Buchanan’s Direct Mail Drive Delivers Substantial Dividends : Politics: The GOP candidate’s donor list has been a highly successful fund-raising tool. It could also give him the roots of a ’96 campaign.

Even if Patrick J. Buchanan goes down to defeat, his supporters say that President Bush’s combative primary challenger will walk away from this campaign with a valuable political prize: a list of loyal direct mail donors who can keep his conservative movement alive in the future.

By all accounts, Buchanan has raised about $2 million through direct mail appeals and has built a list of donors that is the envy of conservative direct mail specialists. Not since the days of Ronald Reagan, they say, has a conservative candidate used direct mail as successfully as Buchanan.

“This is the most successful direct mail effort in the history of conservative politics,” said David Tyson, a direct mail expert who is assisting Buchanan. “I’ve never seen numbers like these. People perceive there is a very big problem with George Bush.”

For now, Buchanan’s direct mail fund raising is expected to help him stay in the race through the California primary on June 2. But the campaign is not only raising money; it is helping to stir up anti-Bush sentiment among the millions of conservative Republicans who are receiving long, vituperative letters from Buchanan criticizing Administration policies and branding Bush “the biggest spender and taxer in history.”

In the future, assuming that the conservative challenger does not succeed in depriving Bush of the nomination, Buchanan’s donor list will be a valuable tool for the outspoken commentator as he seeks to build upon the political movement he has fostered.

Frank O’Brien, a Democratic direct mail specialist in Washington, said Buchanan could use his list to either create a new conservative organization--”a sort of right-wing government-in-exile”--or expand the newsletter-publishing business that he started several years before launching his presidential campaign.

“If nothing (else),” O’Brien said, “it’s probably been the most successful newsletter subscription drive in history.”

Others predicted that Buchanan would use his list to become a contender for the GOP nomination four years from now. “It makes him a real factor in 1996,” said Ann Stone, a Republican direct mail specialist. “It was a very bright move on his part.”

Stone also said she expected Buchanan to create a new organization if his campaign for the nomination ends in defeat, with his direct mail donors as charter members. “I will bet you that a group will be founded and it will be used as a platform for the next four years to take jabs at the Bush Administration,” she said.

So far, according to Roger McCaffrey, who oversees the Buchanan campaign’s direct mail fund-raising efforts, the conservative GOP candidate has raised about $2 million--or close to 80% of his contributions--through the mail alone. He said the average direct mail contribution is between $40 and $45.

Buchanan’s contributors include donors to other conservative causes as well as many people who have never responded to any such appeal, McCaffrey said.

Although other direct mail experts do not doubt Buchanan’s success, they suggest that Buchanan’s direct mail advisers may be slightly exaggerating the results.

“I find it not entirely credible,” said Stone. “Ronald Reagan didn’t do that well in 1980 and 1976.”

Only two other candidates, Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa and former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., are doing direct mail fund raising. But neither Democrat has been nearly as successful as Buchanan.

In reports to the Federal Election Commission, Buchanan said that as of Jan. 31 he had raised nearly $1.7 million, about $700,000 of it in contributions of less than $200.

But aides said Buchanan’s fund raising has been more successful in recent weeks, partly as a result of his success in winning 37% of the Republican vote in New Hampshire’s Feb. 18 primary.

As Buchanan appeared Friday night at a fund-raising dinner in Dallas, his finance director, L. Brent Bozell, said the evening’s estimated proceeds of $75,000 would push the campaign over the $4-million mark.

On a day when Buchanan made clear that he would continue his campaign through the final primary, his aides expressed confidence that the so-far successful fund raising would leave him well-positioned to wage a vigorous fight through California’s primary.

This week, in requesting federal matching funds, Buchanan’s accountants reported receiving $1.1 million in donations of $250 or less between Feb. 1 and Feb. 27. The federal government matches individual contributions up to $250.

To date, Buchanan’s mailings to potential contributors have included two long letters explaining his reasons for seeking the presidency and several follow-up letters, including one mailed immediately after the New Hampshire primary saying that he “desperately” needed more money to compete with Bush’s threatened negative ads.

Predictably, all of Buchanan’s letters savage Bush, accusing the President of betraying the Reagan revolution. As one letter put it: “Mr. Bush has become part of a one-party government. He went to Washington posing as a conservative, but then would not fight. He walked away from the Reagan policies, and has been colluding with congressional liberals. He is the biggest spender and taxer in history and has run the three largest deficits in history.”

Among other things, his letters mention Bush’s reversal of his “no new taxes” pledge, his continuing support for the National Endowment for the Arts and his commitment to foreign aid--all issues that have angered the President’s supporters on the right.

Supporters cite the success of these fund-raising letters--all of them written by Buchanan or his sister and campaign chief, Angela Bay Buchanan--as evidence that the campaign has Bush on the run. Although Buchanan and his campaign staff are running the direct mail campaign themselves, they have the assistance of Bruce W. Eberle & Associates Inc. of Vienna, Va., a direct mail consulting firm that did fund raising for Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) in the 1984 and 1990 elections. Buchanan drafts the letters; Eberle handles the mechanics.

Tyson, who works for Eberle, said the firm has rented the mailing lists of many other conservative groups to use on Buchanan’s behalf. He said the campaign is making a modest profit “prospecting”--or sending letters to people who have not previously contributed--even though prospecting is usually a money-loser in the direct mail business.

Normally, direct mail campaigns do not begin to turn a profit until they have developed a vast list of contributors who can be tapped for money again and again. Even then, the costs of direct mail fund raising are high, usually amounting to about 40% of the gross receipts.

Neither Tyson nor McCaffrey would discuss how much Buchanan’s mail drive has cost so far. However, campaign aides noted that the cost is partly offset by the federal matching funds.

Tyson said Buchanan has even made a profit using lists from such groups as Citizens for Bush and Americans for Bush, two independent groups established to raise and spend money to support the President.

Buchanan has not yet indicated what he intends to do with his direct mail list after the primary season. Tyson noted that Buchanan “owns the list entirely” and that it would be up to the candidate to decide how to use it in the future.