Parties prove big spenders in campaign stretch drive

Tuesday, Oct. 13, 1998 | 11:10 a.m.

Call Sen. Harry Reid. Call Rep. John Ensign. Tell them what you really think.

As Democrat Reid and Republican Ensign go at it in their Senate race, the Nevada Republican and Democratic parties have also jumped into the fray. The parties are asking television viewers to get on the telephone, but don't expect them to pay for the calls.

The parties need the money to pay for their advertisements. Through mid-August, the Nevada Republican Party Central Committee spent $1 million on TV this year. The Nevada State Democratic Party chipped in $690,000. All that money went toward the Reid-Ensign battle.

When politicians talk of campaign finance reform, they often point to "soft money" contributions as a major source of what ails the nation's political system.

Financing by the state parties for their TV ads comes mostly from soft money, which includes unlimited cash contributions intended for party-building activities such as get-out-the-vote campaigns. In the case of Reid and Ensign, the money has been spent on issue-advocacy positions that encourage viewers to pick up the phone.

It so happens that Reid and Ensign, who are divided on so many other issues, also disagree on campaign finance reform, including the use of soft money.

Reid is co-sponsor of a bill by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Russell Feingold, D-Wis., that would ban soft-money contributions to both state and federal parties. A version of that bill passed the House but has been stalled in the Senate because of a filibuster by GOP leaders.

Reid was so upset by the filibuster he held a Capitol Hill news conference on the issue in June. Two months later he issued a news release in which he repeated his criticism of Republican leadership. He believes the bill is now "dead as a door nail."

"When I came here (to the Senate) 12 years ago, one of the first things I spoke about was the need for campaign finance reform," Reid said. "Things have gone downhill in the past 12 years. Twelve years ago you couldn't use corporate money in campaigns. Now, there are huge amounts of corporate money, and it's a huge battle of special interests.

"We need to stop the corporate money coming in. With the present system it's difficult to get out your message because you have all these outside interests saying scurrilous things about you. Then you have to come back and respond to scurrilous things said about you."

Ensign backed an unsuccessful House bill sponsored by Reps. Asa Hutchinson, R-Ark., and Tom Allen, D-Maine, that would have banned soft money to the federal parties but not to the state parties. Ensign said any ban on soft money to state parties should be left up to state legislatures. But he said he would support the Nevada Legislature if it chose to ban soft money to political parties in this state.

"We have no control over the state parties," Ensign said of Congress.

Reid, however, believes Congress does have the authority to strip state parties of their soft money. The McCain-Feingold bill also would give free or discounted television time to candidates who agree to limit their campaign spending. But Ensign said he is troubled by other portions of the bill that would crack down on special-interest voter guides and issue-advocacy TV ads.

"I'd love to see these issue-advocacy ads eliminated, but the courts have already ruled that to ban these ads would be unconstitutional," Ensign said.

Reid also has said he's concerned about portions of the McCain-Feingold bill, noting that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that campaign spending limits violate an individual's right to free speech. Still, he believes Congress must act to reform campaign financing.

Like the candidates they support, state party officials also disagree on campaign finance reform.

Dan Burdish, executive director of the Nevada Republican Party, said his party opposes soft-money bans because elections cannot run without money. Speaking for himself, he said he would prefer no limits on any contributions but full disclosure of where the money came from.

"If they ban soft money, there is no way the parties would exist," Burdish said. "How do you go out and get your message across if you can't raise money?"

The problem, Burdish said, is that parties would be left only with "hard money," which he said is more difficult to raise. Hard-money contributions of up to $5,000 a year to state parties can be made by individuals and federally registered political action committees but not by corporations. In contrast, soft-money contributions can be unlimited and can come from corporations.

Nevada Democratic Party Chairman Paul Henry said his party advocates an end to soft money but would ban such contributions only if the Republicans agreed to do the same. Henry said one problem with soft money is that it gives far greater advantage to corporations than to individuals who cannot afford large contributions.

Henry said he also is troubled that a donor who doesn't want to be directly tied to a state party can give large sums of money to "phantom" groups with innocuous names, who can then turn around and contribute that money to the party.

"My big problem is there is a lack of disclosure because we don't know who these nameless, faceless groups are," Henry said. "It's a shell game. It's a way for people to get around (contribution) limitations that already exist."

The biggest sources of funding for Nevada's Republican Party ads through mid-August came from the National Republican Senatorial Committee ($909,465), Sheldon Adelson's yet-to-open Venetian hotel-casino ($347,957), Americans for Tax Reform of Washington, D.C., ($127,000) and Circus Circus Enterprises ($50,000). One of the top executives at Circus Circus is the congressman's father, Mike Ensign.

State Democrats received their largest contributions from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee ($235,000), KVBC Valley Broadcasting Co. of Las Vegas ($100,000), Hilton Corp. of Beverly Hills, Calif., ($77,500) and Don King Productions Inc. of Deerfield Beach, Fla., ($50,000). The vast majority of soft-money contributions from $5,000 to $50,000 to both parties came from the gaming industry.

The main reason the parties run TV ads is they want to drive up the negative ratings of the opposite party's candidate. They reason that if a voter doesn't like their candidate, maybe they'll dislike the other guy enough to vote against him.

The Republicans have spent their money on ads that blast Reid for voting for "the largest tax increase in history." The ads refer to Reid's support of a 1993 budget reconciliation package that the senator has credited with sparking the nation's robust economy. The GOP ads have charged, however, that the budget package included nearly $241 billion in tax increases.

"In Nevada, he says he's against higher taxes," one ad stated. "But in Washington, he voted for the largest tax increase in history. In Nevada, Reid says he's for IRS (Internal Revenue Service) reform. But in Washington, he's taken thousands of dollars from the IRS agents' PAC (political action committee).

"Call Senator Harry Reid and tell him: On taxes and the IRS, start voting in Washington the way you talk in Nevada."

The GOP ad that has generated the most controversy features a woman sitting at a table who said: "Harry told us he won't balance the budget on the backs of senior citizens. Then he turned around and did exactly that -- voting to raise taxes on Social Security."

The ad relied in part on a Cleveland Plain Dealer article from 1993, with the headline: "AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) Criticizes Plan To Hike Taxes On Some Social Security Income." But the AARP last month sharply criticized the "misuse of its name in partisan advertisements" and demanded that the ad be pulled. The Republicans declined.

The Democrats have hit on a broader spectrum of themes in their ads. One ad praised Reid for supporting a proposed Patients' Bill of Rights "to crack down on health plans that deny needed care." Another lauded the senator for fighting to reform the Internal Revenue Service.

Democratic ads also have gone negative by accusing Ensign of voting against new schools and student loans. They also have accused him of voting to double Medicare premiums that seniors pay to see a doctor, voted to strip away "25 years of health and safety protections," and of voting to let high-level nuclear waste into Nevada.

"He (Ensign) voted to gut clean-water laws so polluters could dump more toxics in our rivers," one ad said. "John Ensign even voted against tougher standards on lead paint and asbestos in schools.

"Please call Congressman Ensign. Tell him to stand up for the health and safety of our kids."

Another ad stated that the congressman repeatedly has "voted against our seniors." As with the attacks on Reid, Ensign countered that the ads against him are full of misstatements and distortions of his record. The congressman, for instance, has repeatedly fought against nuclear waste, but Reid said Ensign voted for an unsuccessful 1995 House budget bill that would have established a temporary waste dump at the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Last week, the state Democrats began airing a TV ad that blasts Ensign for that vote. The ad takes quotes from Sun columnist Jeff German, who wrote in 1995 that the vote was a "major blunder." The ad includes a shot of nuclear waste drums being transported.

But former Rep. Barbara Vucanovich, a Nevada Republican who also voted for the budget bill, labeled the attack on Ensign as unfair. She accused Reid of threatening the Nevada congressional delegation's unity over the issue of nuclear waste.

"Harry Reid knows better," Vucanovich said in a press release. "Having fought the nuclear power industry myself, I could not sit quietly by and watch him mislead people about John Ensign. John has fought harder than anyone to keep nuclear waste out of our state."

In previous elections, special-interest groups such as organized labor and the National Rifle Association have run negative TV ads in Nevada against particular candidates. That tradition was continued last week, when the League of Conservation Voters of Washington, D.C., launched ads against Ensign, termed by the group as one of the "Dirty Dozen" in Congress.

In criticizing Ensign's environmental record, the nonpartisan league is airing ads that accuse the congressman of voting to "make it easier for polluters to dump sewage and toxic poisons into Lake Mead."

"The big polluters have contributed over $100,000 to Ensign to carry their water in Washington, instead of protecting our water back home," the ad states.

But Ensign has said that the league is a partisan "liberal" organization, and that his environmental votes have been intended to eliminate unnecessary regulations.

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