Nevada congressmen planning fund-raisers

Ben Grove

Thursday, May 8, 2003 | 9:42 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Eighteen months before Election Day, cash registers are ringing on the coffers of Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and possible opponent Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev.

Gibbons, who canceled political campaign activities during the war with Iraq, will resume fund-raising next week with back-to-back events. Nevada law firm Jones Vargas will host a fund-raiser for Gibbons's campaign Monday in Las Vegas, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee will hold one Tuesday.

Gibbons has said he would decide this summer whether to challenge Reid. He has some catching up to do in fund-raising: Reid had $2.1 million on hand at the end March; Gibbons had $444,000.

Reid, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, and Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle, D-N.D., are scheduled to be headliners at a fund-raising event for a newly created Democratic group that is using a new strategy to raise so-called soft money under the new campaign finance law.

"Soft money" is not capped in donor limits like "hard money" raised from individuals. Soft money has been used to finance "issue ads" that do not specifically endorse a candidate but otherwise paint the politician in a positive light.

The fledgling Democratic Senate Majority Fund is among a handful of political groups that are using lawmakers to draw in donors at fund-raisers that collect legally limited "hard money" contributions. The groups plan to then solicit those donors for "soft money" checks at a later date.

The strategy skirts the McCain-Feingold law enacted last year that prohibits federal lawmakers from directly soliciting unlimited "soft money" donations from corporate and lobbying groups and unions.

Reid and Daschle will be featured guests at a Tuesday hard money fund-raiser at the Phoenix Park Hotel in Washington for the new group. The group is seen as a kind of stand-in for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which under the old laws raised and spent soft money for candidates. But the McCain-Feingold law banned the national party committees from raising soft money.

The new Democratic group plans to raise soft money after the fund-raiser next week, but under the law, it won't feature federal officeholders in those solicitations or invite them to those fund-raisers, executive director Marc Farinella said.

"What the senators are doing is entirely commensurate with the law," Farinella said. "It's a complicated law."

Democrats were largely supportive of campaign reform aimed at curbing the use of soft money,

Reid's support for campaign finance reform and curbing soft money does not conflict with his support for the new group, spokeswoman Tessa Hafen said. Reid supported the ban on lawmakers soliciting soft-money directly, but he does not object to groups like the new Democratic Senate Majority Fund raising soft money on their own, she said.