Dollars by the Barrel

The Buying of The President, by Charles Lewis and The Center for Public Integrity. Avon Books, 271 pp. $10.

What contributor has given the most money to U.S. Senator Bob Dole since he expressed an interest in becoming president of the United States?

The surprising answer to that question (read on, it's coming eventually) says a lot about the contemporary state of money in politics. That the answer comes from a Washington, D.C., research center says a lot about the coverage of money in politics by journalists.

Too many campaign finance stories ill serve their audiences. At one extreme, the stories are dry recitations of statistics: Politician X raised $2 million during the past year and spent $1.8 million of it, while her opponent raised $800,000 and spent $750,000. That type of story has traditionally failed to explain why one candidate outraised and outspent the other, the strategy behind the spending, who contributed, and what those contributors expected in return.

At the other extreme, stories suggest venal and maybe illegal activity: Politician Q received a $5,000 contribution from an out-of-state tobacco company, then several months later voted to increase subsidies to tobacco growers. Those stories suggest cause-and-effect -- contribution A led to vote B -- without exploring the possibility that the contribution came only after the politician had favored such subsidies year after year.

A few journalists and academics have written excellent books before now about money in politics, going back to 1932 when Louise Overacker published Money in Elections. In 1983, Elizabeth Drew, while writing for The New Yorker, turned her knowledge of campaign finance into Politics and Money. Then came Brooks Jackson, currently with CNN, with his 1988 book Honest Graft. Organizations devoted to educating the world about campaign finance include Common Cause, the Center for Responsive Politics through the outreach of its National Library on Money and Politics and its primer Follow the Money Handbook, as well as the Federal Election Commission, a federal agency blessed with Kent Cooper, possibly the most helpful public-affairs bureaucrat in the history of the republic.

But despite such resources, lots of coverage is wrongheaded, or downright wrong. The Buying of the President, put together by Charles Lewis, a former producer for 60 Minutes, and the staff at his Center for Public Integrity, ought to change that.

Although it focuses on the 1996 contenders for the White House, almost every page contains a valuable lesson for coverage of any politician (updates are available on the center's Internet Web site, http://www. essential.org/cpi). Perhaps the overarching lesson: the most shocking stories are not found in the realm of illegal behavior, but rather in what's legal.

Which brings us back to the Dole question posed earlier. At the time the center completed its research, Dole's number-one patron was the Ernest & Julio Gallo Winery of Modesto, California. Total giving to his campaign, including his political action committee: $381,000. Total giving to two Dole-sponsored foundations technically separate from his campaign apparatus: at least $890,000. Grand total: well over $1 million. Surprised? I was.

The Gallo ranking raises obvious questions. Why would a California winery care so much about a senator from Kansas who has spent most of his political career in the legislative minority party? The center's staff found some answers. Let's take just one example of what the Gallo family wanted as a return on its investment in Dole. It involves a tax matter innocuously labeled a generation-skipping transfer:

"By its name, no one could really tell that it was legislation tailor-made for two California gentlemen getting on in years who just happened to produce one out of every three bottles of wine purchased in the United States. As part of the 1986 tax reform bill this 'transfer' tax measure -- which eventually became known as the Gallo Amendment -- would save . . . $104 million in inheritance taxes when . . . Ernest and Julio Gallo died and their heirs received the money.

"Dole, who was then Senate majority leader, a senior member of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee and a member of the House-Senate conference committee on the 1986 tax bill, received $20,000 in one day from the Gallo family . . . . With the help of others, the provision passed."

The Gallo Amendment illustrates why what's legal is often a good story. Some other points raised by Lewis and his researchers:

* Out-of-state constituents, far from Kansas, pay Dole enough so that he often is busy tending to their narrow interests, leaving him less time for the working men and women in Wichita or for farmers in their wheat fields. Of Dole's top ten career patrons, only one is based in Kansas. The Center for Public Integrity documents Dole's attention not only to the Gallo Amendment, but also to defending the Market Promotion Program, an agricultural subsidy favored by the Gallos; settling a dispute between the Gallos and the U.S. Treasury Department over champagne labeling; and other disturbing examples involving other out-of-state career patrons. Any time a journalist notices a contribution from somebody ineligible to vote for the recipient, it is legitimate to ask what the contributor expects as a return on the investment.

* The Gallos have channeled the bulk of their contributions to the Dole Foundation and Dole's Better America Foundation, entities outside the official campaign apparatus. Donations to such foundations, which are sometimes little more than slush funds for the candidate's personal use, are more difficult for journalists -- and voters -- to uncover. That is precisely why so many politicians establish organizations that fall outside the disclosure laws. It is up to journalists to ferret out such organizations by checking state incorporation repositories, not-for-profit income tax returns filed with the Internal Revenue Service, and relevant lawsuits.

* Dole made promises to contributors that went unheard by the general public. To the Gallos, for example, he vowed to oppose financing health care reform through higher taxes on alcoholic beverages; publicly, however, he refused to discount the idea of higher taxes on alcohol. Journalists need to dig out information on the normally invisible campaign by asking questions about what goes on behind closed doors.

* The Gallos bundle contributions from family members, winery employees, lawyers, lobbyists, and other people under their sway; the bundling enables them to circumvent legislated limits on individuals. The best journalists understand the loopholes as well as they understand the law.

* The Gallos have made contributions year after year, decade after decade. Because most journalists look at just one year or election cycle when writing about incumbents, the large accumulations escape notice.

* The Gallos have made so-called "soft-money" contributions to political parties and other organizations that eventually benefited Dole, and on which there are no limits. Because few journalists outside Washington, D.C., pay attention to party organizations, they often miss the soft-money contributions.

* The Gallos have donated money to other candidates of both major political parties. The family is listed among the top ten career patrons of Bill Clinton ($50,000) and Pete Wilson ($314,671), as well as Dole. This is known as hedging your bets.

The dominance of the rich in political campaigns is pervasive, going beyond the race for the White House. Gallo family members, for example, are among the 1 percent of the population contributing around 77 percent of the money going to congressional campaigns. As a result, the members of that 1 percent have a disproportionate impact on who is elected, as well as on policymaking once those elected assume power. By any definition, that's a big story.

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