Dole Proposes Stricter Limits on Political Donations

Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole, trying to capitalize on allegations of Democratic campaign finance transgressions, proposed a major overhaul Sunday of the laws governing political donations to “take special interests and foreign influence” out of elections.

“In an American election, the voice of a single citizen must speak louder than the entire world,” Dole said in a speech to a few hundred supporters on a stormy afternoon in New England.

Dole pledged to set up a bipartisan commission to consider four changes in campaign finance laws, including one that would forbid donations by noncitizens.

Republican strategists regard the campaign finance issue as the best opportunity for Dole, who continues to lag far behind President Clinton in public opinion polls, to persuade voters that Clinton does not have the character traits necessary to be president.

Meanwhile, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a senior advisor to the Dole campaign, urged suspending the sale of F-16 warplanes to Indonesia until an independent counsel can investigate hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from an Indonesian couple to the Democratic National Committee.

And Sen. Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, the committee chairman, said he would allow reporters to question John Huang, the reclusive committee fund-raiser who arranged the Indonesian contributions as well as a $250,000 donation from a South Korean company that the committee ultimately returned. So far Huang had responded only to written questions.

Dole, whose campaign aides said he would hammer the character issue throughout the final two weeks before the election, was so intent on delivering Sunday’s speech that he ignored the advice of his pilot and flew into a powerful storm, campaign workers said.

“We’ve even seen a string of abuses in recent days,” Dole said upon landing after a rocky flight. “We’ve seen a major scandal involving the flow of foreign money into the Democratic Party and attempts to buy access to the White House.”

Under particular scrutiny are gifts totaling $425,000 that were channeled to the national committee by an Indonesian couple, Arief and Soroya Wiriadinata, during the last year. The couple lived as legal U.S. residents in the Washington suburbs, where Arief Wiriadinata worked as a landscape architect for part of that period, but they gave $300,000 of the total after returning to Indonesia.

Soroya Wiriadinata’s deceased father, Hashim Ning, had been a business partner of Indonesian financial magnate Mochtar Riady, whose son, James Riady, is a longtime friend of Clinton’s, going back to Clinton’s years as governor of Arkansas. Moreover, Huang, the committee fund-raiser, had worked for the Lippo Group, Riady’s international network of companies, before joining the Commerce Department and then the national committee.

McCain, appearing on CBS-TV’s “Face the Nation,” called for an investigation of “whether this Indonesian money has affected the conduct of American foreign policy.” He said he found it suspicious that Clinton, who as a candidate in 1992 had castigated human rights violations in Indonesia, dropped an investigation of child labor and other abuses in that country once he was in office.

Clinton himself did not address the campaign finance issue Sunday, but his campaign staff accused Dole of hypocrisy for calling for reform as a presidential candidate after he “made a career opposing meaningful campaign finance reform” as a senator.

Shortly before leaving the Senate, Dole supported a successful filibuster against a campaign finance reform bill whose leading Republican sponsor was McCain.

Dodd, the committee chairman, said the Republicans’ decision to raise the campaign finance issue demonstrates the “desperate” state of their campaign.

Dodd raised the case of Simon C. Fireman, a Boston-area businessman who was a top fund-raiser for Dole during the Republican primaries. Fireman, in a July plea agreement with federal prosecutors, admitted to conspiring illegally to make disguised cash contributions to Dole and other candidates.

Separately, the Boston Globe reported Sunday that Jose Fanjul, a Cuban citizen who lives in Florida, has raised funds for Dole’s presidential campaign and has contributed heavily to the campaign himself. Fanjul, head of Flo-Sun Inc., a sugar producer, was the top beneficiary of a sugar price support program that Dole supported in the Senate, the paper reported.

Roll Call, a newspaper about Congress, reported that the Republican National Committee returned a $15,000 contribution from a Canadian methanol-producing company called Methanex after Roll Call notified the committee that the donation appeared to be illegal. U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies may donate to political campaigns, but the foreign companies themselves may not.

Dole’s new campaign reform proposal, outlined here in New Hampshire, would not only ban contributions by noncitizens but also would eliminate unlimited business and labor contributions to political party organizations, prohibit unions from bundling compulsory dues into campaign contributions and limit the influence of political action committees.

Even as Dole was unveiling his proposal, running mate Jack Kemp questioned the wisdom of prohibiting all noncitizens, including legal immigrants, from making political donations.

“If you’re here lawfully, you ought to be able to contribute to the candidate of your choice,” Kemp said on CNN. Referring to a proposal by House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) to ban contributions by all noncitizens, Kemp said: “Be careful before you just start shooting off our mouths about campaign reform.”

Dole’s idea of setting up a bipartisan commission to rewrite the campaign finance rules is not a new one. Last year, before the campaign started, Clinton and Gingrich met in New Hampshire and agreed to support a similar effort. But the initiative died in Congress.