Leaders of the Democratic National Committee met with top donors Saturday at a previously private retreat, trying to focus on the party’s successes.
The Democrats’ campaign finance controversy intruded, however, when Jayant Kolatra, an Indian-American businessman, complained in front of reporters that the controversy paints Asian-Americans in strokes too broad.
“When you talk about all Asian-Americans in one breath, it tends to make an impression,” said Kolatra, a financial consultant from Vienna, Va. “Asia is a very large continent.”
New Jersey Sen. Robert Torricelli agreed, telling about 120 donors at the Democratic Business Council’s weekend getaway at the Doral Resort and Spa that the campaign furor has been unfair to Asian-Americans.
“There is a real threat that a whole generation of Asian-Americans believing in this country and eager to participate in the political process are going to feel stigmatized and unwelcome,” Torricelli said to applause.
Former fundraiser John Huang, who headed a Democratic effort to raise millions from Asian-Americans, is a focus of congressional and Justice Department investigations into alleged Democratic Party fundraising abuses.
The DNC has returned nearly half of the $3.4 million Huang raised because much of it came from foreign donors barred by law from contributing to U.S. elections.
The Democratic Business Council comprises 2,000 business people who backed the party last year with at least $20 million. Each member must give at least $10,000 to the party to qualify. Corporations or political action committees must give at least $15,000.
This is the first year the annual meeting of DNC leaders and top donors has been open to reporters. Republicans held a similar retreat in February and barred the media.
The Democrats were eager to focus their message on President Clinton’s agenda of education, health care and balancing the budget. Yet campaign finance woes remain an underlying theme.
The controversy has been an obstacle to raising money in the first quarter of 1997, said Democratic Party chairman Roy Romer, who is governor of Colorado.
“It is a fact that we have not geared up our major fundraising,” Romer said Saturday. “It’s not a good atmosphere.”
Democrats have paid back $1.5 million in questionable campaign contributions and plan to pay back another $1.5 million by June, he said.
But the party has debts ranging up to $12 million, which means the fund-raising machinery must be cranked up again soon.
So the Florida trip to thank donors was important, despite the ongoing controversy.
“There is some need to apologize to donors who are understandably embarrassed,” Torricelli said. “We need to let them know what the 1996 election was about.”
Romer said Democrats must continue to compete under the current fundraising system.
“We need more votes for campaign finance reform,” Romer said, adding that Republicans haven’t shown interest in changing the system. “I’ve got to play the game hard until the rules are changed.”
In a separate but related development, Time magazine reported Saturday that a Hong Kong businessman helped the Republican Party free up money to buy TV ads in the final days of the 1994 and 1996 political campaigns.
The magazine said Ambrous Tung Young bailed out the GOP in 1994 with a $2.2 million loan guarantee and in 1996 by absorbing a $500,000 loss.
In both cases the bailouts involved the nonprofit National Policy Forum, a think tank headed by Republican Chairman Haley Barbour and a source of money for the 1994 and 1996 campaigns, the magazine said in the edition due out Monday.
Young was raised in Taiwan and has a U.S.-based company called Young Bros. Development-USA, the magazine said.
