Democratic NC Fundraising, Parties, and Playboy

Interesting Column in Today's Chronicle about fundraising.


http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/editorial/635302

On cue: Lights! Camera! Shakedown!
By CRAGG HINES -- Aug. 15, 2000, 6:43PM

LOS ANGELES -- The giant sucking sound is Democrats using their convention week to vacuum every possible dollar out of every available soft-touch movie star and entertainment executive. If you're down from Silicon Valley and still believe that Al Gore invented the Internet, well, you're welcome to give, too. Trial lawyers, lobbyists, special pleaders of all stripes, dig deep. Leave your check and business card at the door (so they can try to remember you later). Grab a drink and a sliver of pizza from Spago and fall into the warm embrace of a party desperate to keep the White House and recover their lost homestead on Capitol Hill.

One big L.A. activist complained that the party fund-raising committees and individual campaigns were flogging her pocketbook so hard that her fax machine kept running out of paper from the glut of "invitations." And none of the gigs, she said, was under $1,000. No chump change this week. Some soirees anticipate total personal donations of five and six figures. A handful of individuals, unions and corporations are headed toward a million in this election cycle.

Of course, Republicans did the same thing with the rest of corporate America in Philadelphia two weeks ago (as well as with some of the crowd that's being hit up by the Democrats). The Republicans just weren't giant hypocrites about it. The Democrats are serving it up with an Olympian level of sanctimony. While rifling your pockets they earnestly preach campaign-finance reform and, misty eyed, say they can't unilaterally disarm.

"Yes, what goes on here is obscene," Democratic National Committee Chairman Ed Rendell conceded. "What went on in Philadelphia is obscene. The process is broken. One party wants to end it. The other one doesn't. You have an obligation to make that absolutely clear to the people of this country."

Are you reaching for your airsick bag? What also needs to be made clear is that this is the same crowd who, with Gore in the lead, scammed a Buddhist temple four years ago and then lied about it. And remember there's "no controlling legal authority" that says otherwise. I guess not, when your attorney general plays deaf-mute. Perhaps it's only happenstance, but hardly any of the Democratic shindigs seem to be scheduled for east of Interstate 5, which might be a little too close for comfort to the Hsi Lai Temple in suburban Hacienda Heights. One senior California Democratic wag said the state party had tried to get the center quarantined as "radioactive."

Democrats can claim to be so hot for campaign finance reform because they know that Republicans, always more up front about money being the mother's milk of politics, will openly block it.

Despite the unbridled shakedowns this week, the Democrats want to show they're still a concerned lot. They insisted on vetting the venues. And the party hierarchy about had a cow when Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., scheduled a fund-raiser at the Playboy Mansion. Only when she relented, and moved the event to the ever-more-tasteful B.B. King's Blues Club, did they offer to restore her speaking spot in the convention line-up. She declined.

The Democrats' penchant for prudery seems a bit sudden (not to mention phony) when viewed through the prism of short-term history. Over the last decade, the Los Angeles Times found on examining campaign-finance records, the Democratic National Committee and the party's principal congressional campaign committees have accepted $50,000 from Playboy founder Hugh Hefner and his daughter Christie. Over the same period, Hef's contributions to Clinton-Gore campaigns totaled $9,500, with $1,500 going to Gore's campaign just two years ago.

One of the biggest complainers about Sanchez's proposed Playboy party was Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, D-R.I., chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. But, according to the L.A. Times, Kennedy had not been so offended earlier this year when he went to Christie Hefner's house in Chicago and spoke at a fund-raising reception for a Democratic House candidate. And little or nothing was made of a late-night party Tuesday for Democratic high-rollers in the hipper-than-thou Sky Bar of the Mondrian Hotel on Sunset Boulevard. This is the establishment that last week agreed to pay $1.08 million to minority bellmen who were fired for looking "too ethnic" so they could be replaced with "cool-looking" white boys.

Maybe the plaintiffs would like to donate some of the settlement to the oh-so-caring Democrats. Leave your fax number.

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