When a Candidate Is Married to a Deep Pocket

At a time when running for the Senate is a multimillion-dollar money chase, having a spouse as rich as Teresa Heinz looks like a gold-plated political godsend.

Her estimated $760-million fortune amassed by the family food-products empire would appear to give Heinz’s husband, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), nearly impregnable financial armor as he goes into battle against his GOP foe, Gov. William F. Weld.

But sometimes marrying money cuts both ways.

Weld, no slouch of a fund-raiser himself, is doing his best to make the Heinz fortune an issue that could work against Kerry in the fall election. Weld’s campaign is questioning whether Kerry can legally use his wife’s riches. (The senator has not yet done so, but has left the option open.)

The dispute is more than a gossipy sidelight to one of this year’s most-watched Senate races. It is the latest in a number of cases showing how, in the face of skyrocketing campaign costs, a wealthy spouse can be a huge asset--and potential political liability--for candidates.

It is a conundrum that dates back at least to the 1970s, when Jane Fonda bankrolled Tom Hayden’s campaign to represent California in the Senate. It is a particular problem for the growing number of women in politics--from trailblazer Geraldine Ferraro, the 1984 Democratic vice presidential nominee, to California’s Sen. Dianne Feinstein--because female candidates are more likely to have wealthy spouses than are men. And it may bedevil more and more male politicians as the cost of campaigns spirals upward and the amount individuals can legally contribute has remained the same for more than two decades.

“This is an issue because campaign law presses down hard on traditional sources of contributions, and it’s not easy to come up with several million dollars,” said one campaign finance expert who asked to remain anonymous.

Advocates of campaign finance reform see candidates with wealthy spouses as an extension of a broader problem: the growing roster of candidates who rely on personal wealth to pay for their campaigns.

“There is such tremendous pressure on candidates to spend vast sums of money,” said Joshua Goldstein, research director at the Center for Responsive Politics, which monitors the financing of campaigns. “If you can’t raise it, you have to be personally wealthy.”

Federal campaign law prohibits spouses, like all contributors, from giving a House or Senate candidate more than $2,000 per election: $1,000 each in the primary and general elections. But candidates are allowed to use unlimited amounts of their own wealth, including half of any assets they hold jointly with their spouses.

A pivotal Federal Election Commission decision came after the 1976 Senate primary fight in California, when Fonda pumped some $400,000 into Hayden’s campaign to wrest the Democratic nomination from incumbent John Tunney. Hayden lost, but Tunney’s backers filed a complaint with the FEC saying Fonda violated the $1,000 contribution limit.

The FEC ruled that because California has community property laws, in which married couples’ assets are considered jointly held, Hayden could claim Fonda’s wealth as his own and thus not be bound by the $1,000 limit.

Rivaling the celebrity appeal of the Fonda-Hayden flap is the to-do in Massachusetts over whether Kerry can dip into the fortune he married into last year when he wed Heinz, the widow of Sen. John Heinz, a Pennsylvania Republican who died in a 1991 plane crash.

Kerry, a campaign finance reform advocate who refuses to accept political action committee contributions, has nonetheless been one of the Senate’s top fund-raisers, building a $2.3-million war chest by the end of 1995. But since Weld jumped into the fray, turning it into one of the year’s most competitive Senate races, Kerry has refused to rule out the possibility of dipping into the family kitty to supplement his fund-raising.

“Sen. Kerry and Mrs. Heinz have made no decision about whether to use any of their joint assets in the campaign,” said Jennifer Watson, Kerry’s campaign press secretary. “Any decision to use their joint assets would be in complete accord with FEC regulations.”

Kerry has never said how much of the Heinz fortune is held jointly. His 1995 tax forms, which were filed separately from his wife’s and released publicly April 16, showed no income from assets jointly held with his wife. But Watson said that does not necessarily mean the couple has no joint holdings. The forms would not reflect assets that do not produce income, such as their Beacon Hill home, which he could use as collateral to borrow campaign funds.

Even if Kerry shares some of Heinz’s wealth, Weld’s campaign and other GOP operatives have insisted he cannot use it. They point to a provision of campaign-finance law that suggests he can only use assets he held in 1991--years before his marriage--when he officially became a candidate for reelection.

“Sen. Kerry has been acting like a spinning weather vane on the issue of whether he will use his wife’s family fortune,” said John Heubusch, executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “If Kerry decides to . . . he may in fact be breaking the law.”

Kerry aides call that a strained interpretation. And the FEC has never directly ruled on how the law applies in cases where someone marries a wealthy person after becoming a candidate.

Ferraro, who represented a New York congressional district when she became the Democratic vice presidential nominee, received one of the most famous lessons in the liabilities of having a wealthy spouse. During the 1984 presidential campaign, the financial dealings of her husband came under intense public scrutiny. Ferraro tried to quell the controversy by releasing an enormous stack of financial documents and holding a marathon press conference, but the issue continued to dog her.

Feinstein’s marital wealth has been a mixed blessing. Her husband, financier Richard Blum, helped secure a loan of about $2 million for her bid for the California governorship in 1990. Her rivals complained that the money helped her win the Democratic nomination. But she lost the general election to GOP rival Pete Wilson, and reporting violations involving the loan later brought a $190,000 fine from the California Fair Political Practices Commission.

During her 1994 Senate race, Feinstein faced stricter federal contribution limits than in the state election, and an even more formidable financial challenge. Her GOP opponent, Michael Huffington, spent $27 million of his own money. Feinstein loaned some $2.5 million of her own money to her campaign, including about $1 million raised when she and Blum refinanced their San Francisco home. But she made a point of letting it be known that only her share of the proceeds was used.

Other politicians have found advantages to having a wealthy spouse even when they don’t dip into joint bank accounts. When freshman Rep. Jon Christensen (R-Neb.) campaigned for his seat in 1992, his most energetic and resourceful fund-raiser was his wealthy wife, Meredith, who used her connections to help fatten his campaign war chest.

Her wealth also helped make it financially comfortable for Christensen to quit his job and begin full-time campaigning to unseat Rep. Peter Hoagland more than a year before election day. That allowed him to knock on thousands of doors in the district--the kind of energetic campaigning that could have made the difference in a race won by fewer than 2,000 votes.

“If he hadn’t been married to her,” said Hoagland, “I’d have beat him.”

Christensen is in the process of getting a divorce, but that doesn’t seem to be hurting his fund-raising. By the end of 1995, he had raised $686,181--more than all but six House incumbents.