Bush, Once a Fund-Raising Scold, Now Stars at GOP Donor Event

Four months after moving into the White House, propelled by a campaign that hammered away at the Democrats’ fund-raising practices, President Bush made his debut Tuesday night as the star attraction at the Republicans’ own big-donor bash.

It is not a role he seems to relish--but he doesn’t need to. The money, say the money men, seems to come in anyway.

Individual donors paid a minimum of $1,500 a person and corporate contributors paid at least $2,000 each to attend the dinner, donations that are legal under current campaign law.

Party officials, who had set a $15-million goal for the event, said it earned $23.9 million--a record for Republican fund-raisers. However, that amount fell short of the $26 million that a Bill Clinton-led fund-raising barbecue picked up for the Democrats last year.

Bush is “the easiest guy I have ever had to raise money for,” said Fred Meyer, a Texas Republican whose political path has intersected Bush’s throughout the last decade. Never mind that fund-raising would easily top a list of Bush’s least-favored activities, he added.

On Monday night, Dick Cheney invited 400 top Republican contributors, most of whom have given or pledged at least $100,000 to Republican causes, to a lawn party on the grounds of the vice president’s mansion at the Naval Observatory.

All of which led Washington’s best-known watchdogs of political finance to declare that the Republicans were driving down the same road that Clinton and Al Gore traveled when they invented new ways of luring campaign cash. They hosted coffees in the White House and invited donors to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom. The vice president made calls from his office.

Is the Cheney event in the same league?

“It’s getting closer to the line than anything else,” Meyer said. “But it’s not the Lincoln Bedroom for big contributors.”

Clinton’s opening the Lincoln Bedroom in the White House to overnight guests--in many cases those who contributed heavily to Democratic Party causes--became the gold standard of fund-raising events in the 1990s.

As attention focused Tuesday on Bush’s black-tie bash at the D.C. Armory, the president’s defenders took umbrage at any suggestion of similarity between the two administrations’ fund-raising work.

“The difference is day and night, and I don’t think there is any comparison that is fair,” said White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer.

When the Democrats held special events for contributors, they called the programs “donor maintenance” to reward those who had helped fund their campaigns.

The Republicans, Fleischer said, opened the vice president’s grounds to members of the party’s national committee and the top donors “to say thank you for all their efforts to elect officials across the country who support the Republican vision and President Bush’s agenda.”

Asked where Cheney got the list of those he invited, Fleischer said: “From the RNC,” the Republican National Committee.

What about the access the donors are being given, during their Washington visit, to Cabinet officials, other administration policy makers and Republicans in Congress?

“People meet with the president all the time, some of whom may be contributors, others of whom are not contributors, and many of whom do not support him and will not support him,” the White House spokesman said.

Tuesday night, those who met with Bush--over a menu that included vegetable Napoleon, horseradish-crusted tenderloin and key lime pie--were supporters.

Speaking before the meal began, Bush spent 18 minutes outlining his agenda, setting out a policy plan that echoed his campaign speeches down to his promise to change the tone in the nation’s capital.

The president noted that a year ago when he spoke at the same dinner, he traveled halfway across the country during the presidential campaign to get there. Thanking the more than 2,000 donors in the massive armory, Bush noted that his travel time Tuesday “was only five minutes.”

Among the corporate underwriters were AT&T;, Philip Morris and Bristol-Myers Squibb, which contributed more than $19.7 million during the most recent election cycle--most of it to Republicans seeking federal office and to their party, said the Center for Responsive Politics, a group that studies campaign finance issues.

To supporters such as Meyer, Bush is a natural fund-raiser, someone who can encourage likely supporters to contribute to his cause without ever actually asking for a donation. “I’ve never seen anyone who is better at that,” Meyer said.

Those skills and Fleischer’s assessments notwithstanding, critics saw little difference worth noting between the current administration’s fund-raising effort and that of the previous administration.

“This is business as usual,” said Scott Harshbarger, president of the public interest lobbying group Common Cause.