said, but a few supporters who thought he had been unfairly attacked sent him some more money.

Other Ads Have Worked

Philip M. Stern, co-chairman of Citizens Against PACs, said he does not know what the impact of the ad may have been in Dreier’s case, but similar ads targeting other congressmen have produced the desired results, getting constituents fired up over their congressmen’s campaign fund practices.

Stern said Citizens Against PACs, a nonpartisan group whose backers include such notables as historians Henry Steele Commager and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and author Isaac Asminov, spends about $100,000 a year to call attention to the heavy political influence of political action committees, which funnel millions of dollars from businesses, unions, trade associations and others to candidates.

Stern said Dreier gets a smaller percentage of his donations from political action committees than do many other candidates, but his acceptance of such donations is still questionable.

Dreier, who serves on the House Banking Committee, received $24,150 in donations from 30 financial groups during his current term. He received $9,340 from committees associated with seven major defense contractors.

Many Banking Sources

Dreier said all California congressmen receive money from defense contractors because there are so many defense plants here. He said his contributions from the banking industry come from so many sources, each with conflicting interests, that it is obvious he is not influenced by them.

But Stern said he sees little difference between a member of the banking committee taking money from bankers while making decisions affecting the banking industry and a judge soliciting donations from the plaintiffs and defendants before deciding a case. In fact, the only difference, Stern said, is that judges do not solicit such donations, but most congressmen do.

Dreier said his campaign finances are a matter of public record. Records of donations must be filed with the Federal Election Commission, he said, and anyone concerned can examine the donations, look at a congressman’s actions and draw conclusions.

Hempel, 35, who is director of the program in public policy studies at Claremont Graduate School, said studies he has seen indicate that special interests give most of their money to incumbents who are in safe districts, a strategy that seems designed to do nothing but curry favor.

“They are thwarting the goals of democracy,” Hempel said. While many people talk about public apathy toward politics, Hempel said, “I don’t think voters are apathetic; I think they’re cynical.”

Safe for Incumbents

The amassing of huge war chests and the reapportionment process that has made almost all districts either safely Democratic or safely Republican is making congressional incumbents nearly challenge-proof, Hempel said.

But Dreier said Democrats in California have only themselves to blame because they were the ones who redrew congressional district boundaries in 1982 to lump Republican areas together and protect Democratic incumbents, producing politically safe districts for nearly all the survivors. The political imbalance makes the upset of an incumbent like him so unlikely, Dreier said, that the challengers cannot raise much money.

Noonan, 46, a hospital pharmacist who is running for Congress for the fourth time, said that although he talks to voters about the “pernicious” influence of campaign money, he finds that many younger voters are unconcerned about where a candidate gets his funds. For them, he said, “money is its own justification.”

In fact, Noonan said, “I’ve had people tell me that I couldn’t possibly be a serious candidate because I don’t have money.”

‘Million-Dollar’ Slogan

Hempel is trying to turn Dreier’s money against him by making it a campaign issue. He has coined the slogan that “million-dollar ideas can beat million-dollar campaigns.”

Hempel said he also takes comfort from his own soundings that indicate that Dreier is little known in either Washington or his own district despite being well financed.

“He’s pretty much invisible,” Hempel said. “Our polling shows that he isn’t much better known than I am, and I admit to being invisible.”

Meanwhile, Dreier said, he is secure enough to give some of his campaign money to other candidates. He gave $1,000 to each of the Republican nominees running against Reps. Esteban Torres (D-La Puente) and George Brown Jr. (D-Colton) and $3,000 to the campaign of state Sen. William Campbell (R-Hacienda Heights) for state controller.

But Dreier said the money he is giving away is only the bank interest being earned by contributions to his campaign. He is keeping the remainder for himself, he said, following the advice that one should always be prepared.

DONATIONS FROM FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS

Donations of more than $100 from financial institution political action committees from January, 1985, to June, 1986:

Contributor Amount American Bankers Assn. $1,000 Assn. of Bank Holding Companies 1,000 BankAmerica Federal Election Fund 750 Bankers Trust of New York 500 California Bankers Assn. 1,000 California League of Savings Institutions 500 Central Savings 200 Citicorp 200 Coast Savings and Loan 250 Columbia Savings and Loan 250 Credit Union National Assn. 2,250 Credithrift Financial Management Corp. 250 Crocker Individual Voluntary Investment in Citizenship 3,000 Financial Corp. of America/American Savings and Loan 750 First Interstate Bank 1,000 Gibralter Financial Corp. 250 Glendale Federal Savings 1,000 Great American Federal Savings Bank 500 Great Western Financial Corp. 2,000 Home Federal Savings and Loan Assn. of San Diego 1,750 Home Savings of America 250 Household Finance Corp. 250 Imperial Savings 250 Mercury Savings and Loan Assn. 250 J. P. Morgan and Co., Inc. 1,000 National Council of Savings Institutions 500 Pacific Savings Bank Employees 750 Republic Federal Savings and Loan Assn. 250 Security Pacific Corp. 250 Wells Fargo and Co. Employees 2,000 Total 24,150

* Data source: Federal Election Commission . CONTRIBUTIONS FROM DEFENSE GROUPS Contributions of more than $100 from defense industry political action committees from January, 1985, to June, 1986:

Contributor Amount Aerojet-General Corp. $250 Gencorp Inc. 250 General Dynamics Corp. 3,590 Hughes Aircraft Co. 500 Lockheed Employees 3,500 Northrop Employees 250 Rockwell International Corp. 1,000 Total 9,340

* Data source: Federal Election Commission .

CAMPAIGN WAR CHEST BREAKDOWN DREIER FOR CONGRESS COMMITTEE FUNDS COLLECTED AND SPENT FROM JANUARY, 1985 TO JUNE, 1986:

Donations $387,116 Expenditures 88,006 Cash on hand June 30, 1986 905,594

SOURCES OF CONTRIBUTIONS TO DREIER FOR CONGRESS COMMITTEE:

Contributor War Chest % Political Action Committees 15.4% Individual donors 84.4%

POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE DONATIONS BY GROUP:

Contributor Amount War Chest % Financial Institutions $24,150 40.3 Defense contractors 9,340 15.6 Building and real estate 4,500 7.5 Utilities 3,500 5.8 Others l8,360 30.8 Total 59,850