It’s a long way from San Antonio to Bangor, Maine, more than 2,000 miles by car. But that distance didn’t deter former GOP Rep. Tom Loeffler of Texas and his wife, Nancy, from taking a keen interest in the Bangor Republican Committee.
On Oct. 17, Nancy Loeffler signed a check for $225, sending it to Donald Lewis of Bangor, a supporter of Texas Sen. Phil Gramm’s presidential campaign. Lewis took the check to Betty Bowers, chairwoman of the Bangor Republicans, and told her it was to purchase 15 tickets to the Maine Republican straw poll for Gramm supporters.
Bowers thought it strange that she would be getting a check from Texas for Maine straw poll tickets, but she said Lewis assured her, “This is how they all do it.”
Spreading the cash around straw polls across the country certainly is how Gramm does it–in ways that fully exploit the shortcomings in federal campaign finance laws.
In the year before a presidential election, many candidates dismiss straw polls–essentially elections without consequences–as meaningless, rigged games. But to the Gramm campaign, every straw poll represents an opportunity to argue Gramm’s strength, even as he remains in single digits in most national polls.
Even as voters say they are angered and frustrated by the role that big money plays in politics, the practice of using contributions to buy support continues to flourish. A host of well-intentioned campaign finance laws have erected paper-thin barriers easily pierced by crafty campaigns.
And straw polls, once little more than beer hall rallies and party fundraisers, have become increasingly important, especially for attention-starved candidates and results-hungry media during the long presidential party nomination process.
Nowhere will that be more evident than this weekend in Florida, where nearly 3,400 delegates will cast a straw vote expressing a preference for a GOP presidential candidate.
Winning a straw poll almost always costs money, if not in direct ticket-buying, then in organization, advertising and staffing. For Gramm, it has been a sinewy combination of them all.
From Maine to Arizona, the Gramm straw-poll machine has scored wins–three dozen so far. His most important performance came in August in Iowa when, thanks to buying thousands of dollars worth of tickets with the help of out-of-state financial backers, he won a first-place tie with Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole.
That Iowa poll, like most, was meaningless in terms of nominating national convention delegates, but nonetheless used by media and politicians as a benchmark of Dole’s precarious front-runner status and Gramm’s standing as a challenger. In the Iowa straw poll, almost anyone could vote who bought a ticket, regardless of their residency.
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Gary Koops, a spokesman for Gramm, said the out-of-state funding is “perfectly legal” and that people such as Loeffler support Republicans nationwide.
As Republican candidates prepare to head to Florida, they have declared the GOP straw vote as really important. The stakes for Dole–who has said he must win–Gramm and the others are enormous. Millions of dollars have been spent.
But unlike most straw polls, votes in Florida cannot be purchased, at least not directly. Delegates have been selected in advance by the state party, although there are some loopholes in the process, and Dole, Gramm and former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander have been desperately courting the 3,393 delegates. Instead of buying votes they have borne gifts, written letters and made personal visits and uncounted phone calls.
Gramm’s straw-poll operation has an exceptionally long reach. In Iowa, for instance, the family of Florida developer Alec Courtelis, Gramm’s national finance chairman, bought 800 tickets for $20,000.
Members of the Courtelis family and the Loefflers of San Antonio have something else in common. Their checks to buy straw poll votes for Gramm are in addition to the maximum $1,000 direct individual contributions they already had made to the Gramm campaign.
The Federal Election Commission said it’s unclear whether someone who has contributed the maximum amount of money to a presidential campaign can make additional contributions that indirectly benefit the same campaign.
“The FEC hasn’t answered that question in an advisory opinion nor has it been addressed in regulations,” said FEC spokesman Ian Stirton. “It’s a very good question.”
Records from the Iowa straw poll show that among the well-heeled Gramm supporters who bought thousands of tickets were New York real estate investor Lawrence Kadish (1,000 tickets for $25,000) and Dallas investor Samuel Wyly (500 tickets for $12,500).
Gramm is not alone. Other campaigns pumped in tens of thousands of dollars in out-of-state money to influence the Iowa result. Former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander chartered two planes with about 300 people to come to the state to vote for him.
The Gramm operation in the Maine Republican straw poll provides the most recent window on how the process works. Bowers said that after she took the check from Lewis, she deposited it into a local account, then wrote a check on the committee account to buy the tickets from the state party organization.
She said was taken aback by the Gramm campaign’s tactics. “This isn’t how it should be done,” Bowers said. “They said this is how they all do it. I can tell you that no other candidate did that to us.
“They are buying votes as far as I am concerned. Why would you let someone pay your way if you weren’t going to vote for them? . . . (Lewis) gave it to me and told me it was to pay for the list of delegates he gave me.”
But Lewis estimated that the Gramm campaign sent out-of-state money to buy only about 100 tickets among the fewer than 2,000 that were sold. He said he received the check from the Gramm campaign and gave it to Bowers for tickets for delegates he identified as Gramm supporters.
He said many people simply couldn’t afford the $15 ticket price. “Fifteen dollars is a tank of gas, it’s two meals,” Lewis said.
Rick Tyler, director of the Maine Republican Party, said local party officials had tried to establish guidelines to limit the impact of vote buying from what flyers called “flat landers.” Originally, tickets only could be purchased from local town Republican organizations, but there was essentially no way to monitor how they were purchased. And those who actually cast votes, he said, were verified as registered Republicans in Maine.
“We tried, to the largest extent possible, to control this and keep it on the up and up,” Tyler said.
Gramm’s campaign also exploited a staple of straw polls: Recruit college students, often lured by the prospect of free food and drink, to participate. Many college students actually live in Massachusetts, Tyler said, but claim Maine residency.
The results of the Maine straw poll did not make much news. Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana was probably the biggest loser because he had purchased ads in the state and hoped to use a win there as a measure of viability.
He was no match for the Gramm straw-poll machine. When the votes were counted in Maine, Gramm had 602 votes, 42 percent of the vote, with a 2-to-1 lead over Lugar.