RNC Funded Outside Groups, Records Show

In the closing weeks of the 1996 campaign, the Republican National Committee steered more than $1 million in contributions from its major donors to sympathetic outside groups, collecting the checks at the RNC and then passing them on to the other organizations, documents obtained by Senate investigators show.

The documents, obtained last week from the campaign of former Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, demonstrate that then-RNC chairman Haley Barbour and Deputy Finance Director Jo-Anne Coe tapped big GOP donors to make large contributions to the outside groups. Unlike political parties, such groups don’t have to disclose where their money comes from or how they spend it.

The groups included the National Right to Life Committee, an antiabortion group that was heavily involved in voter education projects in the 1996 campaign, and Americans for Tax Reform, which made 4 million phone calls and sent 19 million pieces of mail urging voters to dismiss Democratic warnings about Medicare cuts.

The documents show that Coe passed on checks for $100,000 each to the Right to Life Committee and Americans for Tax Reform from Carl Lindner of the American Financial Group, a major donor to both parties.

The biggest beneficiary of the GOP program was the American Defense Institute, which runs a voter turnout program for military personnel, who tend to vote heavily in favor of Republican candidates.

The military-oriented group received around $1 million, including $500,000 that Barbour solicited from Philip Morris, the documents show. American Defense Institute president Eugene B. “Red” McDaniel said that was close to the full cost of the voter turnout effort.

Republicans erupted with criticism earlier this year after reports that Democratic National Committee officials and Harold M. Ickes, then White House deputy chief of staff, directed givers to groups they thought would help boost Democratic turnout in 1996.

Democratic and Republican election law experts said Wednesday that party officials are allowed to solicit and even serve as conduits for contributions to outside groups as long as the groups don’t coordinate their activities with the political parties.

But the GOP-generated donations to the outside groups allowed the party’s backers to give additional sums that would help the party without having them publicly reported.