‘Soft-Money’ Curbs Seen as Fatal to Voter Drives

A top Republican official warned a sympathetic Federal Election Commission on Thursday that any attempt to crack down on huge “soft money” contributions by wealthy individuals and corporations would “kill off” worthwhile voter-mobilization efforts funded by the donations.

At a hearing, E. Mark Braden, general counsel for the Republican National Committee, and his Democratic counterpart, Joseph A. Rieser, denied that the two presidential campaigns had acted abusively in raising approximately $38 million outside federal limits this year.

The party officials rejected charges by Fred Wertheimer, president of Common Cause, the citizens lobby, that such money is undermining post-Watergate reforms against campaign corruption.

Federal law limits to $20,000 donations to national parties for the direct benefit of federal campaigns. However, donations funneled to state political parties for activities that benefit both state and federal campaigns--soft money--are covered only by state laws, which tend to have less strict limits.

Aligning himself with Braden and Rieser, FEC Chairman Thomas J. Josefiak declared that the commission lacked authority to stem this soft-money flow, even if it wanted to--and there were clear signs that it does not.

Nevertheless, the party officials and commission members acknowledged what they repeatedly referred to as a “perception problem” created by negative stories in the news media.

Thus, under pressure from a federal judge responding to a Common Cause lawsuit, the commission moved toward tightening bookkeeping rules and requiring full disclosure of soft-money receipts and expenditures.

Just how effective the new rules will be was left open to question. Reflecting the laissez faire environment in which soft-money raisers have operated, Braden breezily told the commission: “You draw up the rules--I get paid to manipulate them.”

Braden and Rieser disclosed that about 30% of the private funds collected by each party this year was soft money that exceeded “hard” limits imposed by the federal law. The money included contributions of $100,000 apiece from nearly 400 major donors. In addition, many corporations, prohibited from donating directly to federal campaigns, made large indirect gifts of soft money to state parties.

The private funds were spent in the presidential campaigns on such “ground war” activities as voter registration, freeing Republican George Bush and Democrat Michael S. Dukakis to devote most of their $46 million in public funds to the “air war”--television commercials and airplane travel.

Rieser, Braden and several commission members stressed that the grass-roots activities funded by soft money benefit not only federal candidates but also state and local candidates and ballot initiatives.