GOP Taps Tax Money to Pay for Broadcast

Bowing to a legal challenge posed by Democrats, Republicans on Monday abandoned plans to use a $1.3-million Amway donation to pay for televising the GOP convention on Pat Robertson’s Family Channel, opting instead to use taxpayer funds for that purpose.

The move raised several new legal issues and drew immediate criticism from Democrats and election-law experts, who contend that it is illegal for political parties to use either public or private funds to pay for the type of broadcast that Republicans are planning.

“They are either pushing the legal envelope or outright violating the law,” said Lisa Rosenberg, a lawyer and expert on campaign funding at the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington. “Public funds are intended only for the day-to-day normal operation of the conventions.”

David Eichenbaum, a Democratic Party spokesman, made the same argument, saying that neither public nor private funds could be used to fund what the Democrats contend is intended to be a lengthy, “partisan infomercial” for the GOP and its probable presidential nominee, Bob Dole. He added that the abrupt, last-minute decision by the Republican National Committee represented a tacit admission that an Amway-funded broadcast was illegal.

In response, Anne Gavin, spokeswoman for the GOP convention, defended the party’s right to use either Amway or public funds to finance the broadcast.

“This action does not reflect any change in legal interpretation,” the GOP said in a statement. It accused the Democrats of mounting “a phony legal challenge” designed to “gag” the Republicans in their effort to broadcast the convention.

The Amway donation was widely seen among campaign-finance experts as a new loophole in the laws governing how conventions are financed. Under the original plan, Amway, a privately held company that has funded a number of Republican technological ventures, would have given money to the San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau. The visitors bureau, in turn, would give the money to the Family Channel to pay for the convention broadcast.

The broadcast is supposed to included both gavel-to-gavel coverage of proceedings and interviews conducted by Republican officeholders and party officials acting as reporters and anchors.

The scheme was believed to be the first time either party had tried to funnel corporate money to assist a convention through a local visitors bureau, which is a permanent entity separate from the host committee.

Two weeks ago, the Democratic Party filed a Federal Election Commission complaint challenging the legality of the Amway donation, charging that the GOP was using the novel funding technique to create a new loophole in federal election law.

Eichenbaum said Democratic Party lawyers believe it would be legal for the Republicans to use public funds to broadcast the raw proceedings. But by adding commentary and interviews by Republican officials to the coverage, the Republicans had converted the broadcast into a partisan broadcast or commercial, he contended.

The dispute reflects a larger controversy that has been brewing in political and legal circles since 1974 when Congress, seeking to end campaign abuses exposed in the Watergate scandal, mandated that presidential elections and conventions be financed entirely with public funds.

Over the years since that law was enacted, lawyers for both Republicans and Democrats have found numerous loopholes that allowed them to fund certain activities with special-interest donations.

In addition, the FEC, which enforces the law, has gradually permitted both parties to fund some convention activities with private donations that are collected by a host committee.

This year, the Republican and Democratic parties each received $12 million in public funding for their conventions. But private funding through the host committees, which has grown precipitously in the last decade, is expected to exceed the amount of public funds for the first time this year.