Democrats Sending Another $1.5 Million Back To Contributors

The Democratic National Committee, adding to President Clinton’s fund-raising headache, announced Friday it is returning an additional $1.5 million in questionable contributions from the 1994-96 campaign season.

The new amount means the party has decided to return almost $3 million in contributions since inquiries into solicitations by three major Asian-American donors began last year.

“The Democratic Party made a mistake in the past two years in not monitoring and supervising adequately its campaign contribution process,” said DNC general chairman Roy Romer, governor of Colorado.

The $2.9 million in total returned donations came from 172 contributors and represented 1.3 percent of the total raised by the DNC in the election cycle, the party said.

According to a party analysis, three-quarters of the $2.9 million was raised by three Asian-Americans: John Huang, a former Commerce Department and DNC official; Charlie Yah Lin Trie, a former Little Rock, Ark., restaurateur now seeking business ties with China; and Johnny Chung, a Chinese beer importer in California.

The Democratic contributions were returned for a number of reasons - with 44 percent, in dollar volume, given back because there was not enough information about the donors to determine if the contributions were legal; 39 percent “deemed inappropriate” for reasons that party officials refused to detail; and 16 percent for other unspecified “legal issues.”

Urging that the fund-raising debate be stripped of “hypocrisy,” Romer argued politicians, under the existing rules, are going to seek out major donors.

“Better with perks than with policy,” he said, arguing that Clinton had not given in to special-interest contributors but that congressional Republicans had.

Romer and DNC national chairman Steve Grossman announced tighter contribution rules and a screening process, which, they said, would eliminate another round of embarrassing disclosures.

Under the rules, the DNC will:

Accept donations only from U.S. citizens.

Reject contributions from U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies.

Limit contributions to $100,000 per year per donor.

Create a compliance division to review all donations.

Spell out in a manual rules prohibiting DNC fund-raisers from promising any governmental benefits to potential donors.

Require detailed information about every donor’s background before accepting any check.

Examine the background of every guest at any event at the White House or where the president, vice president or their wives will be present.