$50-Million Goal : Fund-Raiser for Dukakis: Midas Touch

It is only his second call of the morning, but Bob Farmer, chief treasure-hunter for soon-to-be Democratic presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis, has hit pay dirt again.

“You’ll give $100,000?” Farmer says happily into the phone. “That’s terrific! That’s terrific! You’re a great American.”

That afternoon, Farmer jets to Manhattan with Dukakis for cocktails at Steven Ross’ East Side duplex. Surrounded by enough modern art to endow a small museum, the white-haired Warner Communications chairman and his well-heeled friends write checks for $510,000--a Dukakis campaign record. “It’s the biggest private event ever,” Farmer tells them cheerfully.

‘Spectacular!’

On the flight home, Farmer recalls the Wall Street brokers and other businessmen he met the day before in his 38th-floor suite at New York’s Waldorf Towers. The take: $800,000 in checks and commitments. “Spectacular!” Farmer says approvingly.

Farmer is entitled to his superlatives this year. He is the Midas with a golden Rolodex, a rumpled, pudgy, 49-year-old former Republican who promises to help Dukakis and the Democrats do what they have never done: raise a whopping $50 million for the November election.

He makes it sound simple: Get 200 people to give $100,000 each. Pull in $10 million more from direct mail. Get the last $20 million with mega-parties (charge $1,000 for drinks, $10,000 to eat) around the country. No money from political action committees, labor unions or corporations. And, oh yes, raise all the money in three months.

“Because if you raise the money much later, you can’t spend it,” Farmer tells aides in his third-floor office at Dukakis campaign headquarters here.

Twice What Mondale Raised

Some perspective is due: $50 million is more than twice the cash that Democrats raised to supplement Walter F. Mondale’s general election bid in 1984. It’s less than Ronald Reagan raised that year, but nearly double the $27 million that presumed 1988 Republican nominee George Bush plans to help the GOP raise for his fall campaign.

The final playing field may be less lopsided. Republicans traditionally raise millions more in separate state accounts. Still, the GOP is nervous.

“It’s irresponsible to be talking about $50 million,” says Fred Bush, deputy finance chairman of the Bush for President campaign, which accepts PAC and corporate money. “I think it’s absurdly high.”

Others aren’t so sure. Dukakis raised more money, more quickly, and more efficiently than any other Democrat during the primary race. He currently has more than twice as much cash in his war chest, $3.6 million to Bush’s $1.7 million. And remarkably for a Democrat, Dukakis has avoided all debt.

“Most of us thought that was impossible,” says C. Victor Raiser II, national finance chairman of the Democratic National Committee. “He’s revolutionized fund raising.”

Most revolutionaries don’t ply their trade in Beverly Hills ballrooms and Park Avenue salons. But Democrats and Republicans are battling not only for votes, but for the bucks to wage the most expensive election in U.S. history.

“It’s like Willie Sutton,” says University of Southern California professor Herbert E. Alexander, who has written books on the finances of the last seven presidential elections. “They go where the money is.”

Alexander figures that, counting federal grants, matching funds, and the $15 million raised by Bush’s Political Action Committee before the primaries, the two candidates will each spend $128 million by the time they’re done. Add former candidates, union expenses, state and local party efforts, and other ancillary operations, and the race for the White House could cost a staggering $500 million. That’s up from $325 million last time.

“You could conclude that the Federal Election Campaign Act has unraveled,” says Ed Zuckerman, a campaign finance specialist and publisher of PACs and Lobbies Newsletter in Washington.

Enacted in Watergate Era

That Watergate-era law was designed to put presidential candidates on equal financial footing. They developed a lead foot instead.

The law prohibits any individual from giving more than $1,000 to a candidate, and has strict rules on sources, disclosure and spending. After the primaries are over, each campaign may spend $8.3 million of this so-called “hard money” in the general election, on top of a flat federal grant of $46.1 million. Hence equal footing.

The kick comes from so-called “soft money.” Political parties may raise as much as they can, and disclose as little as they want, to funnel to state parties for voter registration, generic advertising, get-out-the-vote efforts, and other election-related expenses. Hence the $100,000 contributors.

Most of the projected $50 million for the Democrats and $27 million for the Republicans comes under “soft-money” accounts. Both sides promise to identify their donors, but neither says how or when.

Full disclosure would be a first, says Fred Eiland, spokesman for the Federal Election Commission in Washington. “When they say: ‘Sure, we’ll make our books available, we’ll produce the names . . . well, it’s up to them to do it or not. We have no control.”

‘It Raises Questions’

It’s a giant loophole, says Herb Schultz, campaign finance specialist with the Center for Responsive Politics, an independent Washington research group. “It’s not illegal, but it raises questions,” he argues.

Neither campaign apologizes for raising the stakes. “Democracy isn’t free, you know,” laughs Jan Baran, general counsel for the Bush campaign. “It costs. We could always go back to the 19th Century when only white land-owning males over the age of 21 could vote. You wouldn’t have to spend much money reaching them.”

Others see an irony for Dukakis, a “good-government” candidate who inveighs against insidious political action committees, which control donations from industries and other special interests, and pledges to send Congress a law to gut the PACs as his first official act in the White House.

“There’s an element of hypocrisy in it,” says USC’s Alexander. “The candidate can afford to be holier than thou and say ‘I’m not going to accept PAC money.’ Instead Farmer has operatives in key companies, and they go to top executives. And he ends up with $15,000 or $20,000.”

Sensitive About ‘Fat Cats’

There is another irony. Since Dukakis has made honest government a linchpin of his campaign, he is especially sensitive to suggestions that big-money contributors--”fat cats” to some--would receive behind-the-scenes privileges or access. But some do.

Ross, who raised $360,000 for Dukakis even before last week’s shindig, said he has met “three or four times” privately with Dukakis, and aides have asked his preference for vice president. Others, like Washington banker and lawyer Terry McAuliffe, who hopes to raise $1 million, have met the Massachusetts governor for breakfast. The $100,000 donors are promised special parties and entertainment at the Democratic convention in Atlanta.

And money talks. One recent morning, Farmer asked Peter Bassett, who coordinates Dukakis’ fund raising among fellow Greek-Americans, for the names of his top 10 or 12 contributors. “I have to call them and ask them their top vice presidential choices,” Farmer explains.

Farmer adds that when he asked one donor for suggestions, the supporter said he had none. “I said: ‘Well, if you think of someone, you know, let me know.’ He said: ‘I did. Nunn.’ ” Farmer said with a laugh that he still didn’t get the reference to Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn.

Though such sessions are neither illegal nor uncommon, Farmer later asks a reporter present not to write about him seeking contributors’ advice on a running mate. “I don’t want anyone to infer anything improper,” he argues. An aide always accompanies him in meetings to avoid misunderstandings, he adds.

Partial to Glenn

Farmer’s own preference is clear. A photo by Farmer’s desk shows him introducing Dukakis to Ohio Sen. John Glenn in 1984, when Farmer raised money for Glenn’s failed presidential bid. Four years earlier, he had jettisoned his lifelong Ohio-bred Republican ties and sold his textbook publishing company to raise money for Independent presidential candidate John B. Anderson.

Neither candidate survived long. The lesson, says Farmer: “Money is the first primary. He who raises the most, the fastest, usually wins.”

This time, he helped long-shot Dukakis jump-start his campaign with a fund-raiser at Boston’s Park Plaza Hotel last June. The take: $2.1 million, three times more than any Democrat had ever pulled in at a single event. It made Dukakis a front-runner before a single vote was cast.

“We had an open bar and a few shrimp,” recalls Finance Director Kristin Demong. “Never have so many paid so much to eat so little.”

In retrospect, Dukakis’ money machine looks deceptively easy. Start with fellow Greek-Americans and Massachusetts supporters. Instead of worrying about the big money men who bankroll other Democratic campaigns, think of chain letters: Phone your friends to ask their friends to phone their friends, and so on. Think geometric growth. Schmooze.

American Express-Style Cards

Send supporters American Express-style gold Dukakis-for-President cards if they give big, gold stars and lapel pins for less, letters and titles for everyone. Welcome rivals in as their candidates falter. Travel 20 days a month. Make dozens of calls a day. Schmooze some more. Get nearly 100,000 people to contribute.

Dukakis is asking for donations in a big way now. He already has raised $3.5 million in California, a million more than Mondale. Coordinator John Battaglino figures he can tap the Golden State for $7 million more in coming weeks.