Isle GOP linked
to ‘tainted’ money
The Democrats want
By Pete Pichaske
the Republicans to return $56,500
in foreign-linked funds
Phillips News ServiceWASHINGTON -- Hawaii's Republican Party received $56,500 in foreign-linked campaign funds from the Republican National Committee just before the 1994 election, according to federal campaign reports. The donation, part of $1.6 million handed out in 1994 to 15 state GOP organizations, has been denounced as laundered foreign money during the Senate investigation into campaign finance abuses.
Democrats claim the money is tainted by its links to a Hong Kong business and are urging the Hawaii Republican Party, and similar organizations in other states, to return it.
"The Democratic National Committee has agreed to return all funds it received from questionable sources," stated a "fact sheet" distributed by the Democratic National Committee. "Will the Hawaii Republican Party return the $56,500 in foreign-linked funds it received from the RNC in 1994?"
Hawaii Republicans, however, dismissed the demand as politically motivated.
"The money we got was from the RNC," said state party attorney Richard Clifton. "It's not the same thing as the DNC money at all.
"If the RNC comes back and says, 'That money was foreign money'," that's a different story, he added.
"But we sure didn't take it from a foreign source, and to say it should be given back as tainted . . . strikes me as absurd."
The Hawaii contributions came to light last week as the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee turned its attention to Republican fund-raising.
Most of the focus was on a 1994 deal engineered by RNC Chairman Haley Barbour in which money was transferred from a Hong Kong business, Young Brothers Development, to its U.S. subsidiary. The subsidiary, in turn, loaned the money to the National Policy Forum, a tax-exempt foundation Barbour headed.
The same day, the forum gave $1.6 million to the Republican National Committee as payment on a previous debt. Within a week, the RNC, which a couple of weeks earlier was nearly broke, had distributed the same amount of money ($1.6 million) to 15 state parties, all of which had closely contested elections coming up.
According to Federal Election Commission records, the Hawaii Republican Party received $10,000 from the RNC on Oct. 26, 1994, and $46,500 the following day.
The RNC had received the $1.6 million from the National Policy Forum on Oct. 20.
One of Hawaii's close contests was Republican Orson Swindle's challenge to Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Honolulu. Abercrombie this week denounced the RNC arrangement as a "money-laundering scheme" and said the state party should return it.
"They should give the money back, no ifs, no ands, no buts," he said. "I don't defend what the Democratic National Committee has done, but you're not going to have any confidence in the process unless everybody owns up."
GOP attorney Clifton said it would be nearly impossible to trace where the RNC money was spent but speculated it went for such activities as a general get-out-the-vote campaign targeting Republican voters and for media ads. He said Hawaii was given the money in large part because of Republican Pat Saiki's high-profile campaign for governor.
He said foreign sources probably have little interest in who is elected governor in Hawaii.
According to Swindle's 1994 campaign reports, the GOP candidate did not receive any money directly from the state party in the last six weeks of the 1994 campaign.
Former RNC Chairman Barbour, meanwhile, denied that the transaction was improper at last week's Senate hearings, deflecting pointed questions from Democratic senators on the committee such as Hawaii's Daniel Akaka.
Barbour said he had no idea the forum money came from a foreign source and insisted that the RNC had plenty of money to finance its election-eve push without the National Policy Forum. He dismissed the notion of the forum funneling money to the RNC as "baseless" and "goofy."
Spokespersons with both the RNC and the DNC said they were not aware that any of the states that received the 1994 money had returned it.
