Republican Questions Campaign Allegations : Senate Democrat Says GOP Broke Laws

The chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee charged during a televised interview Sunday that Republicans have violated campaign laws in two areas, but his GOP counterpart questioned both allegations.

Sen. George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) accused the Republican campaign committee of “a direct, blatant violation of the law” by using a procedure politicians call “bundling” to channel more money than election laws permit to help GOP contestants in close election races.

But Sen. John Heinz (R-Pa.), who heads the National Republican Senatorial Committee, maintained during an appearance with Mitchell on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that bundling “has been done by both parties for a long time.”

Bundling is generally used when campaign committees have hit legal limits for contributions to individual campaigns, calculated under formulas established by federal law. As an alternative money source, the committees solicit large individual contributions, which are then parceled out to the candidates deemed to need more money as contributions from the individual donors.

Survey Not Challenged

Heinz did not question the findings of a survey by the Atlanta Constitution, which said that it has uncovered donors who had no idea that they had been listed as the source of gifts to candidates they knew nothing about. But he insisted that “we’ve been extremely careful” to advise contributors “in any mail we send them of any contribution that would go . . . to a candidate they didn’t know, that that candidate was clearly identified and the terms under which they were giving were clearly set forth.”

Mitchell’s other charge involved evidence that a Republican “ballot security” program in Louisiana, which purportedly aimed at excluding unqualified voters, actually had been used to restrict voting in black wards. Democrats charge that Republicans concentrated on black wards when they mailed cards to lists of voters and challenged individual voters whose cards were returned as undeliverable.

The Democratic campaign chairman described the GOP program, which is the subject of a lawsuit brought by the Democratic National Committee in federal court in Newark, N.J., as “a flagrant, blatant attempt to prevent Americans from voting.”

The Republican National Committee agreed in court to stop the program last Monday.

Comment on Black Vote

Heinz said he had not seen an exhibit in the lawsuit consisting of a memo purportedly written by Kris Wolfe, the Republican National Committee’s Midwestern political director, which estimated that the Louisiana ballot security program “could keep the black vote down considerably.”

But Heinz said that “nobody condones . . . any so-called ballot integrity program that would be based on race.” The legitimate aim of such programs, he said, is to “stop people from voting who are no longer alive.”

When asked to forecast the results of the Senate races to be decided a week from Tuesday, the two chairmen used the same figures in different orders. In Heinz’s view, the election will leave Senate Republicans with their present fragile 53-47 majority intact; Mitchell saw it as 53 to 47 for the Democrats.

Balance of Senate

Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), whose continued chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee will depend on the Republicans keeping control of the 100-seat chamber, predicted on ABC’s “This Week With David Brinkley” that the GOP would hang on--but with just a 51-49 Republican balance.

A forecast almost as close as Lugar’s came from Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Tex.), who predicted on the same show that the Senate balance would be 52-48 Democratic.

In a bid to help the GOP, President Reagan plans a nine-state round of appearances starting Tuesday that will finish on the weekend in California, where Republican Ed Zschau is pressing Democratic Sen. Alan Cranston in his bid for a fourth six-year term.

Another participant on the Brinkley show, White House political director Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., said when asked what Democratic senator who is favored to win he expected to be beaten, replied: “How about Sen. Cranston? . . . I would predict that.”