Lingle campaign Tapping into the political networks of former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Dole Food Co.'s billionaire Chairman David Murdock, Republican gubernatorial candidate Linda Lingle raised more than one out of eight dollars outside Hawaii during the 1998 election.
funds flow from
out-of-state donors
Records show more than $422,000
Who they are
came from outside sourcesBy Rick Daysog
rdaysog@starbulletin.comNow she's setting a more ambitious goal for her mainland fund raising for this year's race.
Since 1996, the former Maui mayor collected more than $422,000 from about 400 out-of-state Republicans, according to a Star-Bulletin computer-assisted analysis.
The amount is more than double the offshore donations raised during the past six years by either Gov. Ben Cayetano, who defeated Lingle by about 5,000 votes in 1998, and Honolulu Mayor Jeremy Harris, who plans to run for governor as a Democrat this year.
The out-of-state money also highlights the national attention to this year's race for Washington Place, which has been occupied by a Democrat for more than four decades.
Lingle, who raised $3.1 million total from Hawaii and mainland interests for the 1998 race, hopes to collect $5 million this year, with about $1 million of that coming from the mainland.
With Harris' campaign mired in controversy over his political fund raising, high-profile GOP players are flocking to Lingle's aid. Connecticut Gov. John Rowland hosted a lunch on Lingle's behalf last week, while Arizona Gov. Jane Hull will hold a fund-raiser for Lingle later this week.
But Giuliani -- Time magazine's "Person of the Year" for his efforts after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- will likely play a more prominent role than any other mainland politician.
Giuliani, a moderate Republican like Lingle, will host a fund-raiser for her in New York in April and may travel to Honolulu to host an event later this year.
In 1998, Giuliani held a $1,000-a-person fund-raiser for Lingle and helped raise $65,000 from dozens of prominent New York Republicans, state campaign spending records show. They included:
>> Leveraged buyout king Henry Kravis, who gave $5,000;"These are the kind of people who I want to talk to about investing in Hawaii, creating jobs here and seeing the islands as a bridge between the U.S. and Asia," said Lingle.>> Richard Parsons, AOL Time Warner Inc.'s Chief Executive and a former University of Hawaii student, $1,000;
>> New York developer Tishman Speyer Properties, $5,000;
>> Republican fund-raiser Georgette Mosbacher, $2,500;
>> David Neeleman, chief executive of low fare carrier JetBlue Airways Corp., $2,500;
>> Jonathan Tisch, chairman of Loews Hotel Corp., $1,000. Parent company Loews Corp. also chipped in $1,000.
Bob Watada, state Campaign Spending Commission executive director, has a problem with so much campaign money coming from the mainland.
Voters and regulators, he said, have a hard time telling whether any of the donations are linked to corporations with a vested interest in an election.
Watada, who supports a complete ban of all corporate contributions for local elections, said he began an informal inquiry into Lingle's mainland contributions nearly three years ago. He also took a look at more than $400,000 in "soft money" donations that the Republican National Committee and various state Republican parties gave the Republican Party of Hawaii in 1998.
But Watada said he dropped the inquiry after he determined that Lingle and the local Republican Party did not violate any state laws.
Lingle defended her use of mainland money, saying it shows the importance that people there place on Hawaii's governor race.
Compared to local congressional leaders and mainland politicians, the proportion of out-of-state contributions is not that high, she added. Former U.S. Rep. Robert Dornan, for instance, raised about 70 percent of his campaign funds outside of his home state of California.
Lingle noted that a vast majority of her contributions come from local residents and since she has been out of office for four years, she did not receive that many contributions from government contractors.
What's more, nearly 75 percent of the 4,200 donations to her campaign during the 1998 campaign were for $200 or less, indicating widespread grassroots support, she said.
With the exception of Parsons, whose company AOL Time Warner owns Oceanic Cable, and Kravis, whose investment banking firm owns the 781-room Grand Wailea Resort & Spa, the mainland contributors do not have significant business interests in Hawaii. But many share Lingle's middle-of-the-road political views.
For instance, Kravis, a leading financer of GOP centrist causes, helped bankroll the Republican Leadership Council as a counterweight to the influence of the conservative movement.
But the donors' connections go beyond political philosophy. Several are part of Giuliani's inner network and sat on city boards during Giuliani's tenure.
Abraham Biderman, who gave $400 to Lingle on Sept. 15, 1998, was a member of the 1999 New York Charter Revision Committee, while developer Alan Friedberg, who gave $1,000 to Lingle on that same day, was a member of the Metropolitan Transit Authority's board in the Giuliani years.
Yeshoshua Balkany, a well-known Jewish activist in New York and dean of the Bais Yaakov Academy in Brooklyn, gave $3,000. Balkany was dubbed the "Brooklyn Bundler" by Common Cause magazine for his expertise in serving as an intermediary who rounds up political contributions from friends, family and associates.
Balkany told the Star-Bulletin he has never met Lingle. All he can recall is that he was asked to attend a fund-raiser by a Giuliani associate.
"I remember speaking to somebody who said that they needed to help somebody coming in who was running for office in Hawaii," Balkany said.
Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan, Washington, D.C.-based political watchdog organization, likens such contributors to "accidental donors." While they may not know the candidate, they end up giving because of their loyalty to the fund-raiser.
"It gets somewhat intriguing when you have someone like (Giuliani) shaking the trees," Lewis said. "You don't know if they're giving money for the candidate or because of Giuliani."
Lingle also benefited from the largesse of Dole Food's Murdock. According to Campaign Spending Commission filings, people affiliated with Dole Food, Murdock's privately owned Castle & Cooke Inc., and Murdock himself made 21 contributions totaling $31,050. They included:
>> A $2,000 donation by Murdock on Aug. 5, 1998;A Dole spokeswoman said contributions by Murdock and various Dole board members were made on a personal basis. Murdock could not be reached.>> Another $2,000 from Dole Food on the same day;
>> And more than $17,000 in contributions by Dole director Ed Hogan, his immediate family and Hogan's company, Pleasant Hawaiian Holidays.
Lingle said that, compared to the millions he has raised for mainland Republicans, Murdock's donations to her are modest. She noted that Murdock often contributes to local candidates in both political parties.
Castle & Cooke owns 95,000 acres in Hawaii including most of Lanai, which is in Maui County. Publicly traded Dole Food owns another 28,500 acres in Hawaii.
Calling her relationship with Murdock cordial over the years, Lingle said: "We didn't always agree, but we always got along."
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A look at the donors
A who's who of New York's Republican Party contributed more than $65,000 to Linda Lingle's 1998 gubernatorial race on two days, Aug. 31, 1998, and Sept. 15, 1998. A snapshot of who they are and what they gave:
>> Yeshoshua Balkany: ($3,000) An Orthodox Jewish rabbi, Balkany is a major player in Republican fund-raising circles, having raised more than a million dollars for prominent Republicans such as ex-Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush, and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
>> Abraham Biderman: ($400) An executive vice president with Lipper & Co., a rater of mutual funds, he was on the 1999 (City) Charter Revision Committee during the Giuliani years. He also served as commissioner for the Department of Finance and Department of Housing Preservation and Development under former Mayor Ed Koch.
>> J. Morton Davis: ($500) Davis is the chairman of the Wall Street firm of D.H. Blair Investment Banking, a venture capital firm that specializes in biotech, telecom and pharmaceutical companies. A major contributor to Republican candidates, he and wife Rosalind Davis made more than $83,000 in contributions to various GOP candidates in 1996, including $10,000 to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's political action committee, GOPAC.
In 1996, D.H. Blair Co., a now-defunct brokerage firm founded by Davis, paid a $100,000 fine to the Federal Election Commission, which alleged the firm illegally used political donor lists to solicit investment clients.
>> Fischbein, Badillo, Wagner, Hard: ($2,000) This politically connected New York law firm is close to Giuliani. Giuliani named partner and former U.S. Rep. Herman Badillo to the board of the City University of New York.
>> Henry Kravis: ($5,000) The famed dealmaker is one of the partners of the Kohlberg Kravis and Roberts investment banking firm whose $25 billion leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco was immortalized in the best seller, "Barbarians at the Gate." During the late 1980s, Kravis was a member of former President George Bush's Team 100 list of donors after he contributed $100,000 to his presidential campaign.
>> Richard Parsons: ($1,000) Parsons, the new chief executive officer of AOL Time Warner who attended the University of Hawaii in the late 1960s, is a lifelong Republican who has had a role in every GOP administration since Richard Nixon. Under the current Bush administration, Parsons is chairman of a task force studying major changes in the Social Security system. In the mid-1970s, he worked with Giuliani in the beltway law firm of Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler.
>> Jonathan Tisch: ($1,000) Chief executive of Loews Hotels, the $60 billion Loews empire is controlled by the Tisch family, whose holdings include CNA Insurance and P. Lorillard & Sons, which makes Kent cigarettes.
>> Tishman Speyer Properties: ($5,000) This company is a major developer of downtown New York buildings. Tishman Speyer headed the redevelopment of Times Square, which was spearheaded by Giuliani. In December 2000, the company acquired the Rockefeller Center for $1.85 billion. President Jerry Speyer was recently named to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's transition team.
>> Steve Zackheim: ($2,500) Zackheim is chief operating officer of Metrocare, an ambulance company with several city contracts in New York. He is a big donor to Giuliani's Solutions American PAC.