Gore Placing Tight Controls on Fund-Raising

One nightmarish image from Al Gore’s last campaign is coming back to haunt him:

Surrounded by saffron-robed monks and nuns in front of a Buddhist temple outside Los Angeles, the vice president stood smiling under a bright sun at a Democratic Party fund-raiser that would come to epitomize the 1996 campaign finance scandal.

As Gore now races to solicit millions of dollars for his 2000 presidential run, he is all too aware that this video clip looms as the focus of Republican attack ads. Indeed, 10 months before the first primary, some GOP presidential aspirants already are lambasting Gore’s fund-raising record.

Stung by the assaults, the vice president and his top lieutenants have adopted a strategy of aggressive self-policing to prevent a repeat of the myriad disasters that marred the Clinton-Gore reelection.

Gore’s plan stands out in the push-it-to-the-limit world of fund-raising because it goes beyond restrictions imposed by other presidential candidates, past and present. It requires background checks on hundreds of high-powered volunteer fund-raisers, who also must undergo special training on election laws, according to Gore aides. Donors given close access to the vice president also will be screened, and checks made out to the Gore campaign will be carefully checked for foreign money and other possibly unlawful donations.

Moreover, Gore has pledged not to make telephone solicitations from his government office. Previous calls from the White House created problems for the vice president.

“This is going to unusual lengths,” said Ellen S. Miller, executive director of the reform advocacy group Public Campaign and a longtime student of campaign finance. “It shows that Al Gore has been sensitized to how bad the money and politics scandals of 1996 really were. . . . He can afford no missteps here.”

While elaborate precautions may be necessary to inoculate the Gore campaign from further scandal, some Republicans say the same measures are not needed for the rest of the field.

“For [Democratic presidential candidate] Bill Bradley and all the Republican challengers who have never gone out and broken federal election laws, common sense prescriptions solve the problem,” said Steve Schmidt, spokesman for former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander.

And, in any case, Republicans are poised to hammer Gore for his role in the 1996 campaign finance scandal.

“I intend to make it an issue because I’m outraged by it,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a champion of campaign finance reform and a presidential aspirant.

A further test of Gore’s resolve to avoid fund-raising pitfalls will come when he seeks to raise large sums for the Democratic Party if he wins the nomination.

Most of the major controversies during the 1996 campaign arose from the Democratic National Committee’s pursuit of more than $100 million in unrestricted “soft money” donations from corporations, labor unions and wealthy donors. Gore already has said that he will play an active role in such a push next year.

In contrast, individual contributions in the presidential primary campaign are limited by law to $1,000, and the general election campaigns of the presidential nominees are paid for entirely with public funds.

Gore’s fund-raising mandate for his front-running primary campaign is this: Rapidly amass the approximately $55 million that a candidate can legally collect but, in the process, do no harm.

“We have to be very cognizant that we’re operating in a different environment than we did in 1996,” said Craig Smith, Gore’s campaign manager and a former White House political director. “The scrutiny will be much greater.”

Gore’s approach is not expected to prevent him from reaching the legal maximum for the primary--which will give him a significant edge in advertising and organizational firepower. Bradley, a former U.S. senator, is building a national fund-raising base for the first time and has set a target of $25 million.

Despite the self-imposed restrictions, Gore has jumped ahead of all presidential contenders in the first quarter of 1999, raising $8.9 million. Bradley garnered $4.2 million.

Before Gore kicked off his financial drive in March, his senior campaign aides screened volunteer fund-raisers from across the country by checking available public records for criminal violations or other problems that would disqualify them. These include Wall Street financiers, Hollywood executives and lawyers, lobbyists and other party activists nationwide.

Three Gore friends who were charged with crimes stemming from their 1996 fund-raising activities will not be involved in the current campaign, aides said. One pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations and the other two are awaiting trial.

Once approved, the fund-raisers receive detailed training by campaign lawyers on election law and fund-raising pitfalls and written guidelines. So far, more than 250 individuals have participated in this process.

The campaign also is paying special attention to supporters who are invited to attend smaller events with Gore or sit with him at the head table. These individuals will be subjected to background checks in an effort to exclude the kind of felons, foreign arms merchants and opportunists who gained access to Clinton and Gore during the 1996 campaign.

Among those who would be barred: donors who had committed serious crimes or fund-raising infractions.

Checks from donors are being screened through a two-tier system, consisting of an initial review by specially trained campaign staff members and, for contributions that raise questions, more extensive examination by campaign lawyers.

A check written on a foreign bank will be reviewed to verify that the donor is a legal U.S. resident, as required by law. In 1996, Democrats were forced to return millions of dollars in illegal foreign contributions.

Most prominent among the vice president’s travails was the April 1996 Democratic National Committee luncheon featuring Gore at the Hsi Lai Buddhist Temple in Hacienda Heights, Calif. The event raised $140,000, much of it from monks and nuns who were reimbursed by the temple in violation of election laws. Gore compounded the fallout by claiming that the luncheon was a “community outreach” event and not a fund-raiser; he later acknowledged that he knew it was “finance-related.”

In the 2000 race, Gore has touted his refusal to accept political action committee contributions, although such funds generally make up a small percentage of presidential donations.

In addition, aides say that they do not plan a reprise of a June 6, 1995, dinner at the vice president’s official residence for 50 fund-raisers who committed to delivering a total of $1 million to the Clinton-Gore campaign that evening. They say that Gore’s home, a government mansion on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, will not be used for “ticketed events.”

The Democratic National Committee also has tightened its procedures.

Even with the safeguards Gore has adopted, the campaign’s brain trust emphasizes that any system involving hundreds of thousands of individual donations will not be foolproof. At least one solicitation already has slipped through the cracks.

Among the 850,000 past supporters who received the campaign’s initial direct-mail solicitation was Johnny Chien Chuen Chung, the Torrance businessman and former Democratic fund-raiser who pleaded guilty to using conduits to funnel money to Clinton-Gore ’96.

“Dear Friend,” began Gore’s Feb. 9 letter addressed to Chung, “Without your previous support, Bill Clinton and I would not have won our victories for the American people in 1992 and 1996. . . . And to win in 2000, I need you by my side.”

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Times staff writer William C. Rempel in Los Angeles and researcher Tricia Ford in Washington contributed to this story.