THE LEFT COAST’S FEDERAL RESERVE
Democratic National Committee chairman Terry
McAuliffe has known for six months now that his planned
palace for the DNC was not going to be built. When DNC board
members pulled the plug on his left-wing Taj Mahal, they told him
simply to add on to the dump the party already resides in. That
meant that while the renovations would cost several millions of
dollars, McAuliffe wouldn’t need the $10 million or so he’d raised
for the building fund. More than half of the money targeted for the
building came from two of the party’s biggest donors, TV producer
Haim Saban and film producer Stephen
Bing, and owing to the nature of the contributions could
not be spent on overtly political purposes without being released
and redirected by the donors.
So McAuliffe, hard up for cash for the 2002 election cycle, went
to Saban and Bing and asked if they would be willing to shift
building money to the party’s campaign coffers for 2002. Never mind
that the two men over time have donated, combined, more than $19
million in cash to specific Democratic candidates and
issue-oriented campaigns the DNC was running.
“McAuliffe can spin all he wants, but we’re in serious s—- up
to our necks,” says a DNC staffer. “The Republicans hammered us
this year. Their hard money, their soft money, it’s embarrassing.
Then we have to go to these two guys and say, ‘Gee, can we have
more?’ What happens when these Hollywood types figure out they
aren’t going to get anything for their money? What if they go
bankrupt? Who do we turn to next?”
Saban and Bing’s generosity toward the party can largely be
chalked up to their fascination with Bill Clinton.
When the former president is out on the left coast, he sometimes
stays with one or the other, and always socializes with them.
“There’s a school of thought here that as long as Clinton’s around
as a playmate, some of these people will just keep coughing up the
cash,” says the staffer. “But Clinton isn’t going to solve the
party’s longterm financial problems, and that is how do we begin
raising the hard money we’re going to need to raise to compete with
the Republicans in the post-McCain-Feingold election
landscape.”
Apparently, McAuliffe and others will worry about that later.
For now, the party has about $6 million more in its 2002 election
coffers than it did a week ago. And for cash-strapped Democratic
candidates around the country that could be good news.
MAKING RESERVATIONS
It isn’t just South Dakota that is facing potential major fraud
investigations leading into the November elections. According to a
Republican National Committee staffer, the party is monitoring get
out the vote programs in at least two other states with pivotal
campaigns. “We’re looking at Louisiana and New Mexico. Both of them
have had problems in the past and we’re hearing they’re having
problems again,” says the staffer.”
The South Dakota problems came to light a couple of weeks ago.
The state Democratic Party reported huge increases in voter
registration and chalked it up to the national party’s
get-out-the-vote campaign. But the state attorney general is
looking into how particular voter registration programs focused on
Indian reservations, where turnout for elections tends to be
low.
New Mexico has experienced similar problems with its Indian
reservations and Democratic Party. And recall the state’s 2000
presidential election, which saw boxes of ballots mysteriously
“disappear” on election night as Gore and Bush ran neck and neck.
Ultimately Gore won the state by a few hundred votes. Today, former
Clinton Energy Secretary and Monica Lewinsky interviewer
Bill Richardson is running for governor, and
lately has been sinking in the polls. Republicans are concerned
that the state Democratic Party may attempt to boost the turnout on
behalf of Richardson.
Similar problems are a concern for Republicans down on the
Bayou, where the GOP hopes to oust Sen. Mary
Landrieu, or at least push her to a runoff against a
Republican candidate.
“It may be that they can beat us fair and square,” says a
Republican pollster, who will be in New Mexico on election day
monitoring polling places. “But the Democrats’ record in some of
these places is that they’d rather cheat, win and run. We can’t
afford to let them get away with it this time.”
Already the South Dakota Republican Senate candidate, Rep.
John Thune, has said that if the voter
registration fraud story gets any more serious, he will be prepared
to go to court over the election’s outcome. If he loses.
