Bob Dole's K Street Cronies
Peter H. Stone of The National Journal, May 31, 1996
As fund-raisers go, this one was a tad unusual. On the evening of April 30, some 150 Washington lawyers and lobbyists gathered for a reception at a handsome house on Brandywine Street NW. The affair raked in $102,000 for Robert Dole's presidential campaign.
What made the take different was that many in the crowd had already given the maximum $1,000 to the campaign; but they were asked for- -and by law could give--another $500 for a special fund that covers the campaign's accounting and legal costs. The fund, which may legally grow to about $7 million, is likely to come in handy now that Dole has almost run out of campaign cash months before the August convention.
The hosts for the Lawyers for Dole bash included such prominent Dole backers as campaign treasurer Robert E. Lighthizer; Tom C. Korologos, the president of Timmons & Co. and a longtime confidante of Dole's; and lesser-known lights such as Beverly McKittrick, a lobbyist for Philip Morris Cos. Inc., and Peter J. Ferrara, the general counsel for Americans for Tax Reform, a powerful conservative grass-roots lobbying group.
The party is just one of numerous efforts that Washington influence merchants have undertaken to boost Dole's candidacy-- and it underscores just how much they've linked their fortunes and some of their clients' interests to Dole's political bandwagon.
Indeed, from the start of Dole's run for the Republican nomination, which is now all but guaranteed, Washington lobbyists and lawyers have pitched in on many fronts. During the primary season, lobbyists played a crucial role in lining up endorsements from governors, House Members and other politicians to help Dole. A few have also done surrogate speaking work for him with the news media, while others are close advisers to Dole on policy issues. Other lobbyists are deeply involved in planning for the convention.
Stellar Republican lobbyists such as former South Carolina Gov. Carroll A. Campbell Jr., the president of the American Council of Life Insurance (ACLI), and former Rep. Vin Weber of Minnesota, who runs the Washington office of New York City-based Clark & Weinstock Inc., a consulting and lobbying firm, have worked overtime to aid the Kansas Senator's campaign.
More recently, many trade group executives--some with large interests in Dole's and the party's commitment to less regulation and lower taxes--have agreed to help raise at least $100,000 each after a strong appeal from Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman Haley Barbour. The money will go in partfor an RNC advertising blitz designed to help Dole as well as other Republican candidates.
"For this guy, more than any presidential candidate in recent years, the Washington lobbying crowd has been his crowd," political analyst Kevin Phillips said. "With Dole you get the maximum intensity of Washington lobbyists. I think it's been a big mistake."
Still, lawyers and lobbyists have always been fixtures in GOP and Democratic campaigns. But there can be appearance problems when they wear their candidate advisory hats as well as their fund-raising and lobbying hats.
The Dole campaign maintains that its goal is to attract the best talent available. "We intend to win this race, and a key part of that plan is putting together a world-class team. Our team includes the best and brightest men and women of all walks of life--including [Campbell] a former tax-cutting southern governor," a spokeswoman for the Dole campaign said. "It is another former southern governor, Bill Clinton, whose cadre of cronies deserves a second look."
President Clinton has a large entourage of supporters on K Street as well, including trial lawyers and unions that have provided millions to back his reelection. Despite Clinton's sharp criticism of Washington influence-peddlers four years ago, Washington lawyers and lobbyists were the single biggest group of contributors to Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign. The chairman of Clinton's reelection campaign is Peter S. Knight, a prominent telecommunications lobbyist who's a partner in the Washington law firm of Wunder, Diefenderfer, Cannon & Thelen.
Nonetheless, as Dole tries to jump-start his campaign and promote a fresh vision and image of himself, some of his ties to Washington lobbyists and special interests could prompt controversies and questions.
During his long Senate career, Dole has earned a reputation as a pragmatic moderate skilled in the art of legislative compromise. But he has also displayed the talents of a consummate Washington deal maker who has helped get lucrative tax breaks for some of his leading financial benefactors, including Archer Daniels Midland Co., E & J Gallo Winery Inc. and the smokeless tobacco industry. "These are people who owe Bob Dole and who Bob Dole owes," Ross Baker, a government professor at Rutgers University, said.
But the Dole campaign strongly disagrees. "It is a well- known fact that Sen. Dole's decisions cannot be influenced," a spokeswoman for the Dole campaign said. "They are based on facts and commonsense values and logic. The proof is in his record."
Even some Republican lobbyists say that Dole has erred by tapping lobbyists to play so many parts in his campaign. "He's surrounded by a bunch of people who have powerful clients who have their own agendas," said Richard K. Cook, a former Lockheed Corp. lobbyist who's now a special adviser in Washington to the Minneapolis-based law firm of O'Connor & Hannan. "That's why Dole appears neutralized on certain issues. They push and pull, and what come's out the other end is pulp. It's probably contributed to the blandness of his campaign and the blandness of his message."
Influencing Dole
Notwithstanding Dole's decision to leave the Senate, his drive for the White House is still being aided and abetted by by a number of Washington influence merchants who are variously Dole loyalists, party stalwarts and interested lobbyists. Some lobbyists are playing strategic advisory roles, while others are doing the heavy lifting on the money front.
Indeed, the campaign's money needs have loomed large from the start. To win against his opponents, including Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas, journalist Patrick J. Buchanan and multimillionaire Malcolm S. (Steve) Forbes Jr., Dole's campaign spent heavily and is now almost up against the legal limit of $37 million that it can spend before the convention. Those needs have spurred the campaign to put a premium on help from the party's top fund raisers, a number of whom are lobbyists.
The K Streeters are working closely with top Dole campaign officials, such as Lighthizer,campaign manager Scott Reed and Jo-Anne L. Coe, Dole's longtime fund raiser extraordinaire, who is now working out of the RNC on the party's "soft"-money efforts.
At the top of the list of Dole helpers are Campbell and Weber, two veteran politicians whose recent career moves have turned them into prominent lobbyists. Their primary role has been providing strategic advice, although Campbell has also done some fund raising. Campbell, who has known Dole since 1975, has been a veritable whirlwind of activity on behalf of his candidacy. He lined up endorsements early on, providing strategic advice and playing the role of surrogate for Dole with the news media.
Campbell, who considered running for President before he took over at ACLI last year, has been one of Dole's workhorses and is talked about as a possible vice presidential candidate or a good bet for a high-level post such as Treasury Secretary in a Dole Administration.
His involvement in the campaign has been crucial because he helped Dole win the South Carolina primary, the key contest this year for the Republican nomination, and is being counted on again to help in critical southern states such as Florida and North Carolina.
Starting last year, Campbell began rounding up support among Republican governors, a group he knows well from his tenure as chairman of the National Governors' Association. "In early `95, I called a number of governors and said I was going to support Dole," Campbell said. Most important, Campbell spoke several times to New Hampshire Gov. Steve Merrill, who endorsed Dole shortly before the state's presidential primary.
A former four-term House Member, Campbell escorted a few Members of the South Carolina delegation, including Floyd Spence and Lindsey O. Graham, on their visit to Dole. Graham supported Gramm for President, but switched to Dole.
Campbell has also done media appearances for the campaign. During the primary season, he pushed Dole's positions on a variety of television shows, including CNN's Crossfire, ABC News's This Week With David Brinkley and CNBC's Cal Thomas.
But Campbell's shining moment was in his home state. He took charge of lining up key endorsements and helped bring Gov. David M. Beasley into the Dole fold early in the campaign season. Campbell and Beasley, who's very popular with the Christian Coalition, were instrumental in winning the group's support for Dole. Together, they "delivered the Christian Coalition and took the thunder away" from Buchanan, a former Dole aide said.
Campbell was also heavily involved with 1995 fund-raisers in Columbia and Greenville that raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Dole coffers. Ten days before the big primary, Campbell took a leave of absence from ACLI to stump the state for Dole. During that swing, the instrumental role he played in selling Dole's trade message proved critically important in countering Buchanan's protectionist pitch.
"I put all the facts and figures together," Campbell boasted. "We just shot him [Buchanan] to pieces. We basically showed him the New South."
The Dole campaign is likely to expand the role Campbell plays in the coming months, and some insiders say that he could become one of an elite group of major outside advisers to Dole on the platform and strategy. Campbell is a leading advocate of a tax reform proposal, which Dole is now considering, that would allow individuals to deduct all payroll taxes withheld for social security.
For his part, Campbell said that as the campaign progresses, he plans to be involved in a series of fund-raisers throughout the South. On May 17, for instance, he was a featured guest at a fund- raiser in Boca Raton, Fla., for donors to the Republican Eagles, who each kick in $15,000 yearly to the party's coffers.
But Campbell has also turned to Dole for help. He has lobbied the Majority Leader on one of ACLI's key legislative issue, comprehensive legal reform. Dole endorsed limiting punitive damages, something Campbell and other business lobbyists wanted. But the Senate could not muster the votes to end a filibuster on a comprehensive reform measure, and it was ultimately scaled back to limiting damages in product liability cases only.
Weber's Clout
Weber, who is regarded as one of the hottest Washington lobbyists because of his long-standing and close ties to House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., and others in the Republican leadership, is another prominent former Member in the Dole camp. One of several national co-chairmen for Dole, Weber has devoted a lot of his free time to the campaign. "I work with them on message development and strategic development," Weber said. "I'm going to do anything they ask me to."
In recent weeks, as the campaign has searched hard for issues that Dole can embrace and run with, Weber was an early advocate of an across-the-board tax cut of 15 per cent, one of the key options that Dole has considered making a central part of his campaign message. As the process of evaluating plans has intensified and options have expanded to include the payroll tax deduction plan, Weber shifted to a more neutral stance on which one might be best.
In his home state, Weber was useful last year in pressing Gov. Arne Carlson to get involved in Dole's campaign. And he was instrumental in lining up endorsements from approximately 100 state and local officials--including Sen. Rodney D. Grams, who endorsed Dole early in 1995. "We had a big press conference in St. Paul and announced all the endorsements," Weber said.
Weber said he has not raised money for Dole. But he has been a prominent guest at some fund-raising events. One, at the home of John H. Dasburg, the president and chief executive officer of St. Paul-based Northwest Airlines Inc., raised approximately $250,000.
Looking ahead to the convention, Weber has been named counselor to the Platform Committee on behalf of the Dole campaign. In that post, Weber will basically be riding shotgun for Dole to ensure that nothing inimical to Dole's interests and positions is put in the platform.
Weber may provide other critical assistance to Dole through a post that Gingrich has asked him to assume and he has accepted. The Speaker asked him to work with the Republican governors to coordinate their activities and programs with the party's campaigns this year, a move that denotes the growing links between the Dole campaign, the RNC and the congressional campaigns.
Weber, whose lobbying clients include the American Insurance Association,AT&T Corp., Browning-Ferris Industries Inc. and the Edison Electric Institute, said that he hasn't lobbied Dole for any clients. But Weber said that he would not rule out the possibility of doing so.
Weber has already pitched in elsewhere for one of his clients that has a sizable interest in both tax matters and the outcome of the platform process. Weber was hired late last year by the Coalition to Protect Home Ownership--a powerful group representing the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., the Federal National Mortgage Association, the National Association of Home Builders and the National Association of Realtors. Weber's mission has included lobbying the National Commission on Economic Growth and Tax Reform (chaired by Jack F. Kemp), Congress and Republican convention officials to ensure that any tax reform proposals include preserving the home mortgage interest deduction.
Stephen D. Driesler, the Realtors' top lobbyist, said that Weber has also helped the coalition set up meetings with "selected leaders" on platform issues. "We're communicating with party officials and stressing our desire to be part of the platform process."
Weber said that he would not lobby on the platform any further now that he's been appointed Platform Committee counselor. "I'll not represent any clients before the Platform Committee," he said. Weber also noted that Dole has already endorsed the interest deduction on home mortgages and said that he thought it unlikely anything that specific would get into the platform.
Weber's role in the campaign could grow in the coming months because of the trust that Dole and his top advisers place in him. Besides representing Dole's interests in the platform debate, it's expected that he'll be part of a small group advising on the party's positions as well.
Friends of Dole
Besides former Members who are now K Street lobbyists, several of Dole's longtime lobbyist friends have also played roles in his presidential quest. The most prominent of the K Streeters lending Dole his advice and talents is probably Timmons president Korologos, who has known Dole since the Nixon Administration, when he was a White House lobbyist.
In 1984, Korologos earned Dole's gratitude by working behind the scenes to help Dole defeat Ted Stevens of Alaska and win the job of Senate Majority Leader. "Tom helped Dole, which can be a high risk but can also offer high rewards," a former Dole aide said.
Over the years, Korologos has been known to drop by Dole's office to make telephone calls to his clients, and he has proved a staunch political and legislative ally. "He's a personal confidant," a Senate aide said, and "a lot of people use him to convey messages to Dole."
Korologos, whose clients include Monsanto Co., the National Rifle Association, Northrop Grumman Corp. and Union Pacific Corp., is not shy about acknowledging his ties to Dole. "He's my friend," he said. "We talk about everything," including clients' needs.
This year, Korologos, whose ties to Dole have earned him the moniker "the 101st Senator," has been tapped to play a liaison role with Congress on the party platform. "It's the care and feeding of Senators," Korologos quipped.
A successful fund raiser, Korologos has brought in tens of thousands of dollars to the campaign, according to lobbyists who know him. Korologos says that he's now working with the RNC's Victory 96 program to corral soft money from corporations that will allow the party over the next few months to air its message ads, which are increasingly important to Dole's prospects. Korologos was one of several lobbyists who gave $1,000 to Dole's Better America Foundation--as did Bryce L. Harlow, one of his partners. The foundation, set up in 1993, was a Republican think tank that Dole established as he was gearing up to launch his campaign. Dole closed it in June 1995 after Democrats and the press raised questions about whether it was operating independently of his presidential campaign and might be skirting campaign finance laws.
Besides fund raising, Korologos went to New Hampshire before the primary there and did some spade work for the campaign by organizing Greek-Americans for Dole. He set up a similar group in South Carolina.
Korologos also traveled with Dole in California before that state's primary. On that trip, in an effort to garner support from California's huge defense industry, Dole enthusiastically endorsed a Pentagon purchase of 20 more B-2 stealth bombers from Northrop Grumman at a cost of approximately $30 billion.
Since the demise of the Soviet Union, the bombers have been controversial because many defense analysts--and the Clinton Defense Department--have argued that additional planes are unnecessary for the nation's defense. To preempt Dole, a longtime backer of the B-2, the White House shifted its stance somewhat before the primary by supporting an additional $493 million in spending to refurbish one of the bombers.
Korologos said he didn't lobby Dole on the bombers during the trip, but boasted that "I lobby him everyday about expanding the B-2 program."
But some observers think that it was an error to have Korologos traveling with Dole at the time of the endorsement. "If he's sitting there and talking to Dole about other things, it still has the appearance of a conflict of interest," said James Thurber, a professor of government at the American University.
Northrop Grumman has also been a generous supporter of Dole's interests, having given $100,000 to the Better America Foundation.
Other veteran K Street lobbyists have also done double duty on Capitol Hill and on the fund-raising circuit for the Dole campaign. For instance, two of Washington's leading Republican lobbyists, William H. Hecht of Hecht, Spencer & Associates and Nicholas E. Calio, a partner in the Washington law firm of O'Brien Calio, worked the House to round up a number of endorsements for Dole. One of their priorities in 1995 was to garner the support of House Republican Conference chairman John Boehner of Ohio. Boehner endorsed Dole before the first primaries. "I think it was very important," Hecht said. "It was helpful and came at a crucial time."
After Boehner announced his support for Dole, he and Rep. Gerald B.H. Solomon of New York--with the assistance of Calio and Hecht- -worked to get as many other House Members as possible to endorse the Kansas Senator. Before the New Hampshire primary, they had lined up endorsements from approximately 100 Members.
Hecht has also been active as a Dole fund raiser. He estimates that he's raised about $40,000-$50,000 from clients and friends. "I've talked to all my clients," Hecht boasted, pointing out that a few of them--Brown & Williamson, MCI Corp. and Tampa Electric Co.--have contributed generously to Dole.
"Tampa Electric raised some stuff from their executives and sent it along," he said. And when the Dole campaign this spring approached its spending limits and started looking increasingly to the RNC for help, Hecht asked the utility to pitch in with soft money at a May 20 fund-raiser in Tampa. "The business community likes Bob Dole, so it isn't difficult to convince people to give."
Another lobbyist who's a loyal Dole supporter is Wayne L. Berman, an assistant Commerce secretary during the Bush Administration who now runs Berman Enterprises Inc., a Washington-based lobbying and international consulting firm. Berman's star has risen fast in the past two years because of his herculean fund-raising efforts. He raised about $900,000 for the GOP at an RNC gala last year. A New Yorker who's close to Sen. Alfonse M. D'Amato, R-N.Y., the chairman of the Dole campaign's national steering committee, Berman has been working especially hard outside of Washington for Dole. Berman, who has raised a total of about $300,000 in Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami and New York City, is helping out with a June 24 fund-raiser in New York that is expected to net about $1 million for the RNC's soft-money program.
At the behest of campaign manager Reed, Berman has worked as an informal adviser to Members of Congress who needed to be kept abreast of campaign developments or wanted to find out what was happening with certain issues.
Berman's clients include some of the GOP's biggest soft- money donors such as American International Group, Philip Morris and Union Pacific, all of which he does international consulting for. He also lobbies for Flo-Sun Corp., the giant sugar company whose chairman, Pepe Fanjul, held a fund-raiser in Florida in March for Dole and is one of the party's Team 100, whose members raise $100, 000 each in soft money. Berman said he hasn't lobbied Dole or his staff on the sugar price supports that Flo-Sun fought successfully to keep this year. Instead, Berman added, he focused most of his lobbying efforts on the House side. A few of his clients will probably be sponsoring events at the Republican convention in San Diego, and Berman went out to scout some potential sites with them in late May.
To run the entire convention, the Dole campaign in April tapped Paul J. Manafort, who has worked in key slots at other GOP conventions and is a founding partner of DMS Inc. an Alexandria (Va.)-based lobbying and merchant banking firm.
"We'll use a lot of people who've been active in previous conventions, " he said. "The key to success at conventions is not to recreate the wheel. These are people I euphemistically call $100,000 guys doing $5,000 jobs." One of those "guys" is his partner, Richard H. Davis, who is doing the day-to-day, nuts-and-bolts planning of the convention for Manafort.
Part of Manafort's job also involves policy questions, and for those, he's relying on a number of Hill experts. "We're creating a network on the Hill that we can tap at the convention," he said. "We're relying on policy types on the Hill to help us on policy questions."
Manafort has also been heavily involved in other parts of the campaign. He was in charge of Dole's efforts in the Florida straw poll. His firm lobbies for G Tech, a large Rhode Island maker of equipment for national, state and local lotteries.
Money Talks
The RNC has recently enlisted more outside lobbyists to help solve the Dole campaign's financial woes. Some three-dozen trade group leaders met on May 9 to hear Barbour make his plea for each of them to sign up to raise $100,000 this year. Barbour, who drew a number of positive responses, suggested that trade group leaders could raise hard dollars for the Presidential Trust, a campaign fund that can spend up to $12 million for the party nominee, or soft money, which can go toward the party's thematic ad blitz that is gearing up.
Barbour's appeal stressed the $35 million that unions would be spending to defeat Republicans this fall. A group of lobbyists who have been close to the Dole campaign and were very receptive to the RNC appeal came from the construction industry. Another fund raiser for Dole this year has been Thorne R. Auchter, an Occupational Safety and Health Administration chief during the Reagan Administration. Auchter, who has long been a leader in deregulatory efforts and recently became the top lobbyist for the Associated General Contractors,has been quite active on the fund-raising front, according to lobbyists. Auchter's wife, Barbara, also works for Coe's finance team.
Other trade association leaders who responded to Barbour's call for cash included Craig S. Brightup, the top lobbyist for the National Roofing Contractors Association, and Charlotte W. Herbert, the chief lobbyist for the Associated Builders and Contractors.
Several of the trade group leaders had big stakes in a sweeping deregulatory bill that Dole introduced last year that went further than a House measure in setting tough new cost- benefit standards and giving business the right to legally challenge both new and old regulations in court. A filibuster blocked the bill.
The RNC money machine has already tapped some special interests with long-standing ties to Dole and a keen interest in defeating Clinton. In fact, the party last year received record sums from the tobacco industry, which has long supported Dole and is increasingly giving to the GOP because of its antipathy for the Clinton Administration's proposal to regulate tobacco as a drug. Dole strongly opposes the idea and has told drug industry lobbyists privately that if he's elected he would fire FDA commissioner David A. Kessler.
Last year, the tobacco industry gave a record $2.4 million in soft money to the GOP's party committees. Tobacco lobbyists raising money for Dole include Robert J. Dotchin, a consultant with the Advocacy Group, a Washington lobbying firm that represents UST Inc., the leading maker of smokeless tobacco.
Dole's support for the smokeless tobacco industry includes his sponsorship of a 1986 amendment that set a tax on chewing tobacco at one-eighth the level of cigarettes, which critics say has saved UST, the nation's biggest maker of chewing tobacco, some $250 million since it was enacted.
Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and UST also gave a total of $250,000 to Dole's Better America Foundation, about 5 per cent of its total receipts of $4.9 million. Dole, who has long been known to have a penchant for using corporate jets for campaign travel, has flown on UST jets 26 times since 1993, according to public records.
Just how much impact his ties to lobbyists and special- interest money will have on Dole's presidential prospects is unclear, in part because the Clinton Administration also has a record of doing favors for lobbyists and contributors. After all, Clinton vetoed a bill backed by many moderate Democrats such as Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., that would have restricted securities fraud suits, after dining at the White House with some of his biggest financial supporters from the trial lawyers community. Just days after Clinton announced his intention to veto a product liability bill, the Association of Trial Lawyers of America donated $100,000 in soft money to the Democratic National Committee. GOP critics noted that Clinton vetoed a school choice program in Washington that was strongly opposed by the National Education Association, another of the Democratic Party's major contributors.
"Both of the major candidates are up to their ears in well-heeled lobbyists," said Charles Lewis, the director of the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington nonprofit group that monitors ethics- in-government issues.
Still, other analysts think that Dole's heavy reliance on lobbyists and special-interest money could hurt his prospects in the fall, given voters' concerns with the way Washington works. They note that even though Clinton has been adept at shifting his stances to accommodate key financial contributors, Dole's track record with lobbyists may pose more problems.
"I think this is something that Dole should be avoiding, especially since he's already seen as a Washington insider," said Anthony Corrado, a government professor at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, who has worked on past Democratic presidential campaigns. "There are clearly appearance problems even if there's no quid pro quo."
Other analysts also see more risks for the Dole campaign. "You wonder how Clinton the Washington game player could look good, and the answer is you get a chance to run against Dole the Washington insider," author Phillips said. "You can't represent the Perot vote if your campaign is a seething swarm of lobbyists. The stakes are higher now because he's trying to be a semi- outsider."
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