Clinton and Gore Attend Funeral of Key Fund-Raiser

Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton and his running mate, Sen. Al Gore, paused Tuesday to attend funeral services for one of their campaign’s key fund-raisers.

Clinton, Gore and their wives joined mourners Tuesday at a service for C. Victor Raiser II, 52, and his son, R. Montgomery Raiser, at Washington’s National Cathedral.

Raiser, a lawyer and chairman of American Mobile Satellite Corp., served as national financial co-chairman of Clinton’s campaign. He and his 22-year-old son, a recent Princeton graduate, died last Thursday in the crash of a small plane near an Alaskan fishing village.

The candidates will resume their break-neck campaign pace today with a four-day bus trip that begins in East St. Louis, Ill.

While in Washington, Clinton and Gore met privately with Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), an expert on foreign policy and defense matters. Congressional aides said the session was called at Clinton’s request and was aimed at briefing him on defense and foreign policy issues.

Later, before they departed for Little Rock, Ark., the candidates met with a group of Democratic senators, including Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey, Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut and Harry Reid and Richard H. Bryan, both of Nevada.

Throughout the day, Clinton declined to talk with reporters, citing the somber nature of his trip to Washington.

The Democrats’ bus tour kicks off with a rally at a high school in East St. Louis, a predominantly black town. By day’s end, they plan to have stopped in Hannibal, Mo., and Burlington, Iowa.

The tour, due to end Friday in Minneapolis, is patterned after the candidates’ six-day bus trip across much of America’s heartland immediately following the Democratic Convention last month.

On this week’s journey, five busloads of journalists are to follow the lead vehicle. Campaign aides, meanwhile, have sought to play down comparisons with the first trip, apparently fearing that smaller turnouts along this tour’s route would reflect poorly on the campaign.

In other campaign developments, Clinton on Tuesday sought another $1.79 million in federal matching funds. He based his request on more than $3 million in private contributions he received in July, the campaign’s best fund-raising month ever.

The money will be used to retire Clinton’s debts from the primary elections, which soared to nearly $4 million in May before dropping to closer to $2 million at the end of July.

The Arkansas governor agreed to stop raising private money after receiving full federal financing--$55.2 million--for his general election campaign, which officially began at the end of the Democratic Convention. President Bush will receive the same amount of money from the government after he is formally nominated at the Republican Convention in Houston later this month.