|
Allies Want Reform (and Money)
By CARL HULSE and ANNE E. KORNBLUT
Published: March 8, 2005
WASHINGTON, March 7 - In a small office a few miles from Capitol Hill, a handful of top advisers to Senator John McCain run a quiet campaign. They promote his crusade against special interest money in politics. They send out news releases promoting his initiatives. And they raise money - hundreds of thousands of dollars, tapping some McCain backers for more than $50,000 each.
This may look like the headquarters of a nascent McCain presidential bid in 2008. But instead, it is the Reform Institute, a nonprofit organization devoted to overhauling campaign finance laws and one whose work has the added benefit of keeping the senator in the spotlight.
The institute has drawn little notice, but it offers a telling glimpse into how Mr. McCain operates. In the four years since its creation, it has accelerated its fund-raising, collecting about $1.3 million last year, double what it raised in 2003, a sizable sum for a group that exists to curb the influence of money in politics.
Mr. McCain, the institute's most prominent spokesman, defended the large donations as a necessary part of advocacy work, and drew a distinction between the progressive agenda of the Reform Institute and political efforts to which campaign finance laws apply. The institute is different, he said, "because it is nonpartisan and issue-oriented."
"You have to have some sort of funding if you want to do things," Mr. McCain said. The senator, who has championed limits on large contributions for candidates and organizations, is to testify Tuesday on his plan to limit unregulated advocacy groups that spent millions of dollars on advertising in the 2004 campaign.
But some campaign finance experts say that Mr. McCain is moving dangerously close to violating his own principles and that as a chief advocate of clean election rules he should make certain he is above criticism.
"It's screaming hypocrisy, isn't it?" said Roy Schotland, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and a critic of Mr. McCain's campaign finance legislation. "What he's doing is what he and his side are always screaming about, violating at least the spirit of the campaign finance laws."
As chairman of the Reform Institute's advisory committee, Mr. McCain is often praised in its news releases and featured in its fund-raising letters, a useful boost for any potential presidential candidate. But Mr. McCain and others associated with the organization say its rapid growth is unrelated to his political ambitions. If anything, they say, the senator's work on campaign finance limits could hurt him three years from now among conservatives and party insiders who are wary of the issue and play an outsize role in the primary system.
"The issues are sort of counterproductive to John McCain becoming president," said Rick Davis, president of the institute and the manager of Mr. McCain's 2000 presidential campaign. Norman J. Ornstein, a Congressional expert at the American Enterprise Institute and a member of the advisory board, said that it was overstating the case to portray the institute as an extension of Mr. McCain's personal political goals and that he could succeed without it.
"The man is a rock star," Mr. Ornstein said. "He is doing it for the right reasons."
Mr. McCain rode to victory in the 2000 New Hampshire primary partly by promising to take special interest money out of campaigns, showing the potency of the issue. And the Reform Institute has taken on some specific initiatives, like pushing for open primaries, that could assist him with voters who cross party lines.
At the same time, the institute could offer Mr. McCain some structural support, because a game of musical chairs in the Senate has deprived him of the chairmanship of the Commerce Committee, his previous Congressional power center, and left him without a major legislative platform for the next two years.
Mr. McCain's allies say that is no hindrance to a politician of his stature. They say his national fame has allowed him to carve out a leading role on an assortment of issues including advocating a national boxing commission, deploring steroid use in professional sports and promoting a movie based on his biography.
The Reform Institute, then, is just one of his extracurricular activities, part of what Thomas E. Mann of the Brookings Institution described as McCain Enterprises.
"Almost every major politician, and some not so major, who aspire to greater influence tend to build infrastructure," said Mr. Mann, a Congressional scholar who is also on the Reform Institute advisory board.
Nor is Mr. McCain the only prominent lawmaker to connect his political and policy goals to nonprofit institutions. Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader and another potential presidential candidate, last year created World of Hope, a charity that collects and disburses contributions to international and domestic AIDS and relief groups. Other lawmakers have started similar foundations, said Rick Cohen, executive director of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.
Advertisement
The trouble is not the mission of such nonprofit groups or the motivations of their founders, Mr. Cohen said. The problem, he said, lies in the close and unregulated relationship between the nonprofit groups and politicians.
"The nominal function of the Reform Institute is quite positive," Mr. Cohen said. "But it is hard to believe there are not some donors on the public list of donors less because they support the political reform concerns and more because they want their names to be seen showing their support."
Other McCain critics see another purpose for the institute: keeping some of the senator's advisers busy in the months before any formal presidential campaign operation would be established. According to the institute's public tax records, Mr. Davis, its president, received a $110,000 consulting fee from the group in 2003. Mr. Davis said he was making the same amount this year.
Donors said the institute had become more aggressive in recent months in its push for money. Though it is not required to do so, the institute lists all its donors on its Web site. This year, the organization began breaking them down by ranges of contributions, which showed the vast majority of its hundreds of contributors gave $500 or less. About 40 gave between $500 and $5,000, 8 gave up to $50,000 and 12 contributed above that level.
One donation in that category came from an elected Republican official who insisted on remaining anonymous, even to Mr. McCain, Mr. Davis said. Some donors, though, are communications industry giants who had business before the Commerce Committee when Mr. McCain was its chairman. Echosphere, a communications company started by Charles Ergen, a founder of EchoStar Communications and the DISH Network, gave $50,000 or more to the institute. So did CSC Holdings, a subsidiary of the Cablevisions Systems Corporation, headed by Charles F. Dolan, and the Chartwell Foundation, the charitable group funded by A. Jerrold Perenchio, the Univision billionaire.
Mr. Davis and Mr. McCain, who is not currently raising money for his own political purposes, said they saw no problem in accepting donations of that magnitude from foundations associated with people and companies with interests on Capitol Hill.
"We don't do campaign work," said Mr. Davis, who said contributors typically were zealous about political reforms. "You are buying campaign reform. You sort of have to already be drinking the Kool-Aid."
______________________________
From yesterday's AP Wire
roup Tied to McCain Got Cable Donation
1 hour, 21 minutes ago
Politics - AP
By SHARON THEIMER, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - A senator promotes a government policy sought by a corporation while a tax-exempt group closely tied to him solicits and gets $200,000 from the same company.
Campaign finance watchdogs say that creates the appearance of a conflict of interest. To their surprise, the senator is Arizona Republican John McCain, whom they usually praise for advocating campaign finance restrictions.
McCain's help to Cablevision Systems Corp. included letting its CEO testify before his Senate committee, writing a letter of support to the Federal Communication Commission and asking other cable companies to support so-called a la carte pricing.
McCain had expressed interest in exploring the a la carte option for years before Cablevision advocated it but did not take a formal position with regulators until after the company's first donation.
Most of the cable industry opposes the flexible pricing plan, which would allow customers to pick the channels they want rather than buy fixed-price packages. McCain, Cablevision and other supporters say it would lower prices for consumers, but congressional and private studies conclude it could make cable more expensive.
The nation's eighth largest cable provider, Cablevision serves 3 million customers in the New York area.
McCain's assistance in 2003 and 2004 was sandwiched around two donations of $100,000 each from Cablevision to The Reform Institute, a tax-exempt group that touts McCain's views and has showcased him at events since his unsuccessful 2000 presidential campaign.
The group also pays McCain's chief political adviser, Rick Davis, $110,000 a year. Cablevision's donations accounted for 15 percent of the institute's fund-raising in 2003, tax records show.
McCain said he saw nothing wrong with the group's raising money from a company whose issue he championed because the donations didn't go to his re-election campaign. He said — and documents provided by his office show — he expressed interest in a la carte pricing since at least 1998, well before Cablevision advocated it.
"If it was a PAC (political action committee) or if it was somehow connected to any campaign of mine, I would say to you, that's a legitimate appearance of conflict of interest. But it's not," McCain told The Associated Press.
"There's not a conflict of interest when you're involved in an organization that is nonpartisan, nonprofit, nonpolitical."
Specialists on political ethics said they didn't see any distinction.
"I think there is an appearance issue any time you have a company or an interest giving large donations to any organization associated with a member (of Congress)," said Larry Noble, the former chief lawyer for federal election enforcement who now heads the Center for Responsive Politics.
Kent Cooper, head of the Political Money Line that tracks political donations, agreed.
"Senator McCain derives a clear benefit by using The Reform Institute to help the debate on campaign finance reform. His McCain-Feingold bill helped break the connection between members of Congress and large contributions. Here is an example of a large contribution going to the foundation connected with a member of Congress. I don't see a difference," Cooper said.
Davis, who ran McCain's 2000 presidential campaign, said he went to New York and personally asked for the donation from Cablevision chief Charles Dolan after another donor said he might give. The solicitation occurred one week after Dolan testified before McCain's Senate Commerce Committee in May 2003 in favor of a la carte pricing. The company made its first $100,000 donation in July 2003.
The senator then wrote to the Federal Communications Commission (news - web sites) chairman advocating Cablevision's position in May 2004. McCain also wrote to other cable companies, urging them to support a la carte pricing.
Cablevision gave a second $100,000 donation in August 2004. Twelve days later, McCain wrote Dolan about the pricing issue, urging him to "feel free to contact me to discuss these issues further."
McCain said he was involved in the cable pricing issue as far back as 1997, well before Cablevision pushed a la carte pricing.
"I have been fighting the cable companies for years on the issue of cable rates, and I , after numerous hearings, came to the conclusion that we should not force people to pay for programs that they don't want to see."
McCain continued pushing the FCC (news - web sites) to adopt the policy even after the Government Accountability Office, Congress' auditing arm, concluded such a system might produce higher prices.
McCain, who requested the study, said he considered its methodology flawed because the audit looked at al la carte pricing in isolation rather than as one of several consumer options.
Craig Moffett, a cable analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York, said his firm studied a la carte pricing and concluded it could hurt customers.
"I don't know why he remains so stubbornly wedded to the idea," Moffett said of McCain. "I just think it sounds very populist, and there's nothing more appealing than saying, 'I'm going to lower your cable bills' as a way to make voters happy."
Consumers Union, however, shares McCain's view that a la carte pricing would help consumers.
In his interview with AP, McCain also said he considers himself merely an adviser to The Reform Institute.
Davis acknowledged the institute often uses the senator's name in press releases and fund-raising letters and includes him at press conferences because McCain attracts more coverage.
But he said McCain had nothing to do with soliciting Cablevision's money. "I think John McCain avoids the appearance of impropriety with not being involved in any way with the solicitation of any of these funds," Davis said.
Cablevision said it didn't believe its donations influenced McCain.
"Our experience has been that Senator McCain makes up his own mind on every issue," Cablevision spokesman Charlie Schueler said. "Over the years, he has disagreed with some of our positions, agreed with others, and been indifferent to most."
McCain and four other senators were criticized in the early 1990s for taking donations from and providing assistance to failed savings and loan executive Charles Keating.
After that, McCain began championing an end to large election campaign donations from corporations, unions and wealthy people. In November 2002, Congress passed a campaign finance law bearing his name.
_____________________________________
_________________
Throughout his life, from childhood until death, he was beset by severe swings of mood. His depressions frequently encouraged, and were exacerbated by, his various vices. His character mixed a superficial Enlightenment sensibility for reason and taste with a genuine and somewhat Romantic love of the sublime and a propensity for occasionally puerile whimsy.
harry Wrote: I understand that you, of all people, know this crisis and, in your own way, are working to address it. You, the madras-pantsed julip-sipping Southern cracker and me, the oldman hippie California fruit cake are brothers in the struggle to save our country.
FT Wrote: LooGAR (the straw that stirs the drink)
|
