Campaign Funds Go for Meals, Trips as Congressmen Retire : Politics: With no more elections, Dymally, Roybal and Anderson are cleaning out their war chests in a variety of ways.

Last year, Rep. Mervyn M. Dymally used campaign funds for trips to South Africa and New York, dinner at swank Washington restaurants and $5,000 in donations to his daughter’s Compton school board campaign. Rep. Glenn M. Anderson paid out more than $10,000 for telephone, car phone and automobile expenses. And Rep. Edward R. Roybal contributed $35,000 to a national political effort aimed at helping Democrats prevail in recent reapportionment battles.

The spending illustrates the diverse--and legal--ways three longtime Southern California congressmen, each of whom has announced his intention to retire this year, are spending down their campaign war chests.

In the past three years, the trio of Democrats, with 63 years of combined service in Washington, has raised more than $1.2 million in campaign funds. But despite minimal opposition in their final races--and after picking up more than $260,000 in campaign funds since then--most of the money is gone.

Moreover, a Times analysis reveals that less than $265,000 of their expenditures during the last three years went to the true business of campaigning--direct appeals to voters.

Critics complain that entrenched members of Congress, who have little fear of being unseated, often run their fund-raising operations like small businesses, taking in donations steadily and spending much of it in non-election years to keep their political machines tuned.

With little oversight by the Federal Elections Commission as to what constitutes a legitimate expenditure, members can spend their campaign funds on almost anything that is not defined as a personal use.

And the spending adds up.

Dymally (D-Compton) raised $572,790 during the last three years, nearly $140,000 of it since the 1990 election in which he won 67% of the vote. Despite the lack of opposition, Dymally has spent his money as fast as he has raised it. As of Dec. 31, he had only $8,828 left--having spent more than $157,000 between the 1990 vote and his retirement announcement on Feb. 10.

Dymally’s expenditures were driven largely by his fund-raising costs, which accounted for roughly 40% of his spending over the past three years. In 1991, Dymally held two major events at the Beverly Wilshire, which cost the campaign more than $45,000, including $4,112 for commemorative mugs for each guest at his May fund-raiser.

Like many incumbents, Dymally used campaign funds to lease a car, but unlike most of his House colleagues, Dymally appears to have leased that car for his use in Washington rather than in his congressional district.

In January, 1990, the Dymally campaign dropped its auto lease with the Alameda Group in Lynwood, and began leasing a car through Congressional Services Corp., a Delaware corporation doing business in Washington. Neither Dymally nor his staff would comment on the lease arrangement, which cost the campaign about $500 a month throughout 1991. In March, 1991, the campaign spent $475 for tires from the Stidham Tire Co. in Washington.

Members of the House are forbidden from using campaign funds for congressional business. Yet as chairman of the House subcommittee on Africa, Dymally used nearly $1,200 in campaign funds to pay for hotel expenses in Cape Town and Johannesburg, for a shortwave radio and for faxes to his Washington office. Trips to New York, which were earmarked as United Nations visits on his Federal Election Commission reports, cost the campaign more than $1,000.

In 1991, Dymally spent nearly $5,500 in campaign funds on meals at restaurants, many of them pricey Washington eateries, including Tiberio Ristorante and The Prime Rib. Dymally’s FEC reports indicated that nearly half of these related to meetings of the Congressional Black Caucus.

About 20% of the $157,000 Dymally spent in 1991 was given to political candidates and organizations. Dymally, who endorsed his daughter, Lynn, to replace him in a newly created district that includes Compton, Carson and Lynwood, contributed $5,000 to her successful race for the Compton Unified School District board. The former four-year lieutenant governor, elected to Congress in November, 1980, also donated $15,000 to IMPAC 2000, a national political effort aimed at helping Democrats prevail in recent reapportionment battles.

Dymally, 65, arrived in Washington one year too late to benefit from a congressional campaign rule that allowed members of Congress in office on Jan. 1, 1980, to keep unspent campaign funds for their personal use when they retire. Under a 1989 compromise, senior members must leave office by the end of this year to be allowed to retain their windfalls.

Roybal, first elected to Congress in 1962, has $221,688 cash on hand and is eligible to convert $194,000 of it to his personal use, according to the Washington-based consumer group Public Citizen. Anderson, who could keep $164,198, has only $20 and change left in his campaign fund.

Roybal (D-Los Angeles), 76, has been steadily donating campaign funds to educational institutions and political allies. Anderson, while drawing down on his war chest, has spent more on telephones, car expenses, office equipment and restaurant bills.

Last year, Roybal donated $35,000 to IMPAC 2000 and $7,500 to Gloria Molina’s successful campaign for a seat on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

In 1990, Roybal donated $100,000 of his campaign funds to endow a chair in his name--in the field of gerontology--at Cal State Los Angeles.

Public Citizen has called on retiring members of Congress to donate leftover contributions to help publicly fund federal campaigns.

“To help clean up future campaigns, and to end the practice of lawmakers pocketing campaign donations, we are asking you to donate your remaining campaign funds to the presidential public funding system,” the group’s president, Joan Claybrook, wrote recently to retiring lawmakers.

Roybal said he will not follow the group’s wish but will not keep what is left for personal use.

Rather, he will continue his current pattern, he said, donating the bulk of his remaining funds for minority scholarships in his name at the East Los Angeles institution.

“It’s nobody’s business what I do with that money,” Roybal said. “I know members of Congress would like me to give all the money to the political process. But I’ll bypass that and make it available to youngsters.”

Anderson (D-Long Beach), despite wavering about his future for several months before announcing his retirement two months ago, spent $67,810 in campaign funds last year. Of that amount, $6,092 went for telephone bills, including $1,724 for a new car phone, $3,948 for car leasing and repairs, and $4,907 for restaurant and food bills.

Slightly less than 20% went for donations to charities and politicians--including $3,900 to the Long Beach Civic Light Opera and $1,500 to the Pools for the Handicapped in Long Beach.

During 1989-90, the former eight-year lieutenant governor raised $411,845 and spent $459,808. In 1990, Anderson, 79, outspent his Republican rival, Sanford W. Kahn, by a 60-1 margin.

Anderson’s wife, Lee, who also oversees the couple’s Hawthorne property development business, served as his campaign manager for 25 years. She received no salary, but had many of her expenses paid by the campaign.

Her 1989-90 airline travel bills, mainly between Los Angeles and Washington, were $30,979. Her airline travel to Washington in 1991 cost $8,975.

She also charged the campaign $213 for chauffeured limousine service in San Mateo.

For much of 1989-90, Anderson’s campaign was run from a back room of Glenn Anderson Enterprises in Hawthorne. The campaign paid no rent, but it paid utility bills and phone bills.

“We have maintained through the years a separate room with telephones and that has been what we have referred to in-between campaigns as our campaign office,” said Lee Anderson last week. “It’s my office. I’m in the investments and property development business.”

For the 1990 campaign, Anderson also opened a campaign headquarters eight weeks before the election in an abandoned building scheduled for demolition, Lee Anderson said.

In 1990, Glenn Anderson spent $130,000 on mailings to voters. He defeated Kahn by a 62% to 38% margin.

“The congressman was spending a lot of time in Washington . . . and he had also had open heart surgery, so he asked: ‘Do you think this will impact on the voters?’ ” said Los Angeles political consultant Joe Cerrell, whose firm was paid $20,641 for professional services. “So he decided to spend on the basis that people would be concerned about his health.

“When you have it, spend it.”

Campaign Comparison

Three years of campaign expenditures by California’s three senior retiring members of Congress--Mervyn M. Dymally, Edward R. Roybal and Glenn M. Anderson--illustrates differences in the way such money can be spent.

Although none of these Democrats faced serious challenges in 1990, Dymally and Anderson have each spent more than $500,000 since 1989. None of the three spent more than 2% of their funds on such traditional expenditures as advertising or polling.

DYMALLY ROYBAL ANDERSON (1989-1991) (1989-1991) (1989-1991) TOTAL FUNDS SPENT: $545,586 $250,254 $527,618 Campaign Overhead 28% 8% 24% Fund-raising: 40% 8% 23% Other campaign activity: 9% 9% 33% Political/Charitable Donations: 16% 71% 14% Miscellaneous: 7% 4% 6%

Note: Campaign overhead includes travel, restaurant charges, car expenses and general office costs.

Other campaign activity includes voter mailings, campaign brochures, buttons, bumper stickers, campaign rallies and other traditional campaign expenses.

Miscellaneous expenditures include polling, advertising, entertainment and unitemized expenses.