Politicians Get Direct Line to Supporters

WASHINGTON —  For $2 a minute, anyone with a phone can hear a “Beat Helms” message sponsored by a critic of Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina.

For $12.50 a month, anyone with a bank account can support Helms and other Senate Republicans by allowing automatic deductions from their bank books.

In the competition for campaign cash, candidates and political groups are trying out new fund-raising gimmicks and dusting off reliable old ones.

“It gets intense out there when everyone is asking, so sometimes being different works,” said Michelle Davis, executive director of the Republican Governors Assn.

Davis describes the traditional fund-raiser like this: “You dress up, you go to a dinner, you listen to people give speeches, you write your check and you go home.”

The big money in politics still comes from these big-name fund-raising dinners and from the huge “soft money” contributions that corporations and labor unions make to party organizations.

But some of the newest fund-raising methods rely on high-tech gimmicks such as 900-number telephone lines and electronic fund transfers that allow fast and easy access to contributors’ bank accounts.

The Republican governors’ group, meanwhile, is adding a little glitz but sticking to basics as it tries to offer contributors more than a chicken dinner for their checks. The group is holding smaller, more intimate sessions at which donors can chat with governors and other prominent Republicans.

“We have to do more than we have in the past--to add a little cachet,” Davis said.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which helps elect Democrats to the House, this year added the Preakness to the lineup of big sporting events for which it offers tickets in exchange for contributions. Super Bowl parties long have been fund-raising favorites.

The committee, hard pressed for cash, also is raising more money than ever from Democratic incumbents who have cash to spare in their huge campaign war chests.

The anti-Helms effort, sponsored by a North Carolina State University professor, is but one example of the growing popularity of 900 phone lines as a political tool. The National Rifle Assn. started the trend a year ago and quickly raised $2.5 million.

Kent Hance, defeated in the Texas GOP gubernatorial primary this month, charged $3.95 a call for a message from his anti-tax group. The campaign pocketed $2 a call.

The Helms and Hance phone lines come cheap when compared to the two 900 lines set up by Republican Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas, the Senate’s 1989 fund-raising king. The senator charged $25 and $50 for two 900 lines that gave callers recorded voter registration information and details about a fund-raiser Gramm was holding with President Bush.

The Federal Election Commission has looked at a number of legal questions related to political use of 900 lines, which critics say can easily be used to avoid or bend contribution limits.

Democrats also are raising questions about the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s “Candidate Escrow Funding” program--the $12.50 a month direct-deposit gimmick. Participants get a $25 check in exchange for authorizing monthly bank debits that will increase 10% a year.

“Leave it to the Republicans to figure another way to con you,” Texas Democratic Chairman Bob Slagle said of the GOP effort.

The Republicans have revised the fund-raising letter that goes with the $25 check to make it clearer that people will pay out more than that in the long run and have set up a toll-free telephone line to answer questions.

Some more traditional fund-raising gambits also still stir controversy from time to time, such as mailings that cash in on someone’s name without their permission.

Some 200,000 letters mailed out by “Friends of Dan Quayle” late last year sought contributions to support the conservative agenda, yet Quayle had nothing to do with the mailing and gets none of the money.