GOP Donation Letter Offers Access to Leaders

As the Democratic campaign fund-raising controversy intensifies, a Republican group is being pressed to defend a solicitation letter that offers a program of private dinners and sessions with top GOP lawmakers and congressional committee chairmen in exchange for different levels of political contributions.

Offering donors “an unprecedented level of dialogue with House Republicans and party leaders,” the mailing was produced last year to promote the Congressional Forum and the House Council, fund-raising programs operated by the National Republican Congressional Committee.

The mailing, distributed throughout last year and into the first part of this year, cited a private dinner with Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and monthly dinners with the chairmen of key congressional committees as “benefits of membership” for supporters who gave at least $15,000 in individual contributions or a minimum of $25,000 in corporate contributions to “directly fund House races.”

Outraged Democrats, stung by investigations into allegations that they had offered their supporters improper access to President Clinton in exchange for campaign contributions--and that such access may have influenced administration policies--are pointing to the GOP flier to say, essentially, that Republicans do it too.

While most of the alleged campaign finance abuses have implicated Democrats, Republicans use many of the same money-raising tactics. But because Republicans control the investigating committees in both the Senate and House, the White House and the Democratic National Committee have been made the major targets of media and congressional attention, said Phil Schiliro, an aide to Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), the ranking member of the House panel that is investigating campaign-funding abuses.

“If we’re going to do an investigation of campaign finances, it should be bipartisan,” Schiliro said. “This activity by the Republicans is indistinguishable from the focus that they have on President Clinton.”

Schiliro said GOP control of Congress has prevented Democrats from pointing out abuses by Republican fund-raisers. “Let’s face it,” he said, “the president is the focus, and he’s a really sexy target to focus on--not the Republicans who are doing some of the same things they accuse him of doing.”

Schiliro predicted that the situation would change in coming weeks as Democrats begin to respond to allegations of wrongdoing more aggressively by pointing to GOP money-raising tactics. “They have more raw material on the Republican side because they raise so much more money,” he said. “There is much more out there for us to share” with the public.

GOP activists, however, argued that Democrats have been more reckless than Republicans in their fund-raising tactics. Now, they said, Democrats are attempting to divert public attention with unfair comparisons to GOP fund-raising.

“No reasonable person would find equivalence between a dinner with 80 to 100 people that includes Republican leaders and the chairmen of selected committees and a coffee at the White House with the president, the comptroller of the currency and the chairmen of the nation’s five largest banks,” said Rich Galen, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Galen said the GOP solicitations were “wrong” to have stated that the large contributions would pay for House races, but he argued that donors were sophisticated enough to have recognized that it was an error; it is illegal to make direct campaign contributions in such large amounts. Nevertheless, he said, that line--underlined and highlighted in italicized type--has been deleted from the current version of the letter now being sent to potential donors.

According to the one-page solicitation, individuals who give $5,000 annually--and corporations that give $10,000 annually--to the National Republican Congressional Committee qualify for membership in the group’s House Council. These donors are allowed “to have regular briefings with key Republican House members and staff who work directly on the discussion topic,” and can get briefings on political trends and invitations to NRCC winter and summer meetings with GOP House members.

The higher-ticket Congressional Forum--described in the letter as “the NRCC’s major donor program for the business community”--requires $15,000 annual dues for individuals and $25,000 annually for corporations. In addition to all the benefits accorded to members of the House Council, Congressional Forum members also receive invitations to monthly dinners with the chairmen and Republican members of key committees, a private dinner with Gingrich, and the NRCC Chairman’s Skeet and Trap Shoot, as well as VIP designation at all House Council and NRCC events.

Galen defended the party’s offer of special access to GOP lawmakers as a legitimate way for business leaders, officials representing political action committees and other GOP supporters to meet in social settings with lawmakers. “This is the way you raise money in this town--like it or not--and we do it just as the Democrats do it,” he said.

Meanwhile, Democrats and Republicans exchanged partisan fire on Friday over a threat by Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) to seek contempt citations against two former Clinton administration officials if they refuse to surrender documents subpoenaed by the House panel investigating Democratic campaign fund-raising practices.

Former Associate Atty. Gen. Webster L. Hubbell and John Huang, a former Commerce Department official and DNC fund-raiser, said earlier this week that they would claim 5th Amendment protection to avoid turning over requested papers.

Burton, chairman of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, said that left him no option except to have his committee “vote promptly to find them in contempt of Congress.” Because GOP members dominate the panel, it would likely approve the contempt citations. But a majority vote of the full House would be required to enforce the subpoenas in court.

In a letter to Burton, Waxman scolded the panel chairman for taking action without bipartisan support and for leaving Democrats out of the subpoena process. “As a matter of prudence, you should not invoke this compulsory process unilaterally,” Waxman said in a letter released to reporters on Friday.

Waxman acknowledged that Burton was within his rights as committee chairman to force Hubbell and Huang to cooperate with the panel’s investigation. But Burton broke with the spirit of cooperation by doing so without Democratic support, he said.

“If you insist on this course, it will be an extraordinary assertion of power,” Waxman wrote. “As you know, I feel very strongly that it is in our nation’s interest that we work together.”