NEWS ANALYSIS : N.J. Dispute Sheds Light on War to Sway Voter Turnout : Politics: Both parties venture into ethical gray areas in their efforts to influence minorities on Election Day.

The controversy over whether Republicans paid to suppress black voting in last week’s New Jersey gubernatorial election has cracked open a window on one of the murkiest corners of American politics--the shadow war between the parties to influence turnout in the minority community.

From Democrats’ use of “street money” to get out the vote in minority communities to the Republican practice of posting security guards in heavily black and Latino districts to warn against voter fraud, both parties have engaged in Election Day activities that fall into ethical gray areas.

“It’s a seamier side of politics,” said Democratic consultant Tad Devine, the field director for Michael S. Dukakis’ 1988 presidential campaign.

The U.S. Justice Department entered the New Jersey dispute Friday, announcing that it would investigate whether the campaign of the Republican governor-elect, Christine Todd Whitman, violated any laws.

According to the Associated Press, Whitman told a press conference in Trenton, N.J.: “I welcome that investigation. That’s the only way to send a message completely and thoroughly that this did not occur.”

Also on Friday, the state and national Democratic Party filed a civil lawsuit in federal court seeking to overturn the New Jersey election. The suit, which is scheduled to be heard Monday morning, charges that the alleged GOP efforts to depress minority turnout violated the federal Voting Rights Act, other civil rights laws and the Constitution.

The entire arena of encouraging--and discouraging--votes is shrouded with legal ambiguity, election lawyers say. Though it is illegal to pay people directly either to vote or stay away from the polls, the law does not clearly proscribe other questionable practices commonly used by the political parties.

“You can’t pay people to vote,” said E. Mark Braden, the former general counsel of the Republican National Committee, “but you can encourage people and give them transportation money and doughnut money.”

In addition to the New Jersey imbroglio, the Justice Department is investigating allegations from outgoing New York Mayor David N. Dinkins that Republicans tried to intimidate voters in minority communities during last week’s mayoral election in New York City, said Carl Stern, the department’s spokesman. Richard Breyers, communications director for New York Mayor-elect Rudolph W. Giuliani, said that the campaign has not been contacted by the department.

The New Jersey dispute was triggered Tuesday when Whitman’s campaign manager, Edward J. Rollins, told reporters in Washington that the campaign had spent as much as $500,000 to discourage black ministers and Democratic precinct workers from exhorting blacks to vote in last Tuesday’s election. Whitman, who narrowly defeated Democratic incumbent Gov. James J. Florio, angrily declared Wednesday that “it did not happen” and released a letter from Rollins in which he renounced his remarks.

But on Thursday, the controversy gained new momentum when the Rev. Keith Owens of a Baptist church in Camden, N.J., alleged that Republicans had made such offers to several members of the Black Ministers Council of New Jersey.

What’s unusual about the New Jersey dispute is not the means allegedly employed by the Whitman campaign but the end--reducing rather than increasing minority turnout. “What frustrates me is Republicans are trying to draw a moral equivalency between Democratic efforts to get people out to vote and Republican efforts to suppress voting,” said Paul Begala, a Florio consultant.

But the distribution of money in the black community that Rollins described would be familiar to any big-city Democratic politician. Democratic operatives acknowledge that ethical questions can also be raised about their party’s common practice of distributing substantial sums of “walking-around money” to local powerbrokers to encourage them to boost minority turnout.

“It’s done all the time,” said one Democratic activist who has run statewide campaigns in California. “Democrats have to be very careful about what they say--because we are the ones that throw around walking-around money all the time.”

The sums Democrats put on the street in minority communities around elections can be substantial. “In a presidential campaign, how much would Election Day cost in a big city? You’re talking $50,000 to $100,000, in some cases more,” Devine said.

The manner in which this money is spent and distributed varies from region to region, and it can be difficult to draw a line between common and unacceptable get-out-the-vote activities.

During the mayoral race in Los Angeles last summer, for instance, the state Democratic Party raised eyebrows when it spent $100,000 buying doughnuts for voters who turned out in Democratic precincts.

The most common technique is to hire substantial numbers of Election Day workers in minority communities--and occasionally in rural Southern areas that reliably vote Democratic--to “flush out” voters on Election Day. “What is done is a campaign would pay for Election Day workers, would pay for the cost of transportation and would pay for that with checks that are duly recorded,” said Democratic consultant Bill Carrick. “There is nothing wrong with that.”

In other instances, Democratic campaigns will turn over substantial sums to local minority elected officials, ostensibly to reimburse them for the costs incurred by their own political organizations in turning out votes.

Sometimes, Democrats acknowledge, distributing the funds can be a way for a white candidate without roots in the minority community to make peace with local leaders.

In 1988, for example, with hard feelings lingering between Dukakis and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Dukakis’ campaign in California turned over a substantial sum to Jackson’s local Rainbow Coalition for get-out-the-vote efforts, said Tony Podesta, who ran the state campaign for Dukakis.

In Texas, “there are just a number of political chieftains in the Hispanic and African-American communities that you use as clearinghouses” to encourage voter turnout, said one prominent Democratic operative there. “What I’ve seen is giving somebody (a local official) $5,000 and only two-thirds of it gets put on the street. So there is a carrying charge that can be pretty exorbitant.”

In still other instances, Democrats will direct money toward churches or other community and political groups that are said to be able to encourage minority turnout. “When you get off the budget and . . . into these other entities it becomes murkier,” Devine said. “When the money starts going into these entities are you able to keep close tabs on it? No you’re not.”

In Louisiana, Democrats traditionally directed large sums toward political organizations that provide drivers to ferry minority voters to the polls on Election Day. “A driver may cost you $50 or $80 a day, and they just haul people back and forth all day,” said John Maginnis, editor of the Louisiana Political Review, a newsletter.

But this year, the Legislature banned the practice, Maginnis said. “It had been raised to such a practice that it was seen as buying votes wholesale,” he said.

Most campaign operatives agree it is unclear how street money is actually spent and whether it really produces votes. Half a dozen operatives interviewed said they had never personally seen evidence that money was passed on directly to voters, though David Axelrod, a Chicago-based Democratic consultant, acknowledged that allegations of such payments are part of “the mythology” of urban politics.

In fact, he said, the use of street money to swell turnout is based on an anachronistic assumption that local powerbrokers can deliver minority votes en masse: “Whatever the traditions have been in the past, you’ve got a sophisticated (minority) political community out there now,” he said.

The flip side of these ethically ambiguous Democratic efforts to spur minority turnout have been questionable GOP efforts to suppress it.

In the 1981 New Jersey gubernatorial race--an election Florio narrowly lost--the RNC sent poll watchers, including off-duty police officers, to hang posters in heavily black precincts warning about the penalties for voter fraud. Democrats charged that the guards and posters were meant to intimidate blacks and keep them from voting.

In a subsequent consent decree, the Republicans agreed not to replicate those tactics. In addition to the civil suit filed Friday, Democrats are also asking the federal court on Monday to compel depositions from Rollins and other Whitman officials to determine whether the campaign’s Election Day activities violated that decree.

Sources said the Democrats filed the civil suit in part to maintain a legal option if the court decides that the GOP Election Day program did not violate the consent decree.

The New York allegations follow that outline: Dinkins’ supporters allege that signs were placed in Latino and black neighborhoods warning that federal officials would monitor polling places to look for voter fraud and illegal immigrants.

The Giuliani campaign denies any knowledge of those reported activities and has itself alleged a series of voting irregularities by Democrats. But it has not asked the Justice Department to investigate.

In 1986, a controversy erupted over an RNC program to purge dead or ineligible voters from voter rolls in Louisiana and other states. In an internal memo released during a court case, one RNC operative described the Louisiana project as a means that “could keep the black vote down considerably.” The firestorm that followed helped defeat the GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate that year.

More recently, officials of North Carolina Republican Sen. Jesse Helms’ 1990 campaign signed a consent decree with the Justice Department to settle charges that the campaign had sent postcards to 125,000 residents--many of them black--stating erroneously that they were not eligible to vote.

Against this backdrop, the paradox of Rollins’ remarks stands out more clearly: If the campaign did what he originally asserted, it amounts to using Democratic means (the distribution of street money) to achieve a frequent Republican end--the depression of minority turnout.