Democrats Relying More on Special-Interest Funds

Much more than Republicans, Democrats are relying on money from special-interest groups as they battle to recapture the Senate and increase their majority in the House, a study by The Times has found.

The contrast is most dramatic in the hottest House races, in which 17 imperiled Democratic incumbents are drawing, on average, more than half of their campaign funds from political action committees, while 21 similarly embattled Republicans are relying on PACs for about a third of their cash.

The pattern carries over to the Senate, although the gap between the political parties is smaller and the degree of reliance on PACs is less. Senate Democratic incumbents are receiving 29% of their money from business, labor and other special-interest PACs, while Republican incumbents are receiving 25%, according to financial reports through Sept. 30.

Despite the pattern of PAC contributions, Democratic senatorial candidates are being outspent by Republicans in all but two of the 13 “battleground” states that will decide control of the Senate in Tuesday’s elections, the study found. But Democrats said they expect to have sufficient funds to be competitive in every race down the home stretch.

“We’ll have the resources we need to get our messages out,” Diane Dewhirst of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee said Wednesday.

On the other hand, Republicans said their spending edge in several tight contests could help them retain the Senate, where the GOP now enjoys a 53-47 majority.

“It may tip the balance. This is when your tracking polls, media response ads and turnout efforts are crucial,” David Narsavage of the National Republican Senatorial Committee said.

Overall, federal reports show, current Senate candidates had spent $121 million through Sept. 30, up 27% from the same reporting period during the 1984 elections, and House candidates had spent $126 million, up 25%.

To pay their soaring bills, candidates are turning to PACs for more and more donations. Receipts from PACs, $95 million at last count, have shot up 62% in the Senate and 28% in the House from two years ago. And, overwhelmingly, PACs continue to favor incumbents over challengers, although in tight races the average ratio is less than 2 to 1.

Wants PAC Curbs

“It is the PACs that are going to control the Senate and House in 1987, not Republicans or Democrats,” Common Cause President Fred Wertheimer said. His organization, a citizens’ advocacy group, seeks tighter curbs on PACs along with partial public financing of congressional elections.

Clearly, there is irony in the finding that Democrats, who call themselves the party of the people, rely more heavily on special-interest money than do Republicans, who often are tagged the party of the fat cats.

Political scientist Larry Sabato suggested that Republicans lean less on PACs mainly because they get so much more help from massive funds raised by GOP committees. The panels raise their money mostly from small contributions made by millions of individuals solicited by mail.

Republican Party committees have collected five times more cash than Democratic committees, which are scrambling to beef up their direct-mail efforts.

Calls Control Vital

Sabato, a professor at the University of Virginia, said another reason why Democratic incumbents in the House receive more from PACs than do their Republican counterparts is that Democrats there control the legislative agenda, which is vitally important to special interests.

“PACs support not only incumbents, but incumbents in charge,” he said. “They are anything but boat rockers. They support the status quo.”

Senate candidates receive a smaller fraction of their money from PACs than do House hopefuls, he said, because they are able to attract many more individual contributions to their statewide campaigns and because they face the same $10,000 limit on a PAC contribution, despite having much higher expenses.

Overall, incumbents continue to outspend challengers by vast margins--an average of three times more in the House, twice more in the Senate--but the statistics can be misleading. The spending gap is much less in the 13 Senate races and 57 House races deemed by polls to be close. And analysts said challengers in most of those contests had reached a level of spending that gave them a shot at winning.

Must Exceed Threshold

“What you need to play competitively is enough money above a certain threshold. The price for that this year in the House seems to be around a third of a million dollars,” campaign finance analyst Edward Roeder said.

Sabato said the price actually can vary from district to district and state to state, depending mostly on how much television and radio advertising is needed to reach voters--and how much local stations charge for it.

“As long as challengers have enough money to get a message out, so that they can grab onto any trends that are moving their way, you can have an upset,” he said.

In the Senate, two incumbents, California Democrat Alan Cranston and South Dakota Republican James Abdnor, were being outspent by their challengers, Rep. Ed Zschau (R-Los Altos) and Rep. Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), as the campaigns entered October. However, both Cranston and Abdnor had substantially more cash on hand than the challengers.

The Cranston-Zschau clash, which may exceed $20 million, will be the most expensive in the nation, easily exceeding the fierce Florida duel between Republican incumbent Paula Hawkins and her Democratic challenger, Gov. Bob Graham.

Republicans Spending More

Republican incumbents were outspending Democratic challengers in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, North Carolina, North Dakota and Washington--but, in all of the contests, the Democrats had the lead or were within striking distance.

In fact, Washington Democrat Brock Adams was outspent 2 to 1 but received almost the same number of votes as incumbent Republican Sen. Slade Gorton in primary elections last month, in which voters were able to cross party lines. With the two now running neck-and-neck in the polls, Adams aides said they fear the impact of a huge state GOP drive to have voters mail in absentee ballots.

In the House, one Republican and four Democratic incumbents were being outspent by challengers. But the disadvantage faced by Rep. Andrew Jacobs Jr. (D-Ind.) is so large that it may represent the ultimate test of the power of political money.

Does No Fund Raising

Jacobs, who accepts no PAC contributions and does virtually no fund raising, advertising or organizing, had spent just $8,000 by the first of October. Meanwhile, Republican challenger Jim Eynon had laid out more than $340,000 and the American Medical Assn. had poured more than $200,000 into “independent” efforts on behalf of Eynon, a real estate manager and political novice.

In the last decade, no GOP challenger has come within 15,000 votes of Jacobs, a droll eccentric who appeals to liberals on civil rights and environmental issues and to conservatives on government waste issues. But nobody has ever spent half as much trying to defeat Jacobs. He is rated a slight favorite.

Reps. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) and George E. Brown Jr. (D-Riverside) held huge spending leads over their challengers in the two tightest House races in California. However, Dornan’s Democratic opponent, Richard Robinson, had considerably outpaced Dornan in PAC receipts, with 48% of his $349,000 war chest coming from various special interests. Dornan, who had raised $929,000, draws from a large nationwide base of individual contributors that he developed by using direct-mail lists of conservative groups.

Through last month, Cranston was leading all Senate candidates in PAC money with $1,169,000. Zschau, who has been coming on fast with PACs, was 14th at $810,000. However, both candidates ranked among the lowest in the Senate in the ratio of PAC money to total receipts. Cranston was at 14%, Zschau at 10%.

PAC-Minded House

Three Senate incumbents received more than 50% of their total campaign funds from PACs: Jake Garn (R-Utah), Wendell H. Ford (D-Ky.) and Mark Andrews (R-N.D.). But, in the PAC-minded House, no fewer than 164 incumbents, 10 challengers and 8 open-seat candidates relied on special interests for more than half of their funds.

Among the House’s leading PAC recipients were Reps. Vic Fazio (D-Sacramento), $284,000; Pete Stark (D-Oakland), $282,000, and Tony Coelho (D-Merced), $267,000.

Coelho, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, has aggressively pursued business PAC money for Democratic candidates, telling PAC managers: “We’re going to be the majority party (in the House) for a long time, so it doesn’t make good business sense to give to Republicans.”

FUNDING THE BATTLE FOR THE SENATE What the candidates in the closest Senate races had spent by Oct. 1 and had in the bank. Republicans are listed first, and incumbents are denoted by asterisks.

Expenditures Cash on Hand Alabama Jeremiah Denton* $2,734,000 $707,000 Richard Shelby 1,317,000 462,000 California Ed Zschau 7,917,000 506,000 Alan Cranston* 7,485,000 731,000 Colorado Ken Kramer 2,285,000 415,000 Tim Wirth 2,872,000 51,000 Florida Paula Hawkins* 4,478,000 917,000 Bob Graham 4,197,000 856,000 Georgia Mack Mattingly* 3,092,000 123,000 Wyche Fowler 2,005,000 246,000 Idaho Steve Symms* 2,436,000 381,000 John Evans 1,522,000 113,000 Louisiana Henson Moore 4,432,000 441,000 John Breaux 1,952,000 263,000 Missouri Christopher Bond 3,285,000 581,000 Harriett Woods 2,971,000 360,000 Nevada Jim Santini 1,712,000 170,000 Harry Reid 1,624,000 111,000 North Carolina James Broyhill* 3,394,000 3,000 Terry Sanford 2,139,000 0 North Dakota Mark Andrews* 1,258,000 379,000 Kent Conrad 393,000 106,000 South Dakota James Abdnor* 1,923,000 842,000 Thomas Daschle 2,245,000 292,000 Washington Slade Gorton* 2,065,000 436,000 Brock Adams 1,090,000 29,000

Source: Common Cause