Harman Got Illegal Funds in 1994 Race

Rep. Jane Harman’s 1994 campaign for Congress benefited from $21,000 illegally funneled from a Hughes Aircraft Co. fundraising event, but the violation was not deliberate, newly released documents show.

The records were made public by the Federal Election Commission for the first time this week, a decade after Harman’s opponent in the 1994 race sparked a minor campaign controversy by lodging a complaint with the commission about the fundraiser. The file was discovered during a review of closed enforcement cases, a commission spokesman said.

The documents show that Harman (D-Venice), now the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, was never fined or required to repay the money because a federal judge found that her campaign had acted in good faith and had committed no deliberate or serious violations.

At issue was an Oct. 29, 1993, fundraiser Hughes held for Harman at its El Segundo headquarters. Corporations are prohibited from donating to federal candidates, and the money was given by individual company employees so that it would not violate the law.

A Hughes employee, however, collected the money and gave it to Harman’s campaign staff, violating a prohibition against corporations’ acting as “conduits” for contributions, a judge said.

Hughes paid a $40,000 civil penalty to the Federal Election Commission in 1996 to resolve the matter, the records show. Harman’s campaign agreed to no such resolution, so the commission sued the campaign in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

When U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder ruled on the case in August 1999, she agreed with the commission that Harman’s campaign had violated the law, but turned down the agency’s request for a fine, injunction or demand for repayment. She noted in part that Harman’s campaign apparently had relied on incorrect legal advice from a Hughes attorney.

“There is no evidence that defendants believed at the time that the fundraiser was not being conducted in accordance with existing law,” Snyder wrote. “In addition, the court notes that the violations themselves are not substantial nor obvious.”

The release of the documents is a belated final chapter to Harman’s campaign for a second term in Congress, which she won by a mere 812 votes over Susan Brooks, former mayor of Rancho Palos Verdes.

Harman was helped to victory by her strong support from the aerospace industry. In addition to agreeing to hold the fundraiser, then-Hughes Chairman C. Michael Armstrong signed on as a “Republican for Harman” to help insulate her against Brooks’ claims of liberalism.

During the race, Brooks angered Democrats by filing a complaint with the Federal Election Commission about the Hughes fundraiser. Harman’s spokesman at the time dismissed the charges as “outright false,” and Democrats filed their own complaint with the commission against Brooks, alleging that she had broken election rules by taking out an unsecured loan to finance her campaign. The commission closed that case in 1995 without taking action.

Since then, Hughes Aircraft has been sold to Raytheon, and Harman has become a leading intelligence authority in Congress after a two-year break from Washington for an unsuccessful run for governor.

Hughes Electronics Co. spokesman Bob Marsocci declined comment on the release of the files, and a Harman spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Brooks, now working as a part-time special education teacher and employee dispute mediator in Rancho Palos Verdes, said Wednesday she was pleased to have been partly vindicated.

She said a Harman campaign official bet her a decade ago that the Democrats’ Federal Election Commission complaint would succeed while hers would fail. “I’d be happy to take the lunch,” Brooks said.