John Kerry, the Democratic favourite to face United States President George Bush in the US presidential elections, has taken millions of dollars in financial backing from special interests and lobbyists. Kerry, who has made fighting special interests a key part of his campaign, has also backed legislation favouring some of his donors and written letters on behalf of corporate backers.
Questions about Kerry’s financial backers come as his campaign has been forced to fight back against sex-scandal rumours after a right-wing gossip website alleged the Massachusetts senator had had an affair with a much younger intern. After weeks of positive press, Kerry’s background is now coming under intense scrutiny as the fight with Bush looms.
Kerry — like Bush — has recruited an army of ”bundlers” who skip around strict campaign finance laws by gathering $2 000 cheques from friends and employees into bundles of $50 000 or $100 000. Kerry has 32 $100 000 bundlers and 87 $50 000 bundlers. They come mainly from powerful law firms, real estate companies, financiers and lobbyists.
Kerry has received more money from lobbyists over the past 15 years than any other serving senator. Some of Kerry’s close links with lobbyists have raised eyebrows among supporters used to his campaign slogan: ”From the moment I take up office, I will stand up to special interests.”
Kerry has strong ties to lobbyists for the telecommunications industry. Michael Whouley, a top Kerry political aide, is a registered lobbyist for telecoms giant AT&T. Kerry has also taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from Boston lobbying firm Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky. Kerry’s brother Cameron is a lawyer for the company, which represents communications firms and the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA).
Between 1999 and 2002 Kerry sponsored two law Bills and co-sponsored six more that were seen as advantageous to the CTIA’s interests. One of Kerry’s main bundlers, Chris Putala, is employed as a lobbyist by the CTIA.
”We are beyond the point of whether he takes money from special interests, but rather what, if anything, has been done in response to the funds,” said Steve Weiss, spokesperson for the Centre for Responsive Politics watchdog.
Kerry and his wife are also personally linked to the fortunes of the telecommunications industry. Official records show the couple have at least $17-million invested in firms with a stake in the industry. Tracing the actual effect that donations have on politicians’ decisions is virtually impossible. A Kerry spokesperson has denied Kerry has ever acted in response to donations.
But Paul Davis, co-founder of internet firm Predictive Networks, has seen the process of how fund-raising and legislation mix. Kerry met a top Predictive executive on July 25 2000. A day later Kerry introduced a Senate Bill that would allow internet firms to monitor what their consumers were viewing and that Predictive had been lobbying for. In February 2002 Predictive chief executive Devin Hosea threw a fund-raiser for Kerry in Boston. Kerry was given a lift back to Washington DC in a private jet. Hosea threw a second fund-raising party that summer. In the end Hosea become one of Kerry’s $100 000 ”bundlers”.
Davis said many executives and investors at the firm were disturbed by the links with Kerry, as they were Republican supporters. But some even wrote Kerry cheques at the parties.
”One [Republican] wrote out a cheque for the maximum amount. Philosophically, you look at that and think what could they possibly have in common,” Davis told The Observer.
Davis said there was never any suggestion from Kerry or his staff that there was a ”quid pro quo” deal on offer but that some Predictive executives had assumed it was implied.
In 1996 Kerry accepted money raised by controversial Taiwanese entrepreneur Johnny Chung after writing a letter to help a businesswoman friend of Chung’s. Chung later pleaded guilty to funnelling illegal donations to the campaigns of Kerry and Bill Clinton. More recently disgraced ex-senator Bob Torricelli admitted he was raising cash for Kerry’s campaign. Torricelli was the subject of a high-profile investigation into fund-raising favours that ended his career in 2002.
All of this punches a hole in the key aspect of Kerry’s dramatic rise to the front of the Democratic race: his ”electability”. The first Republican attack ad of the presidential campaign was e-mailed to six million people last week. It concentrated solely on Kerry’s links to special interests.
Republicans think Kerry cannot be stopped by his rivals and they now know their opponent. Many Democrats believe that is why allegations over Kerry’s sex life have now been made on the Drudge Report, a gossip website that broke the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The woman at the heart of the alleged affair, a former journalist, is believed to be hiding in Kenya.
Democrats see the Drudge story as a smear to take the heat off Bush at a time of growing disquiet about his service in the National Guard during the Vietnam War. It is a long-standing Republican strategy to leak stories to right-wing websites, which are picked up by mainstream media.
So far, despite worldwide coverage of the allegations and a strong denial from the Kerry camp, the major US newspapers and television networks have been slow to cover the story.
Even some Republicans expressed dismay that the story emerged.
”It is unsubstantiated crap. I want Kerry to lose, but I respect him and this sort of stuff just dumbs down America,” said Ron Kaufman, a top Republican strategist. Many Republicans believe they don’t need dirty tricks. They will use Kerry’s votes to cut defence spending and raise taxes to portray him as weak on national security and a fiscal liberal.
They will also use Kerry’s position on gay marriage to show him as far to the left of middle America.
”He is both economically and culturally too liberal when it comes to people in the key battleground states,” said Stephen Moore, head of the right-wing Club for Growth, which has close ties with the White House.
Republicans are starting to see Kerry as a possible repeat of the disastrous campaign of Michael Dukakis in 1988. Kerry was Dukakis’s deputy when Dukakis was governor in Massachusetts.
”We just have to say Massachusetts liberal. That’s enough to put people off,” said Kaufman.
So far Kerry has used his aura as a Vietnam War hero to shrug off attacks, but Democratic strategists remember the Republican campaign run against Democratic senator Max Cleland in 2002.
Despite Cleland losing two legs and one arm in Vietnam, Republicans portrayed him as weak on national security. They ran TV ads against Cleland with pictures of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Cleland lost. — Guardian Unlimited Â