Group to Add $1 Million to Boxer Campaign

Among the millions of dollars poured into Sen. Barbara Boxer’s reelection campaign by lawyers, unions, Hollywood moguls and business people, the $5,000 check this spring from a Washington, D.C., abortion-rights group was negligible.

It was the only direct contribution that EMILY’s List, founded to promote women’s issues and candidates, has given to Boxer. And the group is prohibited by federal law from donating much more than that to the senator’s campaign.

But behind the scenes, the group has become the key financial cog in Boxer’s down-to-the-wire campaign against Republican Matt Fong and is well on its way toward raising an unprecedented $1 million for Boxer--largely through a practice known as “bundling.”

Intent on solidifying recent political gains by women, EMILY’s List has sent out hundreds of thousands of political mailers around the country, collected mail-in contributions and passed them en masse to candidates who support abortion rights and women’s issues.

Campaign-reform activists have sought unsuccessfully to ban bundling, arguing that it gives the bundlers too much influence over the politicians and allows them to skirt limits on contributions.

“It’s a classic problem. You risk having the officeholder become beholden to the group that’s accumulating all this money,” said Craig Holman, project director at the Center for Governmental Studies, a private think tank in Los Angeles.

Holman was an author of Proposition 208, a 1996 initiative that, among other restrictions, forbade the bundling of contributions in state campaigns. After a brief implementation, the measure was struck down in federal court and is now on appeal.

A similar ban was discussed at the federal level as part of campaign reform proposals in recent years but ultimately died under pressure from groups such as EMILY’s List.

Boxer was not disappointed. Asked where her campaign would be without the support of EMILY’s List, the senator said with a laugh: “A million dollars poorer. They have been phenomenal.”

Her campaign manager, Rose Kapolczynski, is even more blunt, crediting the group for helping elect Boxer in 1992. “She might not even be in the Senate without EMILY’s List,” the aide said.

Boxer, buoyed by her status as an incumbent, had already raised more money by October than she had during her entire 1992 run for the Senate. Her $13 million, compared with Fong’s $8.8 million, has allowed her to air a series of hard-hitting commercials, and she has regained a narrow edge in recent polling.

Relying heavily on direct-mail solicitations and telemarketing, Boxer will raise up to $15 million by the Nov. 3 election, aides say, promising to make this one of the most expensive Senate races in history.

EMILY’s List, an acronym that stands for “Early Money Is Like Yeast (it makes the dough rise),” was founded in 1985 by IBM heiress Ellen Malcolm.

With a war chest of $5.7 million for this election, the group boasts that it is now collecting and disbursing more in donations than any other political action committee.

It has sent out several dozen political mailers to 45,000 potential donors, pushing particularly hard this year for Boxer and two other Democratic senators facing tough reelections--Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois and Patty Murray of Washington.

One recent EMILY’s List mailer--headlined “Pro-Choice Democratic Women Candidates Urgently Need Our Support!”--led off with a photo of Boxer and a synopsis of her Senate race. “Make your check payable to Boxer for Senate,” it implored.

Boxer’s filings list only one contribution from the group--a $5,000 gift representing half the maximum that political action committees are allowed to give under federal law. But through the money it passes on, the group will likely raise more for Boxer than for any other candidate, said EMILY’s List spokeswoman Stephanie Cohen. At last count, the group had raised $737,000 and expects to top $1 million from 10,000 donors, according to the committee’s officials and the Boxer campaign.

EMILY’s List feted Boxer and other Bay Area politicians last week at a raucous fund-raiser in San Francisco, complete with conga dancing and talk of record-setting donation levels. “We are not going to let the right wing defeat Barbara Boxer!” Malcolm, the group’s president, told a roaring crowd.

“Barbara Boxer has become a poster child for EMILY’s List,” said Larry Makinson, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, D.C., a nonpartisan think tank that analyzes campaign data.

A million dollars is an unheard of sum to be bundled by a political action committee for a single candidate, campaign finance experts said.

“Yes, you’re allowed to do it,” said Makinson at the Center for Responsive Politics. “But . . . you don’t want so much money going to a candidate from any one group that they feel beholden to them. EMILY’s List goes way over that limit, so does this follow the spirit of the law? No, it doesn’t in my opinion.”

Contributions Reflect Women Voters

But officials at EMILY’s List and the Boxer camp say the contributions simply reflect the strength of Boxer’s appeal among women voters--despite recent misgivings over the senator’s reluctance to criticize President Clinton in the Monica Lewinsky affair.

“The great thing about EMILY’s List is that it’s a nationwide network, so women in Alabama who don’t have a woman running for Congress or Senate to support can send their money to Barbara Boxer to represent them,” Kapolczynski said. “We get letters from women all the time saying, ‘You’re my voice in the Senate.’ ”

Cohen rejects the suggestion that bundling--which her group is credited with helping perfect in the last few years--puts too much power in the hands of the bundler.

“We’re simply getting more people involved in the system, active and participating,” she said. “We help get them elected, and once they are elected, . . . they’re not beholden to us at all, and we don’t try to influence their views on legislative issues.”

Boxer has been a strong supporter of abortion rights, opposing requirements for parental consent for minors and voting to ease restrictions on late-term abortions if the mother’s life is endangered, among other measures. But she says her positions on abortion--as in all legislative matters--remain unswayed by the agendas of her donors.

In many cases, Boxer said, her positions and those of her donors are in sync because “I think they’re right.”

Such is the case in her relationship with the legal community, she said, which has provided stalwart support to her and Democratic candidates through the years.

The legal community has contributed more to her campaign than any other industry. Lawyers accounted for more than $1 million by Sept. 30--nearly twice as much as in Boxer’s 1992 run, according to an analysis for The Times by the Campaign Study Group in Springfield, Va. Plaintiffs’ lawyers alone contributed more than $300,000.

Fong seized on the issue at a campaign stop in the Silicon Valley last week, criticizing Boxer for accepting such big money from lawyers--and, in particular, from San Diego attorney William Lerach, vilified by corporate executives because of shareholder lawsuits he has brought. Members of his law firm and spouses have been Boxer’s single biggest direct contributor with nearly $40,000 in donations.

Boxer’s critics suggest her donations from the legal community help explain her position on an array of measures that could harm trial attorneys. For example, she has opposed efforts to limit damage awards in product-liability lawsuits and other types of litigation.

But Boxer said her voting record is driven by a desire to see strong protections in place for consumers who may be harmed by defective products. And she added that she is not afraid to oppose the positions of trial lawyer groups on occasion, as she did in sponsoring pending legislation that would close loopholes in securities litigation.

Newport Beach attorney Mark P. Robinson Jr., incoming president of the Consumer Attorneys of California, said trial lawyers see Boxer as a strong protector of consumers. “There’s a natural allegiance there. . . . Within the legal community, there’s a very strong support for her. We feel she’s a fireball and an advocate,” he said.

The legal industry is just one of the traditional Democratic fund-raising sources that has rallied behind Boxer.

Individuals and political action committees affiliated with the entertainment industry have contributed more than $459,000 to Boxer’s campaign, with Time Warner, Walt Disney and DreamWorks leading the way.

Labor unions, always a strong backer of Democrats, have contributed more than $410,000 to Boxer, records show. And pro-Israel groups and individuals have also contributed heavily, with donations totaling $105,000.

But Boxer has broadened her reach beyond the classic liberal profile, garnering significant support from the real estate industry, securities and investment firms and other businesses, Makinson said.

“It’s not necessarily the profile of a very liberal Democrat, because she has got a lot of that financial [industry] money,” he said.

Pollution Violations by Some Donors

Critics charge that some of Boxer’s donations from corporate interests conflict with her strong environmental stances because the donors have spotty compliance with environmental regulations.

For instance, Boxer has received thousands of dollars from firms such as Blue Diamond Growers, a Sacramento firm that agreed to pay $675,000 in 1995 over clean-air problems; National Steel and Shipbuilding Co., which in 1996 agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by environmentalists who charged it had been polluting the San Diego Bay; and General Atomics, a San Diego company that closed an Oklahoma nuclear plant several years ago after ongoing problems with spills, contaminated ground water and environmental citations.

Steve Schmidt, spokesman for Fong, pointed to these donations as evidence of “a tremendous hypocrisy” by Boxer on the environment.

“Barbara Boxer has always used the environment as a political prop, and when you demagogue an issue like Barbara Boxer has demagogued her environmental record, you should be held to a high standard and not accept contributions from companies that pollute. Period,” Schimdt said.

Asked about the donations, Boxer said: “I think if there’s a company that gets fined and they clean up their act, I would hope they wouldn’t do it again.”

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Times staff writer Tony Perry contributed to this story.

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Benefactors of Boxer Campaign

Officials and employees of the following entities were major contributors to Sen. Barbara Boxer in her reelection campaign. The campaign considers EMILY 3/8s List, a Washington-based advocate for abortion rights, to be its single biggest contributor, but because the group collects indirect, “bundled” donations, its contributions 1/3 expected to top $1 million 1/3 are not reflected here.

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Donor Amount Business Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach $39,550 Law Time Warner Inc. $27,350* Media Walt Disney Co. $25,351* Entertainment University of California $23,040 Education Dreamworks SKG $19,500 Entertainment Cotchett Pitre & Simon $18,350 Law Universal Studios $18,050* Entertainment Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee $17,500 Political organization Sterling Equities Inc. $17,000 Development Allergan Inc. $16,650 Pharmaceutical Taylor Roth Bush & Geffner $16,135 Law Green Broillet Taylor Wheeler $15,145 Law American Federation of Teachers $15,000** Labor Cassidy Companies Inc. $14,803 Lobbying Greenspun Inc. $14,750 Media Hambrecht & Quist $14,465 Investment

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* Includes PAC

**Through its political action commitee

Source: Campaign statements filed with the Federal Election Commission

Compiled by: The Campaign Study Group of Virginia