Stakes Raised in Look at Campaign Financing

The only real difference between Robert Krulwich’s previous looks at political campaign financing and his new, 90-minute “Frontline” report, “So You Want to Buy a President?,” is that the dollar figures have gone up.

Right now, the average cost for running a presidential campaign is $20 million. That could change, since the deeper-than-deep-pocketed Steve Forbes has already spent that much in advance of the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries, and Bill Clinton already has some $25 million tucked away for the fall campaign.

What concerns Krulwich, and all critics of the loop-holed campaign finance laws, is that contributions to candidates may buy influence: Money that paves the way to election can later be acknowledged in the form of favorable legislation for the donor. The varieties of gifts and quid pro quos, all technically legal, are dizzying--and effective.

Like a happy ferret, the wise-cracking Krulwich sniffs around for some doozies. Since individual donors are limited to $1,000 gifts during both the primary and general elections, candidates have created organizations that don’t support the campaign directly, but do support the politician. So Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) has no less than three groups where money comes in: the Better America Foundation, Campaign America and the Dole Foundation.

Gifts to Dole don’t always come in cash. Krulwich uncovers that corporations regularly lend out their company jets to Dole for campaigning. Dwayne Andreas, head of Archer Daniels Midland Co. and reportedly the single biggest giver to presidential campaigns in this era, also gives his planes to Dole as the need arises.

Andreas has been supplanted, though, as the kingpin of campaign contributors in one crucial way: Winemaking giant Ernest and Julio Gallo is now the top giver to both Clinton and Dole, and the company’s success in lobbying for trade and business laws (such as a recent inheritance tax law reform) makes one thing clear. The gifts make for a good company investment.

Even before the gifts are delivered, though, corporations can get their way. Krulwich penetratingly documents when Clinton and Al Gore, fresh from the 1992 victory, moved away from insistence on a major government role for building the information superhighway. The day Gore announced a diminished government role, he reports, more than $100,000 poured into Democratic Party coffers from high-tech and telecommunications companies.

Coincidence? No more nor less than when GOP candidate Sen. Phil Gramm’s wife, Wendy, a highly esteemed economist, is on the board of IBP, one of Iowa’s biggest employers, just in time for last year’s Iowa presidential straw poll. Anyone can participate in the poll, and Krulwich notes that the big IBP worker turnout helped Gramm tie Dole in the poll.

Influential spouses and the potential conflicts of interest that come with them only complicate any efforts at campaign finance reform. “You gotta change something,” Krulwich complains at the end, sounding rather hopeless.

* “So You Want to Buy a President?” airs at 9 tonight on KCET-TV Channel 28.