NEWS ANALYSIS : Money ‘Primary’ Is On for GOP’s Presidential Rivals : Campaign: Scramble for funds tests strength. Contenders each seek up to $25 million this year.

It isn’t the skiing that’s bringing former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander to Aspen, Colo., this weekend. It’s the fishing. For dollars, that is.

Alexander, who’s planning to formally announce his bid for the 1996 GOP presidential nomination later this month, is scheduled to spend much of today and Saturday at a private retreat of the GOP’s Team 100--the elite corps of Republican supporters who each contribute at least $100,000 to the party during each presidential election.

Forget voters or political consultants or media bigwigs: At this point in the presidential campaign, there may be no group of people whose support is more prized by the candidates moving toward the Republican race. “If someone is in a position to give $100,000 to the Republican National Committee, they are in a position to raise substantial funds for a presidential campaign,” says Ted Welch, a Tennessee real estate developer spearheading Alexander’s fund-raising effort.

Alexander will not be the only politician in Aspen. California’s Gov. Pete Wilson is also dropping by. And other GOP contenders and possible contenders have worked the group in previous meetings.

From Aspen to Miami, Dallas to New York, the money hunt is on for the Republicans seeking the party’s 1996 nomination. Fully a year before the first Republican voters go to the polls next February in Iowa and New Hampshire, the potential Republican competitors are already scrambling in what is often called “the first primary”--the battle for the hearts and wallets of the party’s financial donors.

The money primary is the first critical test of political strength. Indeed, the contenders’ success in raising money functions as a kind of political stock market--an indication of whether the activists who back up their opinions with checks are buying the messages candidates are selling.

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“Financial support reflects political support,” says Charlie Black, a senior strategist for Texas Sen. Phil Gramm. “You’ve got to have a good organization to raise money and that reflects where you are politically.”

The reason is the structure of the campaign finance laws. Federal law will allow the candidates to spend as much as $45 million next year. But regulations limit them to individual contributions of $1,000 or less.

To raise so much money in such bite-sized units requires an enormous grass-roots organization--the kind that can only be built by candidates with a broad base of support. That’s one reason why the candidate who raises the most money in the year before the primaries almost always has won the nomination since 1976, according to a study by GOP fund-raising consultant Stan Huckaby.

GOP contenders face unprecedented financial pressure because next year’s primary calendar has been compressed into roughly six weeks of intense competition from the Iowa caucus in early February to the California primary in late March. Since the concentrated primary schedule will leave them little time to raise money once the voting actually begins, the leading Republicans all say that they hope to raise as much as $20 million or $25 million in 1995--a pace of about $400,000 to $500,000 per week.

That pressure helped persuade former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp, former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and former Vice President Dan Quayle to forgo the race.

Gramm, who already has $5 million left from his Senate campaigns, expects to raise more than $2.5 million at a Dallas event the night before he formally announces his candidacy on Feb. 24. More than half of his paid campaign staff works on raising money.

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas is expected to announce soon an imposing finance committee headed by New York entrepreneur John Moran, now the Republican National Committee’s national finance chairman. And Alexander, who has attracted the support of six former RNC finance chairmen, will devote 90% of his time to fund raising through this summer, Welch says.

The money chase typically proceeds along two tracks. Most attention follows the hunt for the high rollers: the instantly recognizable figures who have demonstrated the capacity to raise substantial sums in earlier races. This year, that competition involves activists like Alec P. Courtelis, a Miami builder who has signed up as Gramm’s national finance chairman, and Lawrence E. Bathgate, a New Jersey attorney and former RNC finance chairman who joined Alexander after Kemp, his first choice, decided not to run.

But presidential campaigns are vampiric in their demands, and every four years it’s been just as important for candidates to find fresh blood.

This year, the search for new money revolves around figures like Mark Guzzetta, who owns an environmental equipment company and develops real estate in Boca Raton, Fla. Guzzetta raised substantial sums for Republican Jeb Bush’s unsuccessful Florida gubernatorial campaign last fall. But, except for some political work on behalf of Bush’s father, former President George Bush, he’s never played a major financial role in a presidential campaign.

What brought Guzzetta to Gramm was the Texan’s ardor--not only about contesting the race, but about rolling back the federal government. With his uncompromising anti-government message, Gramm appears to be making inroads around the country with like-minded younger Republican fund-raisers eager for a high-octane assault on government taxes and spending. In New York, for instance, Gramm has tapped into a network of politically savvy entrepreneurs and investors as likely to describe themselves as libertarian as they are to call themselves conservative.

With three decades in Washington behind him, Dole has links to all segments of the GOP financial base. But the core of his strength is expected to come in corporate America (with chief executives like Lodwrick M. Cook of ARCO) and with the endless array of interests eager to remain on good terms with a man who will be President if he succeeds and the most powerful Republican in the Senate if he fails.

Alexander’s appeal is more eclectic. He’s turned heads by recruiting many big-name fund-raisers. And he’s planning to vacuum as much as $8.5 million out of his home state of Tennessee. But many remain skeptical that Alexander can keep up with Dole and Gramm over the long run.

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The other likely GOP candidates all face skepticism about their fund-raising capacity. Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter has a history of aggressive fund raising, but no established national network of support. The same is true for Indiana Sen. Richard G. Lugar, who is exploring the race. Columnist Patrick J. Buchanan, who formed his exploratory committee Thursday, attracted substantial sums from a national conservative direct-mail base in his 1992 challenge to Bush--but the high cost of attracting money through the mail can pinch other campaign operations.

Of those still mulling the race, the consensus is that only Wilson could command resources comparable to the leading candidates.

Exactly how much is enough to compete remains an open question. Some experienced operatives say that candidates may be able to build the organization they will need without raising quite as much as the $20 milllion to $25 million this year that conventional wisdom has established as the threshold.

On the other hand, as in an arms race, sufficiency in fund raising is a relative measure. Black, the Gramm strategist, says that a reasonable plan might be to spend $10 million building a national organization in 1995 and then have $10 million on hand by New Hampshire to deploy in television ads over the next six weeks of bruising competition. “The problem is if Dole’s raised $30 million and has $15 million on hand, then maybe Gramm needs more,” he says.