FUND RAISING

By Viveca Novak

The first guilty pleas last week by Democratic fund raisers NORA and GENE LUM took some heat off Justice Department lawyers (hey, they're doing something; no need for an independent prosecutor) but raised the heat on a hitherto minor player in the fund-raising scandal: MICHAEL BROWN, son of the late Commerce Secretary. The Lums admitted conspiring to funnel about $50,000 in contributions through "straw donors" to SENATOR EDWARD KENNEDY and an Oklahoma House candidate in 1994 and 1995, and they agreed to cooperate with investigators, who have recently been focusing on Brown, a donor to Kennedy around the same time. Brown was given $500,000 worth of stock in the couple's Dynamic Energy Resources Inc., a separate $160,000 payment and a golf-club membership. With the pressure on him, say close observers of the proceedings, Brown may be tempted to cut his own deal, and he just may have information to trade on former D.N.C. official MARVIN ROSEN, who was at the controls of the runaway Democratic fund-raising machine during the '96 election, was a lobbyist at the same firm as Brown and was also a Kennedy confidant. The Lums have tales to tell about many other figures in the fund-raising scandal. They crossed paths with the likes of notorious Democratic fund raisers JOHN HUANG and CHARLIE TRIE. And NORA LUM certainly knows her way around the White House: she visited 18 times during Clinton's first term.

--By Viveca Novak