Take It to the Limit -- and Beyond

By WALTER SHAPIRO

Consider this bizarre, but typical, routine from the 1988 presidential campaign: Bob Dole's Iowa campaign director often sleeps in Omaha or Moline, Ill. Or this more cynical aspect: young, fresh-faced volunteers for candidates in Iowa or New Hampshire sometimes receive their living expenses off the books, being handed $20 bills in out-of-the-way motel rooms.

The cause of these contortions is one of the worst election laws on the books, the Pollyannaish effort to limit the amount a campaign can spend in each state. Enacted in 1974 under the guise of fairness, these artificial ceilings are ludicrously low for the Iowa caucuses ($770,000) and the New Hampshire primary ($460,400).

Presidential campaigns will live or die in these early tests, but the candidates are forced to spend amounts that would be inadequate to win some seats in the California state senate. Small wonder that this year, as in every campaign since 1976, contenders are vying with one another to invent the most artful ways to beat the cap. Almost all direct mail to undecided Iowa voters, for example, comes with an awkward postscript asking for contributions. The rationale: fund-raising appeals are exempt from the state spending caps.

Campaign managers know that strictly abiding by the rules is an invitation to almost certain defeat. The prevailing ethos is to skirt the limits as aggressively as one dares. In Iowa, political operatives estimate that some campaigns in both parties will spend close to $2 million each, with many of the expenditures dubiously allocated to other states or exempt under federal loopholes. Even if campaign officials get caught, says Jim Lake, press secretary for the 1984 Reagan re-election effort, "at least they won't have to say they lost because they didn't spend enough."

Cynicism is rampant because enforcement by the Federal Election Commission is belated and haphazard. Not until 1987 did Walter Mondale's campaign pay a slap-on-the-wrist fine for grossly exceeding the Iowa and New Hampshire limits in 1984. Ronald Reagan too went way over the New Hampshire cap in 1980. Even FEC Press Official Sharon Snyder concedes, "If you were to look at all the prior campaigns, you'd get the feeling that the ones who got to the conventions were those who went over the spending limits in Iowa and New Hampshire."

About the only plausible defense for the spending limits is that they buttress long-shot candidates. "It's sort of like the speed limit," says Pat Mitchell, Paul Simon's Iowa coordinator. "It keeps the carnage down." Most campaign spending experts, such as Herbert Alexander of the University of Southern California, would like to see the state caps eliminated. "They're ridiculously low," he says, "and they lead to subterfuge." All too often, in fact, the result is an amoral minuet in which the end (the White House) justifies all sorts of quasi-legal chicanery. "There is retail chiseling, like renting a car in Massachusetts and driving it to New Hampshire," explains a top Republican campaign staffer. "And then there is wholesale blowing off of the limits -- spend now and pay the fine later."

Among the Democrats, Richard Gephardt is widely accused of cap busting in Iowa. In the closing days before the caucuses, Albert Gore made the charge directly, while Simon Campaign Manager Brian Lunde piously suggested that Gephardt pull his television ads. Like several of his Democratic rivals, including Simon, Gephardt had spent nearly $500,000 in Iowa by the end of 1987. Last week the Los Angeles Times estimated that Gephardt's 1988 Iowa advertising costs had already hit $280,000, adding up to what seemed prima facie evidence of spending violations. The Gephardt camp argued that some of the TV ads had been purchased in 1987, but failed to explain how they could maintain 120 field organizers in Iowa in the closing weeks of the campaign without exceeding the ceiling.

Gephardt may be the most flagrant, but he is far from the only cap culprit. All major campaigns in both parties take advantage of loopholes in FEC regulations. Television time is a prime example: ads broadcast into Iowa from Omaha stations are mostly charged to the Nebraska ceiling, even though that state's primary is not until May 10. The best way to reach most New Hampshire voters is to advertise on Boston TV, but the FEC accepts the fiction that more than half of this cost should be allocated to Massachusetts.

Similarly, interstate travel by the candidates does not count against state ceilings. This is the best explanation for Jack Kemp's zigzag itinerary last week, as he hopscotched from Sioux City, Iowa, to Omaha to Des Moines to Minneapolis to Moline to Waterloo, Iowa. Had Kemp followed the otherwise rational course of simply flying Sioux City-Des Moines-Waterloo, the entire trip would have been logged against his Iowa cap.

No FEC stricture invites so much abuse as the "four-day rule." If a national campaign staffer spends four straight days in Iowa or New Hampshire, his salary and expenses are billed to that state's ceiling. But if he flees to Omaha or Boston for 24 hours, none of these activities count against the cap. Sneaking across the border is increasingly common, and there is active trafficking in out-of-state hotel receipts as campaigns collect them for fake "documentation" in case of an FEC audit. This practice has produced a colorful addition to the campaign lexicon: to pumpkin describes the plight of a hapless aide who does not make it over the state border by the Cinderella stroke of midnight on the fourth day. Says Dole of the four-day rule: "It's crazy."

As the campaign days grow short, staffers are frequently going underground to stay in Iowa and New Hampshire for more than the legal four days. In a small town in Iowa last week, a top aide to a Democratic contender whispered in spy-novel fashion, "I'm staying at this hotel, but under an assumed name."

Other gambits to skirt the cap help breed disrespect for more serious campaign-spending laws as well. A wealthy contributor may surreptitiously donate his Avis or Hertz number to a campaign, thereby allowing organizers to drive around Iowa free for a month. The primary goal may be to evade the ceiling, but the further disturbing result is that the "fat cat" is allowed to ignore the $1,000 limit on individual contributions.

Whether or not they bust the cap, most contenders in both parties will be nearly broke after New Hampshire. Only George Bush and Bob Dole among the Republicans and, to a lesser extent, Democrats Michael Dukakis and thrifty Albert Gore will have a comfortable cash cushion for the Super Tuesday primaries in the South. Even some of the early victors may be in trouble, since the rapacious demands of TV campaigns in the South could outstrip the abilities of their fund raisers. That is the underlying truth of presidential politics: it is extremely difficult to win without early money, as Gary Hart came to learn in 1984. This imbalance in resources may be unfortunate, but it is a problem that will not be rectified through ill-conceived campaign- spending limits.

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CREDIT: TIME Chart by Cynthia Davis

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DESCRIPTION: Cash on hand as of January 1, 1988, and contributions made in 1987 to presidential candidates George Bush, Pat Robertson, Robert Dole, Michael Dukakis, Jack Kemp, Pierre du Pont, Richard Gephardt, Paul Simon, Albert Gore, Gary Hart, Jesse Jackson, Bruce Babbitt and Alexander Haig.

With reporting by Laurence I. Barrett and Michael Duffy/Des Moines