Cranston in Dispute With Latino Registration Group

Officials of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project of San Antonio were surprised to learn last year about the relationship between Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) and controversial Arizona savings and loan executive Charles H. Keating Jr.

SVREP leaders say that Cranston broke a promise to help them raise $250,000 to pay for the group’s 1986 campaign to register Mexican Americans in California to vote, when Cranston was running for reelection. The senator also helped set up a rival voter registration group run by his son, Kim, in 1987, they say, and solicited $850,000 from Keating for it and other groups--but not for SVREP.

“I was shocked, to say the least,” Richard Martinez, SVREP’s executive director in Los Angeles, said of his reaction last summer upon learning of the Keating money that Cranston had raised in 1987-88. “The senator told us he was having trouble raising money. It turns out he was raising money, just not for us.”

Andrew Hernandez, now president of the group, said: “This whole episode hasn’t won Sen. Cranston any friends in the Hispanic community.”

SVREP’s finances were so strained as a result of the California drive and resulting fund-raising shortfall, that its late president William C. Velasquez took out a second mortgage on his house, borrowed money from his mother and cut staff benefits, including insurance premiums, SVREP leaders said. Velasquez died of cancer in mid-1988, leaving his wife and three children with the extra mortgage and a small life insurance policy.

Cranston, who has won large majorities among Mexican-American voters in previous campaigns, said that the dispute with the Texas group resulted from a misunderstanding. Aides said that Cranston did raise money for SVREP--it eventually got $100,000--but that he never committed himself to raising a specific amount.

The feud between Cranston and his son’s Center for Participation in Democracy and SVREP illustrates the problems that can arise when a politician is active in raising tax-deductible contributions for “nonpartisan” voter registration groups.

In the spring of 1986, Cranston called SVREP, which had been involved in voter registration drives since the early 1970s. Martinez said the senator asked whether the Texas group was planning to register voters in California that year. He later met with the two Cranstons in Los Angeles and told them a registration campaign in the state would cost SVREP about $250,000. Sen. Cranston called Velasquez and offered to help raise that amount, Velasquez later told his aides.

The senator raised $100,000, about half of which did not arrive until mid-1987, according to SVREP records. The group went $100,000 in debt in registering about 100,000 new voters in California. Cranston won reelection by 105,000 votes of 7 million cast. Exit polling showed he won about 76% of the Latino vote, Hernandez said.

The Senate Ethics Committee and the FBI are investigating whether Cranston and four other senators--Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), John Glenn (D-Ohio) and Donald W. Riegle Jr. (D-Mich.)--intervened with federal regulators on Keating’s behalf at the same time that Keating was making large donations to their campaigns and causes.