The Political Pages

WASHINGTON -- Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, the early front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, on Thursday began posting on his Internet site a detailed list of the size and source of every contribution to his campaign, a gesture of voluntary disclosure that campaign finance experts said was unprecedented in presidential politics.

While the Federal Election Commission requires all candidates to provide such information shortly after the end of each quarter -- and the government itself posts it on the Internet -- Bush said that his campaign would update the details of its fund-raising daily. A short time lag will occur, however, between the receipt of a donation and its appearance on the site.

The information Bush's aides posted on Thursday covered contributions through two weeks ago, or Aug. 26, and although it did not provide a total for those donations, aides said the figure was slightly more than $49 million, a record-shattering sum.

Bush said that the daily Internet postings underscored his support for more openness in the campaign finance system.

"Americans will be able to look for themselves to find out who is helping to fund my campaign," Bush said in a statement.

But several advocates of changes in campaign finance laws said that the Bush campaign was also making a canny public relations move amid clear public concern about the influence of money in politics.

These advocates said that Bush was specifically trying to counter criticism that his presidential campaign was a financial steamroller, driven by the wealthiest Americans.

"He realizes that there's negative reaction to how much money he's raised and he's trying to take the sting out of it," said Ellen Miller, the executive director of Public Campaign, a nonpartisan group that promotes an overhaul of the current system for financing campaigns.

Ms. Miller noted, for example, that Bush's campaign was even going beyond federal requirements by posting information about people who donated less than $200. She said that the decision was clearly an effort to create the impression that small donors have contributed to Bush's windfall, when big donors have truly made the difference.

Aides for several other candidates said they did not expect to follow suit with what for them would amount to a time-consuming and arduous effort.

In his statement, Bush said visitors to his World Wide Web site, www.georgewbush.com, would get a full, accurate picture of his support.

"What they will find is that their friends and neighbors, grass-roots people in every state in this nation, are responding to my message of prosperity with a purpose by sending in $20 or $50 or $100 or a maximum of $1,000 to help elect me president," Bush said.

Bush has raised so much money so quickly that he has already decided not to seek federal matching funds for the Republican primaries, freeing himself from or to be bound by spending limits in pivotal primary states.

Kiki Moore, a spokeswoman for Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic front-runner, who has not raised as much money as Bush, cited that decision in appraising Bush's announcement.

"It's a token gesture," Ms. Moore said.

A visitor to Bush's Web site can see, on a seemingly endless alphabetical inventory, that Mary Abel, a retiree from Temperance, Mich., gave Bush $25 on Aug 16 and that Joseph Zito, a United Parcel Service vice president who lives in Prospect, Ky., gave him $1,000 on July 22.

But the information is not organized in a fashion that permits a quick tabulation of the number of donors or speedy analysis of who they are. Advocates of new campaign finance regulations said that Bush could have chosen a more accessible format.

"First of all, it's great that they're revealing it," said Larry Makinson, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics. "This is setting a new standard."

But, Makinson added, "The format that they're using makes it impossible to do anything but scan names. They want to make it look like the Bush campaign is being supported by grass-roots people all over the country. The reality is that those donors don't count for much."

Ms. Miller, of Public Campaign, said that an analysis of money raised by Bush and other candidates in the first two quarters showed that 92 percent of Bush's funds came in increments of $200 or more. She said that 89 percent of Gore's money came in such increments.

Responding to Makinson's complaint about the format of the list, Mindy Tucker, a spokeswoman for Bush, said that the information was provided in a way to discourage people from electronically copying and from using the list to make their own solicitations.

Ms. Tucker said that the campaign had not encountered a situation in which a donor objected to the release of his or or her name before the end of a mandatory reporting period, and did not expect that to happen. The current period ends on Sept. 30, after which all the candidates will provide detailed donor information accessible on various Internet sites.

Under federal election law, individuals can contribute no more than $1,000 to a campaign. Political action committees can contribute up to $5,000, and while PAC's are not usually big givers during the presidential primaries, they fattened Bush's campaign coffers by $213,222 during the summer months.

That sum included contributions of $5,000 from PACs associated with Ashland Inc.; Bracewell & Patterson, a large Texas law firm; Credit Suisse First Boston; Delta; Mass Mutual; National Semiconductor Corp.; Sinclair Broadcast Group and Glaxo Wellcome.

Bush has proposed raising the individual contribution limit, which has remained unchanged for a quarter of a century, to $3,000. He has also said he supports banning some kinds of soft money -- the largely unregulated contributions to political parties -- but not on as broad a level as a bill pending in Congress would.

Bush's total fund-raising tally has clearly exceeded $50 million by now, although aides would confirm nothing beyond the Aug. 26 figure of $49,250,000. The previous record was set by Bob Dole, the Republican presidential nominee in 1996, who raised $31.3 million over an 18-month period leading up to the election.

Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company

The Political Pages			*The Political Pages*
			*Government Links*
			*Return Home*