Now Comes Venture-Capital Politics

By MARGARET CARLSON

Only in America could a boy born in a modest farmhouse in central Illinois grow up to be a Senate candidate with no previous political experience. Well, make that only in America--by way of Wall Street and a $35 million fortune to spend.

Money is what made it possible for Jon Corzine, the bearded, bespectacled and besweatered former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs, running on an unabashed liberal platform, to go from near anonymity to beat former Governor Jim Florio in last week's New Jersey primary. His open wallet opened the minds of many Democratic bosses to his novice candidacy--he even put spouses of party officials and a county chair on the payroll. Spending about $140 per vote cast, sprinkling more than $2 million in get-out-the-vote money around the state, he might as well have ferried each voter to the polls in a stretch limo.

Although personal money often isn't enough--ask Steve Forbes--it was in this case, partly because Florio was still widely unpopular for having haughtily raised taxes in 1990. Corzine won handily, even polling well in Florio's backyard. He now faces Republican Bob Franks from Hackensack, a generic four-term House member. And while Franks voted for Newt Gingrich's Contract with America, he's considered a moderate who sticks mostly to homegrown issues, like pipeline safety, waste disposal and noise reduction at Newark Airport.

The Corzine race wouldn't have got so much notice had he not become the poster child for Money in Politics. Wary of the image, Corzine let a couple of very expensive heads roll out the door of his headquarters last Thursday for spending money on things easy to ridicule: valet parking at a dinner in urban Elizabeth, lavish events in expensive hotels with tuxedoed waiters carving prime rib, and salaries approaching a quarter-million dollars a year. Corzine didn't settle for the usual in-house opposition research but spent $200,000 instead on a Manhattan attorney who subcontracted the dirty work to private investigators. (Corzine claims he ended the arrangement as soon as he found out about it.)

While the press loves to focus on the wretched excess of wealthy candidates, the public doesn't seem surprised. They recognize the eternal verity that the rich are different from you and me: they buy the best schools, the best doctors and the best vacations, so why wouldn't they buy the best political offices? And Congress squelches any attempt to change the system. Last week John McCain tried to curb a burgeoning money scam by forcing special-interest groups secretly backing candidates to clearly disclose who they are and what they are doing. But majority whip Tom DeLay's troops killed the Senate-backed reform in the House. Against that backdrop, Corzine's spending looks clean: at least he's using his own money, rather than being helped by the ads of obscure allies expecting favors in return.

Corzine has yet to master public speaking or the nuances of public policy, but he has emerged as more than a human checkbook. A mix of Mister Rogers and Warren Buffett, he talks softly and lives simply in a plain house in Summit. He earned his money the old-fashioned, pre-dotcom way, as one of the most successful, nerves-of-steel bond traders in Wall Street history. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Illinois and a former Marine, he worked his way through the University of Chicago's business school and up the ladder at Goldman. Although he lost his co-chairmanship of the firm in a complicated power struggle, he made no blood enemies. Flashy he's not. He has no private jet, no trophy wife. He's been married for 31 years to his kindergarten sweetheart and has three kids. He's given away millions to minority students and the arts, and helps out friends in need, paying the college tuitions for the kids of a friend with cancer.

Franks says he will make Corzine's money a major theme. Election night he trotted out the mantra that he has "experience money can't buy" and warned voters that Corzine might throw around their money the way he throws around his own. As if to make the point, while Corzine was serving shrimp and wine at the Hilton Hotel, Franks' election-night party featured Cheez-Its and a cash bar.

New Jersey is not hostile to wealthy candidates. Retiring Senator Frank Lautenberg spent $5 million out of his own pocket in 1982 to beat Millicent Fenwick, the venerable stateswoman often compared to Doonesbury's pipe-smoking Lacey Davenport. Franks says he hopes to raise $10 million, although competing in the most expensive media market in the country will require much more. Franks may find out that the biggest money problem a candidate can have is not having enough.