-Caveat Lector-
NYTimes
May 19, 2001
Inquiry Studies County Group's Role in '96 New Jersey Senate Race
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI and TIM GOLDEN
Until 1996, the Bergen County Democratic Organization was a
fairly
modest New Jersey political operation. Its money came mostly
from small
donations by county workers and local businesses, and it spent
carefully
to help candidates for offices like freeholder and sheriff.
Then, that summer, the Bergen County group began taking in
donations of
$10,000 and $20,000 from big corporations like Lockheed Martin.
It also
began spending large sums for items like "consulting" by the
private
investigations firm that former President Bill Clinton hired
after his
affair with a White House intern.
Now, some of those big donors have acknowledged that their
contributions
were solicited by representatives of Robert G. Torricelli, then
a
Democratic congressman representing Bergen County who was running
for
the United States Senate.
Public records and interviews also show that the Bergen County
group
paid thousands of dollars in salaries and other expenses for Mr.
Torricelli's successful Senate campaign - an arrangement that may
have
violated federal election laws, campaign finance experts say.
According to people involved in the inquiry, federal prosecutors
are now
examining whether Mr. Torricelli's campaign used the Bergen
County
group to evade restrictions on corporate donations.
A lawyer for Mr. Torricelli's campaign, Robert F. Bauer, would
not
discuss whether the candidate had asked some donors to give to
the
Bergen County group, or whether the Bergen County organization
had paid
some of the campaign's expenses, but asserted that those
practices were
both common and legal.
Experts in campaign finance issues, however, said they had a
different
view of the law on the contributions to party committees, known
as soft
money.
"A candidate can solicit soft money to a party committee and the
committee is allowed to take it," said a former chairman of the
Federal
Election Commission, Trevor Potter, referring to corporate
donations.
"But the committee is still limited in what they can do with that
money. They cannot use it to pay the candidate's campaign
expenses."
Political finance experts said that party committees could use
donations
gathered from individuals to make limited contributions to a
federal
campaign. But even then, they emphasized, such spending must be
done
through a registered committee and reported to the Federal
Election
Commission. During the 1996 campaign, the Bergen County group
neither
registered with the commission, officials said, nor reported any
of the
expenses that it covered for the Torricelli campaign.
The solicitation and use of corporate contributions by federal
candidates was the main target of the campaign finance
legislation that
was approved by the Senate last month. That legislation, the
McCain-
Feingold bill, would bar candidates from raising soft money to
help
their campaigns and restrict the ways in which party groups in
the
states can spend it. Mr. Torricelli voted for the bill, which
is to be
debated by the House this summer.
Questions about Mr. Torricelli's alliance with the Bergen
organization,
the party group for a county that has long been his political
base,
first surfaced this month in connection with a mailing to New
Jersey gun
owners.
According to people involved in the federal grand jury
investigation
into the activities of Mr. Torricelli and some of his aides,
prosecutors are examining whether the Torricelli campaign
secretly
arranged for the Bergen County Democratic Organization to pay
nearly
$37,000 for the mailing.
Documents from the federal inquiry show that prosecutors are also
looking at other spending by the Bergen County group that may be
linked
to the Torricelli campaign.
During the last months of that hard-fought race, the Bergen
County
Democrats received more than $100,000 from an unlikely assortment
of
corporate benefactors, including several companies run by
longtime
political supporters of Mr. Torricelli. The largest of those
donations
was $25,000 from HFS Inc., a large franchising company in
Parsippany,
N.J.
The company's chairman and chief executive at the time, Henry R.
Silverman, had already donated $2,000 to Mr. Torricelli's
campaign, the
maximum that an individual may give in one election cycle. In
August
1996, the Torricelli campaign returned an additional $1,000 from
Mr.
Silverman because it exceeded that limit, federal records show.
"Sometime over the summer, we asked, `What else can we do to
help?' or
they asked us, `Can you do something else to help?' " Mr.
Silverman
recalled in an interview. "And when we said we'd be willing to
do more,
they told us to give to the county."
Another longtime corporate supporter of Mr. Torricelli, the
Allied
Junction Corporation of South Hackensack, N.J., gave $10,000 to
the
Bergen County Democrats on Nov. 14. The company's former
president,
William McCann, said executives of the company had planned to
contribute
at a Torricelli fund-raising event and, when they did not, had
been
asked to give to the county group instead.
"Somewhere along the line, we were solicited for a donation to
the party
that could be used for campaign activities, " Mr. McCann said,
stressing that his memories of the contribution were vague.
"Most
likely, we would have dealt with Torricelli himself."
A spokeswoman for Lockheed Martin, Kathleen Dezio, said the
company had
no record of the $10,000 contribution it is listed as having made
to the
Bergen County group on Nov. 14, 1996.
At the headquarters of the Bergen County Democrats, the windfall
of
contributions coincided with some unusual spending.
According to financial statements that the group filed with the
State
Election Law Enforcement Commission, it spent $8,141.40 between
June 17
and November 28 on wages for Lorraine Cianfrone, a former union
organizer who acknowledged in an interview that she was then
working as
a full-time campaign aide.
The Bergen County group also reported that it paid $1,000 to
Nikia
Davies, who was then a college intern in Mr. Torricelli's New
Jersey
congressional office and worked on the Senate campaign as a
volunteer.
Ms.
Davies said in an interview that she could not recall receiving
the
payment.
Other payroll expenses listed by the Bergen Democrats include a
single
payment of $6,500 to Kevin C.
Noland, and payments totaling $1,427.16 to Kerri Hoberman, who
said
they, too, had done some work for the Torricelli campaign. Mr.
Noland,
who said he had "mostly volunteered" for Mr. Torricelli, would
not
comment on why he had been paid by the Bergen group. Ms.
Hoberman, who
was said by other campaign aides to have worked primarily on the
1996
campaign of Representative Steve Rothman, who took over Mr.
Torricelli's seat in the House, also declined to comment on the
matter.
Records show the county group paid $20,000 to Investigative Group
International, the private investigations firm, on Oct. 31,
1996.
A spokesman for the investigations firm - which is headed by
Terry
Lenzner, a former Watergate investigator, and also worked for Mr.
Clinton's lawyers after the Lewinsky scandal became public -
confirmed
the payment, but said he could not discuss any of the firm's
clients.
Neither the former chairman of the Bergen County Democrats,
Gerald
Calabrese, nor Donna Spoto, who was the group's executive
director,
would discuss the organization's finances. But a lawyer for Ms.
Spoto,
Paul Faugno, said she that was not involved in any wrongdoing.
The lawyer for Mr. Torricelli's campaign, Mr. Bauer, also
declined to
discuss the financial ties between the campaign and the county
group,
citing the continuing federal inquiry. But he suggested that
they were
permitted under election rules that allow state and national
party
organizations to spend limited amounts on behalf of federal
candidates.
"Anyone at all familiar with the law and the way coordinated
campaigns
are run, in congressional or presidential campaigns, knows that
these
are common and certainly not illegal practices," he said.
The Torricelli campaign did report $720,000 in spending on its
behalf by
party organizations in 1996, according to Sharon Snyder, a
spokeswoman
for the Federal Election Commission. All of that spending was
attributed to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
A subpoena served on the Bergen County Democratic Organization on
March
23 by federal investigators demanded any documents from the group
that
related to Mr. Torricelli, his campaign, five of his campaign
aides and
his fund-raising efforts.
The subpoena also asked for any documents or records relating to
Printing Craftsmen Inc., a printer in Fairview, N.J., that is
listed on
the Bergen Democrats' financial records as having been paid
$16,000 on
Oct. 18, 1996. Two Democratic officials and a former Torricelli
campaign aide said that payment may have gone to cover part of a
$35,000
debt that was owed to the printer for months by Mr. Torricelli's
campaign.
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
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The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To
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