For Kerry, big money may pay and cost
By Chris Mondics
Inquirer Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - The crowd was hungry for some old-time Democratic religion, and Sen. John Kerry did not disappoint.
Playing on a populist theme that had helped former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean vault briefly to the top of the Democratic pack, Kerry denounced the influence of big money in Washington and promised a major housecleaning if he won the White House.
"I have a message for the influence peddlers, for the polluters, the HMOs, the big drug companies that get in the way, the big oil, and the special interests who now call the White House their home," Kerry told supporters at a recent campaign rally, in comments whose theme he has frequently reiterated. "We're coming, you're going, and don't let the door hit you on the way out."
But for all his sharply worded denunciations of special-interest money, Kerry has been one of the Senate's most skilled fund-raisers and has collected millions from a wide variety of corporate interests and lobbyists - leaving him vulnerable on the issue.
His main Democratic challenger, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, has hammered Kerry on fund-raising, as did Dean before dropping out of the race. Republicans, who have been even bigger beneficiaries of corporate money than Democrats, have run biting television ads depicting Kerry as a hypocrite for flaying corporate special interests while leaning on them for money.
"Here is a man who wants to appeal to public distrust of insider politics, yet he is the ultimate insider," said Mark Rozell, chairman of the department of politics at the Catholic University of America. "It's problematic because Kerry has been so spectacularly successful [at raising money]. It is a stretch to say that he has no connection to insider Washington and that he is untainted by politics and lobbying."
Kerry proponents note that he has been one of the strongest supporters in the Senate of legislation to curb the influence of big money. Moreover, they say, fund-raising by President Bush - more than $142 million for his presidential campaign so far, much of it from special interests - dwarfs Kerry's fund-raising operation.
"The reform community has always seen Kerry as a reformer," said Frank Clemente of Public Citizen, an activist group that supports tighter campaign-finance laws. "... The vast majority of the time, he is voting in favor of the consumer or the patient and against the corporation."
During his 19-year Senate career, and now during the presidential race, Kerry has raised at least $65 million. He has collected money from a wide range of telecommunications, insurance, banking, and other corporate interests with business before the powerful Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, on which he has a seat.
He also has a long association with Capitol Hill lobbyists. The Center for Responsive Politics, a watchdog group, says Kerry has taken more money from members of lobbying firms - representing hundreds of different interests - than any other senator, a total of $640,000 since he entered the Senate in 1985.
From time to time, he also has taken actions or supported policies that benefited contributors.
In 1996, Kerry's staff gave Taiwanese American businessman Johnny Chung and an associate who was interested in getting a company listed on the New York Stock Exchange introductions to staff at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Chung pleaded guilty in 1998 to laundering $8,000 into Kerry's 1996 Senate campaign. Kerry, queried about the contribution this month, said the contributions were returned. The government developed evidence after 1996 that the money may have been funneled through Chung into campaign accounts, including Kerry's, from the Chinese government.
In 2000, Kerry persuaded Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain (R., Ariz.) to back off legislation that would have required Massachusetts authorities to return to the federal government $150 million in insurance overpayments on a huge highway and tunnel project in Boston called the Big Dig.
The federal money had been paid to AIG, an insurance firm whose employees have given Kerry $30,000 in contributions over the course of his career.
That same year, Kerry introduced legislation sought by Predictive Networks, a Cambridge, Mass., information-technology company, that would have made it more difficult for consumers to block its efforts to monitor their Internet usage, a service of huge potential value to advertisers. Around that time, the firm's former CEO organized fund-raisers for Kerry that generated $100,000 in contributions.
In 2002, Kerry and Sen. John Ensign (R., Nev.) wrote Michael Powell, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, urging him to postpone the sale of licenses to broadcast over a portion of the radio-frequency spectrum occupied by commercial TV stations.
The Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association, a trade association for the wireless industry, wanted to postpone the sale because its members could not then make full use of the frequencies. Association members have contributed at least $100,000 to Kerry campaigns over his career, according to an analysis by Dwight Morris & Associates, which tracks campaign contributions.
The FCC ultimately postponed a portion of the sale.
Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said that in each instance, Kerry was not influenced by contributions and took positions that benefited the public.
"It's common knowledge in Washington that individual contributions to John Kerry do not buy anything," Cutter said.
As evidence that he is above the money-fueled politics of Capitol Hill, Kerry cites his practice of not taking contributions from political action committees set up by corporations, labor unions and trade groups to gain access and influence.
Some watchdog groups view this approach skeptically. Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, said Kerry still received millions in individual contributions from employees of big companies, lobbying firms and trade associations.
"Kerry has no choice," said Lewis, who credits Kerry with working for campaign-finance legislation. "If he wants to be a successful politician, he has to raise obscene sums of money, and therein lies the problem. He is a hypocrite, but I would put an asterisk after it."
That might be a nuance lost on the public as the campaign progresses and the partisan attacks increase.
"It's difficult to say that you are going to oppose special interests when you have gotten a lot of campaign contributions from various industries," said Darrell West, a political-science professor at Brown University. "He has raised a lot of money, and he has been very successful at it."
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