The ‘Greens’ Of Campaign Contributors Timber Industry Dropped Dollars Like Pine Needles

North Idaho’s timber industry dropped campaign dollars like pine needles during the 1996 elections.

Meanwhile, a lone Hayden Lake financial wizard could have bought a new Mercedes with the cash she gave to a term-limits initiative.

But no single contribution compares to actor Bruce Willis’ six-figure push to bury a federal pact to store nuclear waste in Idaho.

A computer analysis by The Spokesman-Review showed Idaho businesses, individuals and political action committees spent nearly $3.5 million on legislative races and initiatives last year. About $600,000 came from the Panhandle.

State residents spent another $2 million on congressional and presidential candidates, with some $440,000 coming from North Idaho.

The donations are part of a growing phenomenon that candidates, campaign reform advocates and even some donors say undermines the political process and jades the public: American elections are awash in money, but most of that cash is raised and spent legally.

Legal avenues abound

Public attention in recent months has focused on some potentially illegal contributions to President Bill Clinton’s reelection campaign.

The biggest problem, say those who track donations, is contributions that meet state and federal spending ceilings, but get channeled through loopholes that make limits meaningless.

“The drive for money reached unprecedented heights in the last election cycle,” said Ellen Miller, director of Public Campaign, a Washington, D.C., group that tracks political spending.

“If anybody thinks there are any limits, they are fooling themselves,” she said. “The wealthy ‘max out’ and look for other ways to give.”

The newspaper’s computer analysis of contributions underscores that point. Although strict limits exist for donors to national campaigns, some Inland Northwest donors used legal avenues to funnel money to groups that in turn helped their favorite candidates.

Most of these contributions were not soft money - the hard-to-track funds that go to political parties and for which there are no limits.

They were, instead, donations to political organizations with the stated goal of helping their party’s candidates get elected.

“But you’ve got to check it six ways to Sunday to know who’s giving,” Miller said.

For example, any American citizen can give a candidate for Congress no more than $1,000 for a primary or general election - a total of $2,000 per election cycle. For a candidate for the House, that’s every two years; for a Senate candidate, six years.

But after reaching that $2,000 limit, donors can - and regularly do - give money to political action committees set up by members of Congress, caucus leaders or the party that also give money to their favorite candidate.

“It renders those thousand-dollar limits meaningless,” said Jennifer Lawson, vice president of Common Cause, a national government reform lobby.

A ‘contribution’ to reform?

Many of the area’s biggest donors declined to discuss the philosophy behind their contributions, saying they did not want the publicity. Those who did speak, defended their right to give.

And at least one - Hayden Lake resident Donna Weaver - suggested her contributions were a step toward reform.

Weaver gave more than $65,000 to Idaho’s term limits initiative because she considers it “the fundamental reform that will change the culture of government.”

She also gave nearly $22,000 to Republican candidates and committees, including Rep. Helen Chenoweth, Republican presidential candidates Lamar Alexander, Steve Forbes and Bob Dole.

Alexander and Forbes got her money because they favor term limits. While Dole didn’t fit that mold, he was “the party’s man,” she said.

Sawmill owners made up four of the Panhandle’s top 10 congressional and presidential campaign donors, giving a combined $44,560 to Republicans. In statewide races, timber giant Potlatch Corp. gave away more than $50,000.

Idaho is one of only eight states that allows businesses to contribute directly to candidates.

Potlatch spokesman Kevin Boling said companies “don’t buy votes” on a particular issue with their contributions. They help elect candidates “already predisposed to business interests.

“We are a major economic force north of the Salmon River,” he said. “Campaigns are expensive, so it’s important that we support the ones who fight for less government - not more.”

Potlatch also gave money to fight a 1 percent property tax cap initiative because the company feared it would disrupt the state’s “stable, predictable tax base,” Boling said.

Bret Bennett, with Bennett Lumber Products in Princeton, said his family business gave money to candidates he believed would protect workers’ jobs. Meanwhile, his father and uncle were top contributors to the GOP campaigns of Sen. Larry Craig and Rep. Helen Chenoweth - in part because each pushes to allow more logging in national forests.

“Everyone’s out here trying to stop timber harvest on federal lands,” Bennett said. “We’re heavily dependent on public timber.”

Three of North Idaho’s top donors to state candidates were PACs. But leading contributors to those committees were large businesses that also gave to candidates directly.

Potlatch gave $10,000 to Timber PAC, run by a conglomeration of industry executives. All the money spent by the Idaho Committee on Hospitality and Sports came from tourism magnate Duane Hagadone’s business interests.

The PAC used to include money donated by the Coeur d’Alene Greyhound Park. Hagadone executives still use it because it provides “a double record” and an “extra paper trail” to track contributions, said Hagadone lobbyist and PAC treasurer Russell Westerberg.

“We just like everything to be completely public and above board,” he said.

Money from Hagadone businesses goes to candidates who support “the economy in general, public education and infrastructure like roads,” Westerberg said.

State Sen. Gordon Crow, R-Coeur d’Alene, was the single largest Hagadone beneficiary because “he’s the senior senator up north and understands the importance of tourism.”

The state’s high-rolling individual contributors were single-issue ideologues.

Weaver, who ran Idaho’s successful term limits campaign, said she believes so strongly in term limits she didn’t mind the expense. Along with her money, she also devoted her time to the cause.

“It’s now been a year and I’m still working all the time.”

Despite her five-figure contributions, Weaver’s term limits spending was barely half the $120,000 Bruce Willis spent in a failed initiative to block Gov. Phil Batt’s agreement with the federal government to store nuclear waste in southern Idaho.

But she spent nearly eight times North Idaho’s second-largest initiative contributor, Laclede sportsman Ed Lehman. All $7,413 of his money in 1996 went to block a measure that would have banned bear hunting with bait and dogs.

“I’ve got three grandsons and I’ve hunted and fished all my life,” he said. “I want a continuation of the things I’ve been able to do for my grandsons.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Graphics: Top donors to state campaigns; Top donors to federal campaigns