Matsui Named to Top Fund-Raising Post : Politics: He and Rockefeller will head Democrats’ contribution drive for 1992 elections. They get off to fast start on second job: bashing Bush.

The Democratic Party took the unusual step Wednesday of picking two members of Congress to head national fund-raising efforts for next year’s elections.

Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Sacramento) and Sen. John D. (Jay) Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) were chosen not only for their contacts with big givers, officials said, but for a special mission: bashing President Bush while promoting Democratic alternatives on the campaign trail.

Getting off to a fast start, Matsui, the new treasurer of the Democratic National Committee, charged at a news conference that the Administration “has shown absolutely no vision in both domestic and foreign policy.”

He added in an interview: “We have tremendous changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, yet (Bush) takes a wait-and-see attitude. This is somewhat astonishing for a President known as a foreign policy expert. On the domestic front, we see poverty going up and (students’) SAT scores going down.”

Chiming in, Rockefeller, the party’s new finance chairman, said that Bush is “about to discover that his day of a free ride is over. We have, as a party, begun to expose George Bush for what he is.”

The two lawmakers are proven fund-raisers. Although Rockefeller used his own fortune in running for West Virginia governor and in his first Senate race, he raised nearly $3.5 million in his 1990 reelection campaign. Last month, he decided against running for the White House in 1992.

Matsui raised $1.2 million for his 1990 reelection campaign and an equal sum for a 1992 Senate bid, which he abandoned last May with the statement that he wanted to spend more time with his terminally ill father, who died Aug. 1.

In their new jobs, Matsui will be searching primarily for $10,000 to $15,000 contributors, and Rockefeller will be focusing on $100,000 donors, Matsui said.

They will be taking on financial duties previously handled by Robert A. Farmer, a businessman who resigned as the national committee’s treasurer to raise money for Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton’s expected presidential campaign.

Matsui said that Democratic National Chairman Ron Brown had made it clear that the fund-raising effort will include a new dimension: “developing a message for the party.”

Rockefeller has gained national prominence on health care, an issue that Democrats plan to ride hard in presidential and congressional elections.

Matsui, an articulate, respected member of the House Ways and Means Committee, has developed strong ties with business people and fellow Asian-Americans, whose political activism has grown with their affluence.

“Bob is a good selection because he is from a state with a lot of money and he is very well connected with the emerging Asian population, which has not been tapped yet,” said an associate who requested anonymity. “He also represents a fresh image for the party, a guy with forward thinking who comes from a group that has risen from (World War II) intern camps to a respected place in society.”

Matsui said that he took the post because it offered “a great opportunity” to aid the party financially and to help it “develop a vision for the future.”

His selection creates an oddity: Two other Sacramento residents also are top party fund-raisers. Rep. Vic Fazio is chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Phil Angelides heads the California Democratic Party.

Matsui predicted that there will be few conflicts.