Principals Say Temple Event Was Explicit Fund-Raiser

As Vice President Al Gore stood to deliver his remarks at the Hsi Lai Buddhist temple in Hacienda Heights in April, the audience of about 100 people included a lot of familiar faces.

There was John Huang, the prodigious Democratic National Committee fund-raiser who had helped organize this gathering. There was Don Fowler, the committee’s chairman, responsible for the party’s national election campaign.

There were a number of prominent Democratic contributors. And right beside Gore, translating his remarks extolling religious tolerance into Chinese for the temple members present, was Maria L. Hsia, a longtime financial backer of Gore, an active fund-raiser for the party in California and the other principal planner of the luncheon.

All of them knew that one of the purposes of the event was to raise campaign funds. Indeed, about $140,000 was collected--with some checks changing hands on the premises. But Gore, who prides himself on being exceptionally well-briefed, maintains that he thought the temple gathering was strictly a goodwill reception for the Asian American community and that he had no idea money was being solicited from the participants.

Questions about the temple fund-raiser, which party officials now acknowledge was an inappropriate blend of religion and politics, are among those fueling the growing controversy over the Democratic Party’s aggressive solicitation of hundreds of millions of dollars for its 1996 campaign--its most expensive ever. And party officials’ sparse and shifting explanations for their actions are feeding the impression that they are trying to fend off scrutiny--at least until after election day.

In the wake of media reports, the DNC has returned $15,000 to the temple for the cost of hosting the event. The party has also surrendered another contribution from a donor who said she was handed $5,000 that day and told to write a check to the party, which is illegal. Meanwhile, the Federal Election Commission directed the temple Friday to document the legality of the donations collected--that they came from legal U.S. residents and were not laundered from an illegal source.

Extensive interviews with those who planned, attended and contributed to this fund-raiser provide a fuller account of the event and test the party’s initial assertion that it was largely set up by the temple itself and that Gore knew nothing about its financial purpose.

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Participants say the luncheon did not feature many of the usual trappings of a fund-raiser. There was no front registration table, no donor cards and no thank yous expressed from the speaker--Gore--for the generous financial support. Don Knabe, a Republican who attended, said that “if it was a fund-raiser, it wasn’t like any fund-raiser I’ve ever been to.”

Said DNC spokeswoman Amy Weiss Tobe, “Our people never told Gore’s staff that this was a fund-raiser.”

Hsia, speaking through her attorney, Peter Kelly, said the gathering was initially planned as a chance for Gore to see the temple and meet with Asian American activists. He was invited by Shing Yun, the master of the Hsi Lai parent temple in Taiwan, during a visit with Gore at the White House in March. Gore, joined by Hsia, among others, had met Shing Yun during a trip to the monastic headquarters when he was in Taiwan in 1989.

At the same time, according to Hsia and others, Huang was planning a fund-raiser at the Harbor Village Restaurant in Monterey Park. But several days before Gore’s trip west, Huang learned there was not enough time for both events and that the DNC needed to combine the two, said Kelly, who is also the temple’s attorney and a former state Democratic chairman.

Hsia said Huang excoriated her--”You’ve ruined my fund-raiser!”--because some of his large donors canceled upon hearing that the event would be at the temple. He urged her to help solicit additional donors, prompting her to approach monks, nuns and other temple devotees to give money, she said.

Hsia said Huang confirmed that he checked with the DNC on the propriety of holding a fund-raiser at the temple, according to Kelly. Huang has never directly addressed his role and is not granting interviews.

Los Angeles toy company executive Charlie Woo, a frequent Democratic donor and a friend of Huang’s, said he was perplexed when Huang switched the event to the temple. Woo nonetheless attended and brought a check for $1,000 because “I clearly understood it to be a fund-raiser.”

Religious organizations are generally prohibited from holding political fund-raising events, which could jeopardize their tax-exempt status.

Top-level officials at the DNC knew the event was a fund-raiser. The office schedule of Fowler listed the lunch as a fund-raiser. Huang’s boss, DNC finance director Richard Sullivan, was the contact person for the Gore staff regarding the event, sources said. Sullivan could not be reached Saturday.

The vice president’s schedule listed the event as community outreach. Gore has taken only a few questions about the campaign-donations controversy on the campaign trail. His office declined repeated requests for an interview.

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Gore has raised large sums for the Democrats as vice president, and carefully prepares himself for his appearances. “I don’t dispute that he’s the best-briefed vice president,” said Lorraine Voles, his press secretary, in reference to the temple visit. “He was given a briefing. He asked questions about these events. But doing an event like this, the way it was described to him, was not unusual.”

Some political experts were skeptical, citing Gore’s detail-conscious reputation. “Either he knew and isn’t telling the truth or he’s claiming that people very close to him blindsided him,” said Larry J. Sabato, a University of Virginia professor of government who has written widely on political ethics.

“There’s always a reckoning up ahead.”

Yet those around Gore sense little risk to him in the controversy about Democratic fund-raising.

“I don’t think he’s overly concerned about it,” said one Gore advisor. “There’s not much that he had to do with it.”

Connell reported from Los Angeles and Miller from Washington. Times staff writers Nicholas Riccardi in Los Angeles and Elizabeth Shogren in Derry, N.H., contributed to this story.