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Excerpts from U.S. Corporations Back Republicans With Dollars

By Alan Elsner, Reuters [10/27/98]

U.S. corporations are voting Republican in next week's congressional elections by pouring tens of millions of dollars into party coffers, according to financial disclosures to the Federal Election Commission.

In donations from Jan 1, 1997 to Sept. 30, 1998, several prominent U.S. corporations gave six-figure sums to both political parties. In most cases however, their contributions to the Republicans far outweighed those to the Democrats.

``Rule one for corporations is to give to the party that can do them the most good, that is the party in control of the Congress,'' said Larry Makinson, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan group that tracks campaign contributions.

`Rule two is, don't give in such a lopsided way as to make yourself a target for the other party, which is what the tobacco companies have done,'' he said.

According to figures compiled for Reuters by the Campaign Study Group, a north Virginia research company, Republicans out-raised Democrats in so-called ``soft money'' receipts by $100 million to $76 million in the period under review.

That figure includes $5.6 million donated to the Democrats by labour unions, which gave only $342,000 to Republicans.

Lawyers also supported Democrats to the tune of $5 million and gave around $1 million to the Republicans.

Soft money is subject to no limits on how much any one donor can give but is not supposed to be used directly to urge voters to back a particular candidate by name.

However, the rule is widely ignored.

The number one corporate donor was tobacco giant Philip Morris, which gave $1.8 million to Republicans and $418,000 to the Democrats.

Next was AT&T which gave $560,000 to Republicans and $280,000 to Democrats.

Third was RJR Nabisco, a food and tobacco conglomerate, with $669,000 to the Republicans and $280,000 to Democrats.

Microsoft, which is fighting a Justice Dept. anti-trust case, gave $284,000 to the Republicans and $90,000 to the Democrats, the first time it had donated a sizeable amount to either party.

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