New Stage in Fund-Raising Probe

As Bill Clinton pursued the presidency in the summer of 1992, a little-known Hawaiian entrepreneur named Nora T. Lum burst onto the Los Angeles political scene to drum up support for Democratic candidates and solicit thousands of dollars from Asian Americans.

After Clinton’s victory, Lum and her husband, attorney Eugene Lum, disappeared from the local political stage just as quickly as they had arrived, leaving a mystery that federal investigators still are seeking to unravel.

“Nora wanted to be a star,” said one high-ranking Southern California Democrat with whom the couple worked. But when she moved on, added the Democrat, speaking on condition of anonymity, “she didn’t leave a lot of friends behind.”

Now that the Lums have agreed to plead guilty to making $50,000 in illegal campaign contributions and to cooperate with the continuing Justice Department investigation of Democratic fund-raising activities, investigators believe that they could provide important information about figures more central to the inquiry, including controversial Democratic fund-raiser John Huang.

Prosecution of the Lums was the first criminal case arising from the investigation to go to court. Unlike most elements of the Justice Department investigation, however, which are related to fund-raising activities in the 1996 campaign, the Lums’ case grew out of an independent counsel’s inquiry into allegations about the tangled finances of Ronald H. Brown, the Commerce secretary and former Democratic National Committee chairman who died in a 1996 plane crash in Croatia.

The Lums were friends of Brown, and Justice Department investigators are still examining their activities, seeking clues that might shed light on some of their political and business associates, including Brown’s son, Michael.

Staff members on the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, which also is investigating fund-raising activities, said they too are eager to talk to the Lums.

The Lums are scheduled to appear today in Washington before U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina to enter their guilty pleas. Among the questions investigators are now free to ask them:

* Can they point the way to bigger, more influential figures in the Democratic Party who may have violated federal campaign-financing laws?

* Did the Lums collect money from foreign sources and turn it over to the Democratic Party--a potential violation of federal law?

* Was the Torrance fund-raising operation, run out of an airplane-sized warehouse, set up at Brown’s behest, as Nora Lum indicated to Los Angeles-area Democrats? Was it part of the official Democratic Party machinery?

* What happened to the money--thousands of dollars at least--that a Lum-led group solicited at fund-raising events in Manhattan Beach and elsewhere?

In 1992, the Lums landed in Los Angeles trumpeting their political ties in Hawaii and their friendship with Brown. They called together 20 or so Asian American community leaders to launch a group they called the Asian Pacific Advisory Council of the Democratic National Committee. The Lums’ effort was part of a larger bid by Democrats to raise funds aggressively in the Asian American community.

Ron Wakabayashi, director of Los Angeles County’s Human Relations Commission, who was honored by the group, said he assumed it was operating with the party’s blessings because big-name Democrats, including Brown, showed up at its headquarters.

Charles Chidiac, a former fund-raiser for the group, told the Washington Post last year that it generated questionable contributions. He alleged that in 1992, Nora Lum showed him a grocery bag containing $50,000 in cash, telling him that it was given by a Korean auto maker.

Wakabayashi and others, however, said they have absolutely no recollection of ever seeing large amounts of cash at the group’s offices.

On Oct. 27, 1992, the group staged a fund-raising reception at the Radisson Hotel in Manhattan Beach. The $150-per-person event brought in an undetermined amount of money. Democratic National Committee officials, however, said they know of no such fund-raiser.

“We cannot immediately find any information about any fund-raiser” on that date in Manhattan Beach, Democratic Party spokesman Steve Langdon said.

Langdon also said any official ties between the group and the Democratic National Committee remain murky. “If there was a relationship, it is difficult to determine now,” he said.

*

After Clinton’s election, the Lums spent time in Washington, where Nora Lum, now 54, visited the White House frequently--18 times since 1993, according to an administration official. The Lums’ daughter, Trisha C. Lum, 27, landed an entry-level job with Brown’s Commerce Department. She has agreed to plead guilty to making an illegal $10,000 contribution to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

The Lums also spent time in Oklahoma, where they began a high-stakes business venture. The Lums joined with W. Stuart Price, who had been a Clinton campaign finance official, to acquire a troubled Tulsa natural gas company. They called it Dynamic Energy Resources, and put Michael Brown on the company’s board of directors.

By 1994, prosecutors said, the Lums had begun to funnel company money to the reelection campaign of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and to Price’s bid for a congressional seat in Oklahoma.

In their plea agreement, the Lums said they routed $50,000 in illegal donations through “straw contributors,” including employees and board members of Dynamic Energy.

Kennedy called the charges “very serious,” and his press secretary, Kathleen McKiernan, said $19,000 from the Lums’ associates--including $2,000 from Michael Brown--has been returned.

Times staff writer Sara Fritz and researcher Anna M. Virtue contributed to this story.