Inaugural donors: It's an investment
10:08 PM CST on Monday, January 17, 2005
By WAYNE SLATER / The Dallas Morning News
AUSTIN – Electrical contractor Ty Runyan says he likes President Bush's efforts to curb union organizing, so he's showing his appreciation this week with $100,000 for the inauguration.
"Bush has been very pro-business," said Mr. Runyan, whose non-union Austin company is one of scores of big-dollar donors with interests in Washington who are helping to underwrite the inaugural festivities
More than 150 corporations, trade associations, lobby groups and wealthy individuals have contributed six-figure sums for a button-down bacchanalia expected to cost up to $40 million. Most have benefited from Bush administration policies.
Critics say the donors want special treatment at the expense of regular citizens who don't have the money to schmooze with administration figures and congressional leaders.
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"What they've set up here is a corporate and special-interest-subsidized inauguration," said Larry Noble, executive director of the Center for Responsible Politics, a nonprofit group that monitors political spending.
"They're doing this as an investment."
Donors say they're expressing good citizenship. Mr. Bush dismissed criticism of the corporate largess, telling reporters last week that he sees no problem having private contributors pay for the week's parade, candlelight dinners and gala balls. "There's no taxpayer money involved in this," he said.
The swearing-in itself and security arrangements will be paid by the federal government.
Mr. Noble said the unprecedented outpouring of corporate cash is the product of ever-evolving campaign finance laws.
Federal statutes limit individual contributions to political candidates at $2,000. And the McCain-Feingold law passed three years ago bars corporations from donating unlimited amounts, so-called soft money, to political parties.
That leaves political conventions and presidential inaugurations, both exempt from limits, as ways for big-money donors to express support.
"They just view this as part of their government-relations program, their lobby program," Mr. Noble said.
Host of interests
The top-tier donors – $250,000 – have a host of interests pending in Washington: oil and gas companies pressing to open more public lands for exploration; power companies seeking lower pollution standards; Wall Street investment firms that stand to gain from private Social Security accounts; pharmaceutical companies that favored the prescription drug benefit in Medicare; defense contractors; beer and tobacco companies; and manufacturers that have benefited from tax cuts.
In exchange, donors get tickets to the most-prized inaugural events with an opportunity to rub shoulders with the president, vice president and key decision-makers in Congress.
Moreover, the week is festooned with a host of unofficial inaugural events sponsored by corporations and K-Street lobbyists that will play out in hotel ballrooms, law offices and corporate suites across Washington.
Tonight, for example, Gov. Rick Perry will be feted by beer, liquor, trucking and tobacco interests at a gala in the National Building Museum featuring rockers Ted Nugent and ZZ Top.
Bill Webb, president and chief executive of the Texas Motor Transportation Association, which is a lead organizer, said he hopes the party will raise the group's political profile in Washington. Cabinet members, governors and members of Congress from outside Texas have called for tickets, he said.
"A governor calls and you're not going to turn him down," Mr. Webb said.
'Fantastic investment'
Mr. Runyan said he's a small-businessman, not a longtime political mega-donor, whose fight with organized labor prompted him to start giving money. "Prior to two years ago, I had no interest in politics," he said.
He praised Bush appointees to the National Labor Relations Board, which has delivered some stinging defeats for labor. And he is backing a GOP-sponsored bill that would make it harder to organize non-union sites.
Mr. Runyan said he ran up a fortune in legal fees defending himself against organizing efforts by members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. He said the union damaged his equipment and sought to put him out of business.
"Having spent a half-million dollars in one year on legal fees, you think spending $100,000 to support my president who represents American business is a bad investment?" he said. "No. I think it's a fantastic investment."
Ed Sills of the Texas AFL-CIO said Mr. Runyan is an anti-union employer whose six-figure contribution to the Bush inaugural "tells me that business must be pretty good."
Longtime supporters
While some of this year's donors are newcomers like Mr. Runyan, many are longtime financial Bush supporters:
•Texas oilman Boone Pickens, whose most recent venture includes speculating on water rights, has been a consistent contributor to the Republican Party and gave $2.5 million to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which attacked Democrat John Kerry during last year's presidential election, and $2.5 million for another independent group to air a pro-Bush television commercial in Ohio.
Spokesman Jay Rosser said Mr. Pickens gave $250,000 to help pay for the inauguration because he believes in the president, not because he is seeking any special favors.
"Boone is 76, and there's not a lot left that he needs," Mr. Rosser said. "He hates sitting on committees or through long committee hearings. He has no interest in an ambassadorship or government service of any kind."
•Dallas financier Harold Simmons gave $100,000 to the inauguration. Mr. Simmons has benefited from administration tax cuts and is seeking to bury millions of cubic feet of radioactive waste from federal nuclear weapons facilities at a site in West Texas.
Like Mr. Pickens, Mr. Simmons helped boost Mr. Bush's re-election with $4 million to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
•Houston-based Waste Management Inc. has given $100,000 to the inauguration. The company, which operates landfills, is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Among the $250,000 inaugural contributors is Southern Co., an Atlanta-based power company whose executive vice president was a Bush Ranger, an elite tier of donors who each raised $200,000 for the president's re-election. The Bush administration sided with Southern and other coal-fired utilities in 2003 by changing federal pollution rules.
Other donors include Las Vegas gambling executive Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam Adelson, who each contributed $250,000. Gambling and hotel interests that are helping finance the inauguration have a stake in having a ready supply of low-wage immigrant labor.
Staff writer Todd J. Gillman in Washington contributed to this report.
E-mail wslater@dallasnews.com
RESOURCE
For more information about donors to the inauguration: www.inaugural05.com/donors/
INAUGURAL FINANCIAL FRIENDS
A sampling of the larger contributors to President Bush's inauguration:
Contributor Amount Interests With Federal Government
Chevron Texaco $250,000
Long-stalled energy bill and expansion of exploration to offshore and public wilderness areas.
Marriott International $250,000
Federal immigration policies producing a large labor pool.
Pfizer Inc. $250,000
Regulation of prescription drug benefits in Medicare.
Southern Co. $250,000
Environmental regulations exempting some older coal-fired plants from installing new pollution control equipment.
Richard T. Farmer, Cincinnati $100,000
Pollution rules governing industrial laundries.
WellCare $100,000
Medicaid overhaul that would move more low-income mental-health patients into managed care.
International Paper $100,000
Federal regulations allowing forest managers more leeway authorizing logging on public land.
Goldman Sachs $100,000
Private investment accounts as part of Social Security.
Harold Simmons, Dallas $100,000
Plans to import federal radioactive waste from Ohio and bury it in West Texas.
Lockheed Martin $100,000
Federal defense contracts.
SOURCE: Bush-Cheney Inaugural Committee
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/011805dnnatmoney.3b746.html
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