Senate’s Checks and Balancing Acts

Los Angeles gay activist and Democratic fund-raiser David Mixner has given Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.) a firm message: Kerrey, whose dislike for the president is well known, may have a safe Senate seat in Nebraska, but in the unlikely event that he doesn’t support Clinton in the impeachment battle, the senator’s prospects for a presidential bid don’t look real good.

“Political donors, grass-roots, unions and special-interest groups have made it clear there would not be much future for someone like that in their plans,” Mixner says. “This is almost kind of a civil war . . . and [senators] are under no illusions about the impact this could have on their future.”

On the other side of the impeachment battle, the Political Club for Growth is holding the feet of Republican Sen. Spencer Abraham of Michigan to the fire. Abraham is expected to support the GOP, but he has angered many supporters because he has suspended his outspoken criticism of Clinton while the Senate trial is still going on. His sudden silence has some members of the Political Club for Growth furious, says Lisa Shiffren Mann, the group’s president.

“The club has supported him down the line, and we’re disappointed in Spence. We’re going to call him in and yell at him,” Shiffren Mann says. “He’s being a little squishy . . . and if you can’t be counted on this, then what are you waiting for?”

For the second week in a row, senators have sat in judgment at their burnished mahogany desks for roughly six hours a day, cut off from the clamor of interest groups, lobbyists or political allies. But away from the Senate floor, the movers and shakers of all political stripes are taking the senators’ pulses, bending their ears and, yes, twisting their arms.

As the examples of Kerrey and Abraham suggest, activist groups are leaving nothing to chance even in cases where it appears clear how a certain senator will vote.

Some of the largest and most active--the anti-impeachment People for the American Way and the pro-impeachment Conservative Caucus--are using rallies and phone banks and mailings to mobilize armies of citizens to make their points with senators.

But political donors have special access, in well-worn back-channels, to weigh in with senators themselves.

Sometimes, because the subject is impeachment, they are subtle. Sometimes they are not.

“If one of these senators goes the wrong way on this, then comes to Los Angeles to raise money, it’s going to be very chilly,” says a second Democratic fund-raiser based in the Southland. “The donor base of the Democratic Party is actively delivering that message.”

Gary Bauer, the conservative activist whose Campaign for Working Families dispersed $7 million in the last campaign cycle, was only slightly more guarded. In supporting several Senate candidates, “we thought they were a particular kind of people.” If they vote to shorten the impeachment proceedings or acquit the president, he adds, “it would be terribly disappointing.”

While Bauer called it inappropriate to “browbeat or politically threaten a senator,” he makes sure that those whom he has supported in the past know how strongly he feels about impeachment. On every issue debated so far--from whether to call witnesses to whether perjury is an impeachable offense--Bauer alerts senators to his views in a flurry of faxes to Capitol Hill.

Liberal interest groups and Democratic Party faithful appear unified in their impeachment views and unabashed about expressing them. To this broad group, a vote to remove Clinton from office would be an overreaction and a repudiation of the electorate’s will. While many assert they are repelled by Clinton’s behavior, few Democratic activists have wavered from this view.

Real estate investor Terry Bean, an active Democratic fund-raiser from the Portland, Ore., area, has sought out several senators to argue that, while Clinton’s behavior was objectionable, his removal from office would be a seriously disproportionate measure.

“I don’t make threats. I state my positions,” Bean says. But, he adds, if a Democratic senator voted for conviction, “which I do not expect at all, I certainly would be less motivated to raise money” for him or her. “And I think they’d have a lot of trouble in a primary.”

Reflecting such certainty, the Democratic National Committee is playing an active role in coordinating anti-impeachment campaigns in about a dozen states that are represented by Republican senators but which voted for Clinton in the last election. Through its Democratic Business Council, the DNC is helping friendly businesses focus their message on senators whose votes are uncertain.

“We’re very mindful of the electoral possibilities this whole situation creates,” says Melissa Ratcliff of the DNC. “From a purely political point of view, the longer the Republicans drag this trial out, the better it is for our electoral process. As long as that’s happening, we’re going to get as many political points out of it as we can.”

Ironically, perhaps, that political analysis is shared by some GOP members, and it has muted the Republican message. Many moderate and business-oriented Republicans--among them the party’s biggest campaign contributors--are expressing concern that the GOP’s legal pursuit of Clinton will hurt the party with voters. The impeachment proceedings may at this point become something the Republican Party needs to see through, these Republicans believe. But the quicker it can be resolved, in their view, the better.

This ambivalence is decidedly absent, however, among the Republican Party’s wing of social conservatives. Adherents insist without apology that Clinton should be convicted and removed from office. And the longer the trial lasts, most believe, the more likely those outcomes become.

These may be small donors, say political analysts, but they number in the tens of thousands. They are currently the most vocal members of the Republican Party and arguably the party’s most organizationally active. And they are not shy about expressing their views.

Among this group, “there’s virtual unanimity that . . . it is the duty of the Senate to convict” the president, says Howard Phillips, chairman of the Conservative Caucus and coordinator of an ad hoc group calling itself the “Clinton Conviction Campaign.” “And they act on it--a lot.”

With a mailing list of 100,000 and a phone bank that is calling about 500 conservative activists a day, Phillips’ Vienna, Va.-based group has orchestrated torrents of letters and phone calls to senators’ offices.

“Believe me, 500 calls into one congressional district or state can get attention,” says Phillips. While other activists may prefer to threaten or cajole their senator personally, Phillips contends that stirring up a nest of angry hornets has much more effect.

“I’m of the view that grass-roots contact is much more influential than anything witty, logical or charming that any one of us might say,” Phillips says.

For the Republican Party and for GOP senators sitting in judgment of Clinton, the dueling messages of these groups have created a powerful whipsaw effect.

“The base is conflicted,” says one Republican Party aide to a senator facing a reelection campaign in 2000. “And we are getting equally hammered by both sides.”

In the end, Republican senators appear to be under greater pressure from small political contributors than from big contributors like David Bardes, a member of the Republican Party’s most active and generous financial backers, called the Eagles.

“They’re getting a lot of angry mail from people saying, ‘I’ll never give again,’ ” Phillips says. “I think a Republican who voted to acquit would have a lot of explaining to do.”

But for Bardes and other big name Republican contributors, impeachment is not that kind of litmus test.

While a firm believer that Clinton should be removed from office, Bardes, a tax planning consultant from Vero Beach, Fla., says he will write checks to the Republican Party regardless of the outcome of the impeachment proceedings. And he adds he would be willing to contribute to the campaign of a Republican who, having heard all the evidence, votes to acquit.

“I would question his judgment, but I would have confidence there are strong cogent reasons why he did what he did.”