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Obscure Statute on Soliciting Funds Might Come Into Play Against Gore

For years, members of Congress wanting to solicit campaign contributions have been told to troop down the street to their party campaign committees before "dialing for dollars." Some reportedly even duck out to the Capitol parking lot between votes and use a cellular phone to plead for cash.

They have done so because of an obscure law, written in 1882 and enforced only a handful of times, that prohibits federal employees from soliciting or receiving campaign donations on federal property. It was aimed at protecting federal workers from being leaned on by their bosses, but has come to be accepted practice for politicians concerned about conflicts between their official and political duties.

Now, that law has come up for renewed discussion because of Vice President Gore's statement yesterday that he made fund-raising calls to big donors from his White House office, charging them to a Democratic National Committee credit card. Gore insisted that he believed the calls were perfectly legal and that there is "no controlling legal authority" that bars the practice.

But Republicans quickly pounced on Gore. The Republican Senate campaign committee issued a statement last night demanding that Gore provide records showing that the DNC paid for the calls Gore made.

While the 1882 law seldom is enforced, several legal experts said Gore's admission may compel Attorney General Janet Reno to open a preliminary investigation that could lead to appointment of an independent counsel. That is because the standard for triggering the independent counsel law is receipt of specific, credible evidence that a federal law may have been broken by a person covered under the independent counsel statute, and Gore is a "covered person."

Election law experts said yesterday it is not entirely clear whether the criminal statute, intended to cover federal workers, applies to the vice president or president.

They agreed yesterday that Justice Department prosecutors seldom charge a public official under the law. Officeholders usually leave federal property to make campaign solicitations anyway, the experts said, to avoid embarrassing questions such as those that Gore faced yesterday in a nationally televised news conference.

"If I were the attorney general, I would be hard-pressed to take an aggressive interpretation under the circumstances," said Kenneth Gross, former chief of enforcement at the Federal Election Commission. He said prosecutors have used the law only four times, mostly in the early 1900s.

Stanley M. Brand, a Democrat and former general counsel to the House, said members made a practice of using phones at the campaign committees because it was "better form," not because they feared prosecution for a handful of calls.

Republican lawyers, however, had a stricter interpretation. Craig Engle, general counsel to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said: "It's not a matter of form. It's a matter of substance."

A.B. Culvahouse Jr., White House counsel for President Ronald Reagan, said before Gore's news conference that he thought there would be a "very serious problem under the statute" if Gore made the fund-raising calls from his White House office.

Gore said he did not violate an April 1995 memo from then-counsel Abner J. Mikva that said "campaign fund-raising activities of any kind are prohibited in or from government buildings" because the memo was addressed to staff members, not to him or President Clinton.

Like Gore, at least one GOP senator -- former presidential candidate Phil Gramm of Texas -- took an expansive view of what is permitted under the law. He told the Wall Street Journal, according to a 1995 story, that he made fund-raising calls from his home, his car and his Senate office. "I do it wherever I am," he was quoted as saying. "I can use a credit card. . . . As long as I pay for the calls, I can make calls wherever I want to call."

The House ethics committee once criticized a lawmaker for sending a single fund-raising letter written on a House typewriter.

Kent Cooper, a longtime FEC official who now heads the Center for Responsive Politics, which monitors campaign money, said members of both parties take liberties with the law.

He added: "Don't expect either party to investigate this practice very deeply. If congressional hearings do get into this, you'll be able to hear a pin drop."