Gore's fundraising. . . . -- The New Politics of War

[ Show ]

Support VoyForums

[ Shrink ]

VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 19:02:42 09/14/00 Thu
Author: Frank W
Subject: Gore's fundraising. . . .

Will Gore's media lapdogs blow this one off too, or will it find "legs" and take hold?

Memo Linking Political Donation and
Veto Spurs Federal Inquiry

By DON VAN NATTA Jr. with RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.

ASHINGTON, Sept. 13 � Vice
President Al Gore attended a
Houston dinner in November 1995 to
promote a budding relationship between the
Democratic Party and a handful of powerful
Texas trial lawyers. The relationship
blossomed, producing $4 million in donations
from the lawyers' firms since 1996. But it also
produced some heavy-handed fund- raising
that has recently drawn the scrutiny of federal
campaign finance investigators.

At the time of the dinner, the lawyers were
deeply troubled by a bill passed by the
Republican-led Congress that would have
drastically overhauled the nation's litigation
system by restricting the amount of money that
people injured by faulty products could win in
lawsuits. Two days after the dinner,
Democratic officials asked Mr. Gore to call
several lawyers who attended the dinner to
ask each to give $100,000 to the party.

Mr. Gore was asked to call Walter Umphrey,
a prominent plaintiff's lawyer in Beaumont,
Tex., but his aides say he did not make the
call. Two weeks later, Donald L. Fowler, then
Democratic national chairman, was asked to
call Mr. Umphrey to press him for a $100,000
check. On a briefing memorandum for the
Fowler call, a Democratic Party aide, wrote
these words for Mr. Fowler to tell Mr.
Umphrey as the reason for the phone call,
"Sorry you missed the vice president," and
then, "I know" you "will give $100K when the
president vetoes tort reform, but we really
need it now. Please send ASAP if possible."

Almost always, the memorandums, known as
call sheets, were careful to avoid any mention
of executive branch actions or donors' legislative wishes. Soliciting
contributions and explicitly linking campaign donations to official actions
is improper and, in some cases, illegal.

In an interview, Mr. Fowler said that he never would have used the
language on the call sheet and that he could not recall speaking with Mr.
Umphrey about campaign gifts. But he acknowledged that at least one
conversation with the lawyer was "possible, maybe even probable."

Mr. Fowler criticized the call sheet's message, which was written by a
young party aide named Erica Payne. "I don't know why that language
was on the call sheet," said Mr. Fowler, who is now chairman of Fowler
Communications in South Carolina. "I'm sure I never said anything like
that to him or anybody else. It's unwise."

The call sheet's unusual mention of a veto as part of a solicitation of a
$100,000 donation has attracted the attention of Robert J. Conrad Jr.,
the head of the Justice Department's campaign finance task force, who
has opened a preliminary investigation into the matter, several law
enforcement officials said.

Jim Kennedy, a spokesman for Mr. Gore, said today: "The Republicans
and others have had this for more than 1,000 days and no one found it
interesting until 1,000 hours before the election. That's curious, isn't it?"

Although it was well known in late 1995 that the president was likely to
veto the tort reform bill, its passage by the Republican-controlled
Congress greatly concerned trial lawyers.

On May 2, 1996, President Clinton vetoed the bill, which would have set
strict limits in both state and federal courts on punitive damages, the
money juries may give beyond awards to compensate victims for their
losses. Supporters of the measure, including Democrats who lobbied for
almost a decade for legislation to limit liability damages, argued that it
would put a cap on multimillion-dollar jury awards that they said added
to consumer costs. But the opponents said large jury awards were
needed to prevent companies from selling unsafe products.

Congressional Republican leaders � and even a few Democratic
senators � angrily criticized the president, saying the veto was intended
to placate donors to the Democrats. Representative John A. Boehner,
Republican of Ohio, said Mr. Clinton was handing a gift to the generous
trial lawyers who were supporting his re-election bid. Donations from
those lawyers, he said at the time, "can buy you a Bill Clinton veto."

Among those who criticized the veto was Senator Joseph I. Lieberman,
Democrat of Connecticut, who had pushed hard for the legislation. In a
Wall Street Journal interview that year, Mr. Lieberman, now Mr. Gore's
running mate, described the trial lawyers as "a small group of people who
are deeply invested in the status quo, who have worked the system very
effectively and have had a disproportionate effect."

In the months after the president's veto, Mr. Umphrey's law firm
contributed a total of $40,000 to the Democratic National Committee.
And in the four years since then, Mr. Umphrey and his firm, Provost &
Umphrey, have given more than $700,000 to the Democratic Party,
Federal Election Commission records show.

This year, Mr. Gore has continued to woo the Texas trial lawyers, a
strategy that has paid enormous dividends to the Democrats. In the years
before the May 1996 veto, five prominent Texas lawyers � Mr.
Umphrey, John Eddie Williams Jr., the host of the dinner attended by
Mr. Gore on Nov. 28, 1995, John O'Quinn, Wayne Reaud and Harold
Nix � and their law firms had given $747,700 to the Democrats. Since
the veto, the five men and their firms have given a nearly $4 million to the
Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit
research group in Washington that monitors campaign finances.

By contrast, according to the center, the five lawyers have given no
money to the Republican Party, whose nominee for President, George
W. Bush, has pushed aggressively as governor of Texas to limit jury
awards and has pledged as a presidential candidate to "curb frivolous
lawsuits."

Mr. Umphrey did not return calls to his Beaumont office. Calls to the
other four were also not returned.

But Michael E. Tigar, an attorney who represents all five lawyers, denied
that his clients' subsequent contributions were linked in any way to the
president's veto. "Tying campaign contributions to legislative or executive
action has never been illegal in the United States unless there is proof that
the public official extorts the money by threatening to give or withhold
action based on the contributions," Mr. Tigar said.

He said Mr. Umphrey and the other Texas lawyers he represents "have
repeatedly been asked in many forums whether they have ever given
money to a candidate or officials as a quid-pro-quo for official action,
and they have repeatedly said under oath that they have never done so."

The call sheet's author, Ms. Payne, declined to comment. Her lawyer,
Thomas Dwyer, said Ms. Payne knew Mr. Umphrey was "a major giver"
and that he was likely to contribute after the president vetoed the bill. "At
the time this memo was written," he said, "she was aware, from the
grapevine, that the president was most likely going to veto this bill. At no
time did she get inside information from the White House or anyone
about this piece of legislation."

Trevor Potter, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission,
called the call sheet's language "extraordinarily ill-advised," saying
prosecutors would probably be investigating whether the solicitation
violated either a bribery statute or a law prohibiting "illegal gratuities," a
"gift" given after an elected official takes a public action.

Mr. Umphrey's contributions are a vivid example of the generosity
bestowed on the Democratic Party by the five Texas lawyers, most of
whom have become fabulously wealthy from the $3.3 billion in fees they
were awarded for their work on a lawsuit against the tobacco industry.
The lawyers helped engineer a $17.3 billion settlement in 1998 from the
tobacco industry for Texas.

"Once the tobacco case was settled, they had a lot more money to give,
so they've been very, very generous," said a Texas party official who
knows the lawyers. "It's kind of like winning the lottery. All of a sudden
you have a lot more money to spend. They're doing the same thing
they've always done, but they're doing it on a much bigger scale."

Lawyers and law firms have already contributed nearly $5 million to Mr.
Gore's presidential campaign � nearly 10 percent of all the money the
Gore-Lieberman campaign has raised, according to an analysis by the
Center for Responsive Politics.

Mr. Gore obviously is not counting on Texas this November, but it has
still served as an important fund- raising stop, in large part because of
trial lawyers. In March, for example, the vice president jetted to Houston
to attend two fund-raisers that, combined, raised nearly $600,000 for the
Democratic National Committee.

One of these fund-raisers reunited Mr. Gore with Mr. Williams, whose
law partner, Denman Heard, was host to 125 people who contributed
$150,000 to the Democrats. Later, a dinner at the Houston home of H.
Lee Godfrey, a partner in Susman Godfrey, a major litigation firm, raised
$400,000 for the Democratic Party.

At Mr. Heard's home, the guests listened as Edward G. Rendell, the
Democratic National Committee's general chairman, launched into a
rousing defense of plaintiff lawyers, saying that much of the nation's gains
in consumer safety were due to their efforts.

Mr. Clinton has also attended several fund-raisers in recent months at the
homes of trial lawyers. In January, he attended a $5,000-a-plate dinner
at the home of Mr. Williams.

Earlier, Mr. Williams also hosted a fund-raiser for Hillary Rodham
Clinton's Senate campaign committee.

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

WOW! What a suprise! He's like the only politician that dares do that! (NT) -- Z, 15:24:40 09/15/00 Fri
- Re: Yup, as a matter of fact, he IS the only one running for President who has done that -- Frank W, 12:04:57 09/16/00 Sat