How the GOP bought the 1996 elections

by Tim Wheeler

This article was reprinted from the November 22, 1997 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

WASHINGTON - Republican Senator Fred Thompson staged months of hearings before his Government Operations Committee with sensational charges that White House officials, "Washington labor bosses," and Asian businessmen "bought" the 1996 elections. Then Thompson terminated the hearings.

But now a flood of documented evidence proves the opposite: That faced with a likely loss of majority Republican control of the House and Senate, the Republican National Committee (RNC) launched a frenzied last-ditch effort to preserve their control of Congress last fall. They secretly funneled millions of dollars through a network of right- wing outfits to "buy" a House and Senate friendly to Big Business, the ultra-right and the rich.

Much of the proof was unveiled in a remarkable Nov. 9 floor speech by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), ranking Democrat on the Senate committee. He buttressed his charges with a thick file of confidential RNC documents which his office sent to the World. His disclosures were virtually ignored by the corporate media.

Most of the groups which served as conduits for the RNC blitz are tax exempt and therefore barred from electioneering activities. It includes the American Defense Institute (ADI), the National Right to Life Committee, the Christian Coalition, the California Civil Rights Initiative, and a shadowy outfit called Triad Management.

Levin released a memorandum marked "confidential" from RNC Finance Director, JoAnne Coe which exposes an operation awash in so-called "soft" corporate cash. The Oct. 17, 1996 memo is addressed to top Republican Party officials including RNC Chairman Haley Barbour. The subject is RNC money funneled to ADI, a tax exempt outfit whose president is retired U.S. Navy Captain Eugene B. "Red" McDaniel, a former POW. McDaniel's son, Michael, is now a top leader of "Promise Keepers" based in Denver, Colorado. In her memo, Coe wrote, "Today I have also sent $100,000 to National Right to Life and $100,000 to Americans for Tax Reform-- both from Carl Lindner." Lindner is the President of American Financial Corporation, Chief Executive of United Brands, and Chairman of the Penn Central Corporation. Her memo also refers to $500,000 "Haley obtained from Philip Morris," the Richmond-based tobacco conglomerate.

Also listed are checks in the amount of $100,000 from Enterprise Rent-a-Car mogul, Jack Taylor, longtime GOP donor, Max Fisher, $50,000 from former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and $30,000 from Houston oil executive Patrick R. Rutherford.

She reports that a $100,000 check to ADI from billionaire corporate raider, Kirk Kerkorian, has been mislaid. Kerkorian is the owner of 52 million shares of Chrysler and the owner of MGM. She asks whether she should stop payment on his check and send a replacement so the "grand total to ADI is only $950,000."

In a telephone interview from his Alexandria, Va. office, Capt. McDaniel denied that ADI used the RNC money for electioneering purposes. "It was used strictly to register military people to vote," he said. "We've gotten a lot of help from the Republicans but none from the Democrats. I flew 81 missions over Vietnam to give the Vietnamese the right of self determination and yet I had never exercised that right myself," he said, as if U.S. carpet bombing that killed and maimed millions of Vietnamese was a blow for Vietnam's independence. McDaniel told me his son, who served as ADI Executive Director before moving to "Promise Keepers" will soon return to ADI's board of directors. "Promise Keepers" is a right-wing movement launched by former football coach Bill McCartney which stages huge men- only Christian rallies in the name of "training men how to be responsible to God, to their wives and children."

Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), another tax exempt non- profit organization received a total of $4.6 million in the form of four checks wired from the RNC in October 1996. Levin released facsimiles of all four checks. ATR used the money to send out 19 million pieces of mail and make 4 million phone calls urging voters to dismiss warnings about Republican attacks on Medicare.

Said Levin, "In public statements, both ... Barbour and ATR President Grover Norquist denied that the money transfer was part of any coordinated effort between the two," explicitly outlawed under the Federal Election Campaign Act. Yet another RNC document released by Levin, "Memorandum for the Field Dogs" proves that the GOP operatives and Norquist closely coordinated their activities in the final weeks of the 1996 elections.

The ads, the RNC memo states, "will be sent to 150 selected Congressional districts ... We discussed this effort during Wednesday's conference call. This is an effort undertaken by Americans for Tax Reform. They are attempting to warn seniors about Democrat Mediscare tactics."

In fact, seniors had every reason to be scared. Nationwide outrage over Republican plans to cut and privatize Medicare was so deep that it led to two federal government shutdowns and the possibility that the GOP could lose majority control of the Senate and House. That is why the ATR TV ads were so crucial to soothe the mass anger in the final month before election day. Levin says the covert strategy worked.

The $4.6 million was funneled through ATR to a direct mail outfit named the John Grotta Company which in turn hired a media firm to produce a TV ad titled "Straight Talk About You, Medicare and the November 5 Election." During a news conference at RNC headquarters Oct. 29, 1996, Barbour boasted, "Sure. We made a contribution to Americans for Tax Reform ..." Groups like ATR, he said, "have more credibility in pushing a political message than the parties themselves."

Levin charged that this admission proves that "the RNC was using ATR as a surrogate to do what the RNC itself had neither the hard money nor the 'credibility' to do on its own." That would mean in the first place a cover-up of Republican plans to destroy Medicare on behalf of the giant medical-pharmaceutical profiteers.

RNC produced an ad from its files identified by the title "RNC-TV/Open Seat TV; 30/Control." It called for pasting in the picture of whichever labor-backed candidate was running in a given district. The audio portion reads in part: "Washington labor bosses and liberal special interests want to buy control of Congress ... They think Joe Blow will vote their way ... WRONG!" ATR ran this ad in scores of open House and Senate races, Levin charged.

ATR also produced a TV ad timed for Halloween with 34 liberal, labor-backed candidates named as recipients of an "Enemy of the Taxpayer Award." The ads were illegally funded by the RNC.

Levin blasted Thompson for milking the Senate hearings on campaign finance abuse for partisan advantage. Thompson had promised three days of hearings to allow the Democrats to present evidence of GOP campaign abuses but then ended them, claiming he lacked "the caliber of witnesses and information" needed.

ATR President Grover Norquist meets the test for a "high caliber witness," Levin said. Norquist wrote a book, "Rock the House" about the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 1994. "Yet the role of right-wing tax exempt organizations in that takeover are wholly unexplored topics in the campaign finance investigation," said Levin.

Also ignored by Thompson's hearings, Levin charged, were fundraising activities by Dole for President and by Triad Management which he called "a totally new phenomenon in American electioneering ..." Triad is a private corporation which set up two tax exempt groups to serve as conduits for millions of dollars worth of TV ads supporting the Republicans. Triad also enabled wealthy GOP donors to "launder" contributions to the GOP far in excess of federal limits, Levin said. "Triad undertook all of these activities without ever registering with the Federal Election Commission or disclosing any contributions or expenditures." Yet this wholesale abuse of federal law was not considered "worthy of a single hearing witness or deposition" by Thompson and his fellow Senate Republicans, said Levin.