Dole Lashes Out at Clinton Over Foreign Donors

Using some of the harshest language of his campaign and focusing on an issue that has recently emerged, Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole on Friday accused the Clinton administration of “taking money-laundering to an art form” and the president of “abuse of power” in connection with fund-raising by the Democratic Party.

“It’s time for a complete accounting,” Dole told a small crowd at Tiguex Park in this city’s Old Town neighborhood, referring to the brewing controversy over questionable contributions to the Democratic National Committee, many tied to foreign interests.

“Come on, Mr. President. Come clean, Mr. President,” Dole said. “You hear the president who often talks about a bridge to the future. It seems it’s a bridge to wealthy political donors. It goes through a laundromat first, then takes a left at the Democratic National Committee and then goes all the way down to the Oval Office.”

Even as Dole launched his attack, however, the Republican National Committee on Friday returned a $15,000 illegal contribution from a Canadian company, Methanex, according to Roll Call, a newspaper of Capitol Hill. The donation by the U.S. subsidiary of Methanex, the world’s largest methanol producer, violated campaign finance laws because the money was not earned in the United States, Roll Call reported.

The DNC, for its part, already has returned one illegal contribution from a foreign corporation and has come under attack for other questionable donations. Dole signaled Friday that the furor could become a key element in his efforts to overcome Clinton’s lead in the polls before election day.

Indeed, he focused on the contribution issue later in the day in a speech at a school in Denver. And at both of his appearances, he appeared to relish going on the attack--a contrast to the ambivalence he previously has displayed about taking the president to task on ethical matters.

“This is really unbelievable,” he said in both speeches. “Every day we have a new scandal about the foreign corruption of America.”

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In Denver, Dole declared that campaign contribution laws should be changed so that noncitizens can no longer legally donate money. Under current law, foreigners with legal residence status in the United States and U.S. subsidiaries of foreign-owned companies are permitted to make campaign donations.

“I think it’s time to say, ‘OK, if you’re not a citizen you can’t contribute to a political campaign of the United States of America,’ ” Dole said.

Clinton campaign officials wasted no time firing back at Dole, noting that federal prosecutors are already investigating three separate cases of allegedly improper contributions to his presidential campaign, including one that led to a Massachusetts businessman paying a $6-million fine earlier this year.

In the other two cases, companies in Pennsylvania and Nevada are being investigated to determine if officials there also gave employees money and told them to contribute to the Dole campaign.

“Bob Dole likes to give these speeches, but maybe he ought to be more worried about cleaning up his own campaign,” said Clinton campaign spokesman Joe Lockhart.

Lockhart acknowledged that Dole raised important campaign finance issues today. But Lockhart added that “when it comes to illegal campaign contributions, the Dole for President campaign . . . is a full-service laundromat.”

Dole and senior aides have denied any knowledge of improper contributions.

Vice President Al Gore, meanwhile, criticized Dole for his recent remarks on immigration and affirmative action, accusing him of running on “wedge issues” that create “hostility and hatred and division,” in the country.

“You know what a wedge issue is? It’s an issue that is designed to divide people, one from another,” Gore said as he campaigned in Louisiana.

In contrast, Gore said: “Bill Clinton has pursued a campaign--and for four years, a presidency--that has been designed to bring us together, not to drive a wedge between black and white, rich and poor or by region or religion or by any other means. The other side has pursued wedge issues continually, as they are doing right now.”

Dole, as part of his campaign’s intensified effort to carry California, used a speech Thursday in Riverside to accuse the Clinton administration of ignoring a host of problems he charged were related to illegal immigration. And at several of his campaign stops in Southern California earlier this week, Dole stressed his support for Proposition 209, which would end government-sponsored affirmative action programs in the state.

Dole steered clear of such salvos in his Albuquerque appearance, instead concentrating his fire on the money issue, which he coupled with other controversies involving the administration that he increasingly is raising on the campaign trail.

“The number and persistence of scandals suggest abuse of power in this White House,” Dole said. “Let’s start with Filegate. Maybe one of your FBI files is floating around down there. . . . Some guy named Craig Livingstone, a bouncer in a bar, hired as White House security chief to rifle through these things.”

He added: “This crowd, they’ve given us Filegate. They’ve given us Travelgate [the administration’s firing of employees at the White House travel office]. Now they’re giving us some other gate. Hundreds of thousands of dollars coming in from foreign sources.”

Dole added a new name to his rogue’s gallery of dubious foreign contributors to the Democratic cause. Several times this week, he scored the DNC for taking a large donation from an Indonesian banking family with ties to the president.

Friday, he called attention to Yogesh Gandhi, the head of a foundation near San Francisco who donated $325,000 to the DNC.

“Some guy named Gandhi . . . gave $300,000,” Dole said. “You know he never had $300,000. Somebody gave him the $300,000. And he passed it on to the Democratic National Committee. The president greets him in the White House. He gets a nice plaque. That is going to end.”

Gandhi, the great-grandnephew of Mohandas K. Gandhi, is head of Gandhi Memorial InternationalFoundation in Orinda, Calif. He presented Clinton with the Mahatma Gandhi World Peace Award at the White House earlier this year for his efforts in Bosnia and the Middle East.

Gandhi’s assistant, Raj Patel, had told The Times that the DNC contribution reflected Gandhi’s “personal commitment to the Democratic Party.” He said Gandhi came to the United States 15 years ago and met Clinton during the 1992 campaign.

In something of an odd juxtaposition, Dole suggested that Clinton has failed to heed the lessons of the Watergate scandal that toppled President Nixon, while also calling attention to Clinton’s work as Texas campaign director for George S. McGovern’s 1972 bid for the White House.

“It would seem to me that this president came of age during the political campaign of George McGovern,” Dole said. “He did not absorb any of the lessons of that time. He didn’t learn a thing from this national nightmare that we call Watergate, which happened on our watch. One thing you learn, you sort of follow the money.”

Dole served as chairman of the national Republican Party as the Watergate scandal mushroomed and was a close political associate of Nixon’s.

At an evening rally in Wichita, where Dole stopped on his way to Kentucky, he continued to hammer away at the money issue.

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Dole accused Democrats of using money from illegal foreign contributors to pay for “negative ads trying to distort my record,” a remark that caused his audience to jeer loudly.

Still, even some of his fellow Kansans were skeptical that the issue of Democratic campaign funds would help Dole.

“It doesn’t matter to me,” said Ken Meeker, 35.

Meeker, an accountant, said that while he enthusiastically supports Dole and is grateful for all he had done for Kansas as its senator, he no longer holds out hope for a Dole victory.

“Bill Clinton relates better to the young generation,” Meeker said.

Times staff writer Gebe Martinez contributed to this story.