Washington Gets to Mr. Smith
Hamburger, Tom
Washington Gets to Mr. Smith Dave Durenberger entered the Senate with a Work and Pray ethic. But then came the swimming pool, the tennis court, the condo, the sweetheart loans, and the free...
...The industries that benefited-steel, railroads, and airlinesall contributed substantially to his campaign...
...In addition, an Andreas foundation gave $85,000 to a charity Dole established in his name to assist the disabled...
...He seemed tailorwith reminders of the familiar adage that what’s most shocking is not what’s illegal, but what’s legal...
...The company’s PAC gave $9,000 in 1982 to Durenberger...
...They wanted continued tax breaks for doing business there...
...But the conflicts involved legal campaign contributions and honoraria similar to those received by most other members...
...The Moynihan proposal quickly took the wind out of the sails of all the senators who could (literally) afford to be reformers...
...Last fall, Senators Warren Rudman and Robert Dole told The New Republic that up to twothirds of their colleagues were millionaires (the elliptical disclosure forms show that only one-third are...
...Over the years, the bank loaned Durenberger nearly a.million dollars, some of it at very low interest rates-and he was seldom asked to provide collateral...
...To a questioning reporter, he quipped, “PACs are the United Way of politics...
...Most are rolling in dough...
...When Humphrey died in 1978, Durenberger was hustled onto the Republican ticket...
...Is it any wonder that Durenberger couldn’t answer the question posed to him by the Minnesota Citizens League president...
...Senate’s honoraria limit, not from selling the books but from making speeches promoting the books to medical associations and other special interest lobbies...
...Dwayne Andreas, his family, and his company sent a total of about $130,000 to Dole in the eight years before his 1988 presidential run...
...During the spat over the pay raise, which he favored, Durenberger observed, “There are just more millionaires than us average folks than ever before” pursuing Senate seats...
...Rudman was frustrated that Durenberger got off lightly...
...In Wright’s case the Ethics Committee’s special counsel suggested that, in addition to the other charges, the speaker improperly intervened with regulators on behalf of S&L executives who were also campaign contributors...
...Archer Daniels Midland gave $5,000...
...I’m the senior senator, I came out here first,” some in attendance recall him saying...
...It was no accident that shortly after he arrived in D.C...
...More important, he had membership on the Finance Committee...
...I don’t see the con f I i ct . ” he said...
...Like Dole’s, both had legitimate public purposes, so they were not investigated closely by the Ethics Committee...
...Only after being insulated from his constituents could he possibly consider himself “average...
...It’s difficult to take vacations and other things that normal people get to do,” Duren berger’s reaction to questions about the propriety of taking trips from firms seeking tax breaks...
...While his peers-the Heinzes, the Boschwitzes, the Danforthscould spend with abandon, Durenberger had to watch it...
...And if the District of Columbia were a state, it would rank third in per capita income...
...The Durenberger case is replete flects the state’s personality, with his midwestern style and suicidal attachment to honesty (“I will raise taxes...
...No wonder Durenberger continually poor-mouthed to friends...
...You stride down these impressive hallways and six people are running after you to do your bidding...
...I think it’s wonderful that they do that...
...Members of the Finance Committee have a leg up on other senators because that committee, after all, writes the nation’s tax laws...
...Several of the senator’s friends said Durenberger adopted a rationalization for his questionable deals: Since he was doing great work for the public and suffering financially as a consequence, he felt entitled to take a few perks, maybe even cut a few corners...
...The D.C...
...His defender on the Senate floor, Robert Dole, was certainly an instructive model...
...companies with factories in Puerto Rico...
...It has an effect...
...The TV appearance came just weeks before the Senate voted unanimously to denounce Durenberger for breaking its expense and income rules through a series of unsavory business deals...
...These amenities helped cut capital gains taxes on the sale of his Minneapolis home, but they still ate substantially into the senator’s budget...
...Some friends and one long-time staffer warned Durenberger against making these moves...
...By the late seventies, representatives were discovering they couldn’t afford elegant homes or fancy meals out on a government salary...
...Pocket envy So the midwestern reformer who came to town skeptical of the campaign finance system ended up joining in...
...Through 1975 Wright was an advocate of financial disclosure by politicians...
...I think it’s wonderful that they do that...
...But Durenberger drew the wrong conclusion from all this...
...Durenberger was asked to serve on the Senate Ethics Committee, where he sat in judgment of his peers...
...Still, the incumbent at least has a chance...
...Durenberger did experience wrenching family turmoil in the mid-1980s...
...In 1986, Massachusetts Mutual did so to the tune of $4,000, twice the honoraria maximum...
...Both had unorthodox book deals that earned them tens of thousands of dollars from special interests...
...Treasury $95 million a year...
...Durenberger championed an illfated tax proposal that allowed rust-belt industries to sell their tax credits to more profitable firms...
...But one member was clearly unmoved: Warren Rudman, the vice-chairman of the Ethics Committee, a former prosecutor with little income outside his salary who lives modestly...
...He had an affair with a Senate employee, then moved out of his home to a Christian retreat house in Arlington, where he contemplated divorce, the serious drug problems of two of his sons, and his financial burdens...
...That year, his third in Washington, Durenberger built an addition to his modern, commodious home in McLean...
...A senator is courted by staff and lobbyists from the time he leaves home to the time he returns...
...To his pleasant surprise, Durenberger learned early that he could significantly supplement his Senate income simply by speaking, something he enjoyed doing...
...His first year’s financial disclosure form revealed that he had about $80,000 in savings, after purchasing a comfortable house in McLean, Virginia...
...At his ethics trial this summer, Durenberger was denied the opportunity to make an opening day statement because the committee needed to finish work by 6 p.m...
...Andreas family members gave an additional $10,600...
...Faced by a challenger with bottomless pockets, what incumbent wouldn’t throw himself into the arms of the PAC men...
...Most of it came from industry groups with a stake in legislation before the Finance Committee...
...Massachusetts Mutual contributed to AGE during this period, but the exact amount is not available because AGE recently shut its doors...
...And both had ceased extolling the virtues of disclosure...
...He has classic good looks and a deep, rich voice, and he’s appropriately gray at the temples...
...Not all members worry as much as Durenberger and Wright did about personal finances...
...He at first resisted the pressure to chase after campaign funds, but when he realized his opponent would be Mark Dayton, heir to a department store fortune, Durenberger attacked fundraising with the same intensity he brought to his committee work...
...He was well off...
...I don’t see the conflict...
...Other insurance companies that received tax breaks contributed to AGE...
...Durenberger was not the only one to lose his way in this strange new world...
...Even if Dayton hadn’t provided the incentive to raise funds, the environment of the Senate would have done it...
...Civic slide A close look at this case and the conflicts of interest that weren’t pursued yields some insights into the peculiar, money-mad environment of Washington, D.C...
...His father was the adored football coach of the abbey’s St...
...He saw some of them going on luxurious free vacations (sometimes picking up honAround the same time, Durenberger’s staff began io look to private companies and lobbies to pay for Durenberger’s vacations and other personal trips...
...In 1987, Durenberger was mildly reprimanded by the Ethics Committee for discussing classified information at a fundraiser sponsored by a pro-Israel committee...
...Individuals are permitted to give only $2,000 per election cycle to a candidate’s campaign ($10,000 for PACs...
...Rudy and I each have four boys...
...Not having money is, of course, a matter of perspective...
...Minnesota, after all, is the land of 10,000 civic organizations...
...On Capitol Hill, where lobbyists and hot-shot journalists can now pull in over $200,000 a year, an income of $125,000 (the maximum including honoraria a senator may earn in a year) might seem inadequate...
...You can’t buy a home at the lake, you can’t have a boat in the backyard and some of those things...
...Durenberger groused that ethics questions were driving all but the wealthy from office...
...After Durenberger reached the maximum honoraria limit in 1985 and 1986, groups requesting a speech would be told to write their honoraria checks to Piranha Press...
...He became a different guy,” recalled his old friend and former press secretary, Lois West, after leaving Durenburger’s employment...
...In his 1978 campaign Durenberger said he wanted “to address the decline of public confidence in American institutions...
...John’s annual once noted, “intends to put Flynntown on the map by reforming national politics...
...After all, a dozen members have book deals...
...The nightly cocktail fundraising receptions had already begun...
...His eldest son was reaching college age...
...I looked at this house...
...John’s Work and Pray Ethic into public service...
...Real estate prices in the best neighborhoods shot up...
...But the executive director quit in 1987, claiming that he had been pressed by Durenberger’s staff to direct the organization’s funds to a new Minnesota chapter during the senator’s reelection campaign...
...If you want to know who is really influencing a member of Congress, the Durenberger case proves you have to dig beyond campaign finance and financial disclosure reports...
...According to the Campaign Research Center, Massachusetts Mutual alone gave more than $200,000 in campaign contributions to members of Congress...
...By the end of the 1980s, however, both men were in trouble over condominiums provided or subsidized by well-heeled friends...
...Durenberger shrugged it off, noting that Senate privilege protected him from traffic tickets and prosecution...
...Paul, run by a college friend...
...In the mid-I980s, Durenberger let his staff know that he wanted a piece of this action...
...the astonishing parallel transformations that have swept through the capital city and national politics: Over the past 20 years, the cost of living well in D.C...
...Along with Hubert Humphrey and Gene McCarthy, Walter Mondale probably best rehomes in Georgetown and Chevy Chase: dinner at even the best restaurants was within reach...
...And the Doles found a bargain-priced condominium at the Sea View Hotel in Bal Harbour, Florida, previously owned by Andreas...
...In addition, they served to boost the senator’s name recognition and occasionally to pay for his travel...
...Massachusetts Mutual and other insurance companies took a keen interest in Durenberger’s Americans for Generational Equity Foundation (AGE...
...As Durenberger came into money, he spent it...
...The firm, chaired by Dwayne Andreas, has profited from gasohol thanks to the reduced tax rate, which costs the U.S...
...The state’s political tradition includes a generous view of the role of government and an antiseptic code of POlitical conduct...
...economy ceased to be geared to civil-servant pay...
...To cope with higher bills-some related to his family’s counseling needs-Durenberger began borrowing more and more money from Commercial State Bank in St...
...Given the rash of ethics cases recently, it seems there is something more at work here...
...Perhaps the most disturbing element in this morality play is that if any politician ever seemed ethically well-moored, it was David Durenberger...
...The exmanager never recorded the sale, but paid the mortgage, the condo fees, and other bills...
...Both men, it appears, were not well-moored ethically...
...But to many of today’s senators, that salary is play money...
...And his improved house cost more to maintain...
...This August, after Chris Dodd proposed legislation to limit earned income of senators, Daniel Moynihan, who makes money from writing and teaching on the side, countered with a proposal to limit unearned income...
...He was a founding member of his state’s ethics board...
...In 1982, Durenberger was able to raise $3.1 million for his race against Dayton...
...Public affairs shows even get good ratings there...
...Their efforts to “promote production through tax cuts” earned them appreciation from farmers and especially from Archer Daniels Midland, the agribusiness giant that manufactures more than half the gasohol produced in the U.S...
...He sold his house in Minneapolis for a sizable profit...
...At cocktail parties, congressmen discovered they were wearing the cheapest suits in the room...
...Those people are creating jobs and participating in the political process...
...Of all the money and favors provided by Massachusetts Mutual, only the limo rides were considered troublesome by the Ethics Committee...
...When Durenberger began submitting requests to the Senate for reimbursement for staying in the condo, he changed the name of the partnership to “603703 Partnership” and never disclosed his ownership...
...For example, the Puerto Rico-U.S.A...
...Smith Dave Durenberger entered the Senate with a Work and Pray ethic...
...In Durenberger’s case, wealthy friends who might have been interested in legislation picked up personal bills and supplemented the lawmaker’s incomelike his bank president buddy who offered the senator sweet rates on unsecured loans...
...The extra money came in handy...
...He raised more that year from political action committees than did any other senator...
...Just prior to Durenberger’s Senate hearings, Rudman was asked about the temptations to violate Senate rules in a city consumed by money and power...
...Then came the rapid proliferation of trade associations and other special interest groups, increasing business, fees, and expense accounts for Washington’s lawyers...
...Like Durenberger, Wright came to Washington a strong advocate of financial disclosure...
...John’s College, where Dave studied as an undergraduate...
...Of those contributions, only the campaign donations were easily accessible through disclosure laws...
...You have to go home with him...
...West recalls driving with Durenberger a couple of years ago when the senator ran a red light...
...But the next year, disaster struck...
...To Boschwitz, Durenberger is a pauper...
...Thanks to wealthy candidates, PACs, and special interests, a Senate seat on average now costs just under $4 million, and we’ve returned to a Senate full of millionaires-the same kind of group we had before 1913, when the institution of direct election of senators was supposed to put an end to this problem...
...While it’s easy to have sympathy for his predicament, one needn’t sympathize with his solutions...
...The 1990 Census shows that the beltway that rings the city slices through five of the nation’s 10 highest income communities...
...To Durenberger’s constituents, who make an average of $17,746 a year, he’s loaded...
...A poorer challenger without the credential of incumbency is likely to be intimidated right out of the race...
...if he does run, he’s going to have trouble finding anyone who’ll give him money...
...They did...
...Durenberger voted against the limit, with good reason: The rule slashed his income in 1984 by nearly $70,000...
...A trusted in protest over the book deal...
...But I couldn’t afford it...
...This pattern helps explain Jim Wright’s change of heart, according to Jackson...
...He grew up on the grounds of a Benedictine abbey in central Minnesota, in a tiny cluster of homes called Flynntown...
...Maybe in the first couple of years I would have said that, maybe even through the campaign...
...Rudman had heard this plea from Durenberger before...
...This plea apparently moved many senators, a dozen of whom rose to praise Durenberger before voting to denounce him...
...You get to be one of the most powerful people in the world...
...And in 1986, the company also gave him $2,000 in honoraria...
...He complained to his staff about the expense of keeping tuxedos, noting that if he were CEO of a major company, he would not have to worry about such costs...
...Durenberger ’s senior yearbook pegged him as the graduate “most likely to translate St...
...Durenberger’s reaction to questions about the propriety of taking trips from firms seeking tax breaks...
...Boy, I’d have taken money from anybody in that campaign,” Durenberger later told The Wall Street JournaE...
...At the same time this was going on, the insurance lobby fought successfully to preserve reduced tax rates on the cash value of life insurance...
...By common reckoning Durenberger came to Washington with real money...
...And his colleagues came down hard, denouncing him on the floor and requiring, among other things, that he pay at least $95,000 in restitution for improperly receiving honoraria...
...Several insurance companies ultimately received exclusive tax breaks, including Massachusetts Mutual, which saved $1 1 million in 1986...
...Taxes for sale In 1985 and 1986 Durenberger arranged a series of four-hour therapy sessions with a psychologist whose offices were located about 35 miles outside of Boston...
...The problem wasn’t that Durenberger had too little money but that his peers had too much...
...The year after his victory over Dayton-1983Durenberger ’s personal earnings from speeches soared to $93,000, nearly one and a half times his Senate salary...
...In his final plea to the Ethics Committee, Durenberger asked the panel to “look at your own lives when making a judgment about mine...
...They got the tax breaks...
...If the ethics frenzy keeps going, most of us are going to bail out of the place and let Jay Rockefeller and those folks run it,” he said...
...Durenberger went on to explain: “I don’t feel sleazy having to ask the same people that are lobbying out here and all that sort of thing for money, that doesn’t bother me...
...To help defray the cost of traveling to these sessions, the senator’s staff would call lobbyists in the Boston area to arrange trips...
...Durenberger repaid the loans, but he failed to record some of the low rates and some of the larger loans on his financial disclosure statement, as required by law...
...Some say the turning point was the February recess of 1982...
...Durenberger didn’t accept free travel only from Massachusetts Mutual...
...by Tom Hamburger “What happened to you...
...Within two years of his election, he was chairman of his own Finance subcommittee, Health, where he took to the arcana of health policy with gusto...
...To be sure, he will pose for pictures with school children and find time for a brief talk with visiting farmers, but he spends most of his time with lobbyists representing monied interests and staff members eager to please...
...Even in the late sixties, Washington was still a quiet southern town...
...AGE had done some pioneering work challenging conventional wisdom about social security and other benefits for the elderly...
...Even with the house, the tennis court, the pool, and the perks of office, Durenberger complained...
...That craving clouded their judgment...
...In 1980, he took in $21,000 in honoraria from hospital and securities firms, homebuilders, bankers, and others interested in getting to know a member of the Finance Committee...
...Durenberger also grabbed at a chance to save rent and taxes by putting his condo into the “DurenbergerScherer Partnership...
...He won handily and swept ebulliently into Washington...
...Nor can it be found in the explanations ultimately offered by Durenberger-and informally accepted by the Senatethat his moral compass was off because of a penod of emotional, family, and financial crisis...
...So Rudy bought it...
...Until the Senate returned to Democratic hands in 1985, Durenberger was one of the committee’s most powerful members, particularly since he chaired the Health subcommittee...
...Durenberger came to Washington 12 years ago, an intellectual moderate with bipartisan support and a reputation for high integrity...
...Upper-level civil servants and congressmen could afford nice Those questions hit too close to home...
...Both developed a need for a more lavish lifestyle than they could afford...
...Nearly all of the 113 lobbies that paid to hear the senator thought they were paying honoraria for speeches-not “book promotion...
...Clearly, Durenberger ’s atti tude for years had been, “Why not?’ You can’t really blame Durenberger for being surprised at how hard his fellow senators came down on him...
...The members, by the way, were officials of about a dozen U.S...
...Foundation provided a one-week vacation for Durenberger and two of his sons after the senator spoke to members in San Juan...
...The American Medical Association independently purchased more than $100,000 of television advertising for Durenberger during his 1988 reelection race...
...Durenberger also started two foundations...
...But they all worry about campaign finances...
...Curt Johnson, president of the Minnesota Citizens League, put the question bluntly to Senator David Durenberger on a public affairs television show early this summer...
...The next most troubling was a book publishing scheme that earned the senator $100,000 above the made for the high-minded Minnesota electorate...
...He also got it from other companies that got breaks under the tax bill...
...The growing size of Senate staffs has increased the isolation of senators from their constituents...
...They contributed $3 1,200 to Durenberger’s campaign...
...Instead of flying to Minnesota as usual, Durenberger flew to the West Coast to meet with a handful of Californians, who helped funnel thousands into his campaign...
...In Durenberger’s case there was no suggestion of legislative conflict of interest from the special counsel...
...As Lloyd Bentsen put it, “If Moynihan becomes law, I couldn’t stay in the Senate...
...Through its PAC, the company gave Durenberger $9,946...
...And then you forget why you wanted to be that...
...Scherer’s apartment was clear of any mortgage, so it wasn’t a clean split...
...But his friends say Durenberger, like successful people everywhere, was intensely competitive...
...The company then took the unusual step of ordering copies of Durenberger’s books in bulk, providing an additional $1,500 to the senator’s unorthodox honoraria dodge...
...He also put in a swimming pool and a tennis court...
...In the mid-l980s, Durenberger’s marriage fell apart...
...In fact, he found he was good at it...
...Durenberger’s staff members were well aware of their increasingly difficult boss’s desire to make money...
...He was driven to keep up with the Boschwitzes...
...The question lingers with his constituents...
...But now, he added, “There’s probably a sense of realism that comes with one reelection that says, ‘That’s the way it is.’ Bad though it may seem, it’s still better than second place...
...Durenberger denied the charge...
...To wage even an average senate race in 1982 would take millions, Durenberger was told...
...One admitted that it did so only because the senator’s office required it...
...Durenberger’s most serious offense, according to the Ethics Committee, involved a pair of real estate deals he cooked up to justify billing the Senate for staying in a condo in which he held hidden ownership...
...And, as their reluctance to examine Durenberger’s legislative conflicts of interest demonstrates, most senators are too busy picking up tens of thousands from wealthy contributors to discuss ethical questions...
...After the counseling session, the limo took Durenberger to lunch with company executives...
...Prudential gave $10,000 to AGE in 1989...
...Documents show he and his top staff saw early that he could use the deal as a way to collect speaking fees from special interests...
...Since Durenberger was elected to fill an unexpired term, he faced reelection in four years...
...Washington is the country’s premier city of affluence...
...Dole had found myriad ways-all of them apparently legal-to enhance his income, stature, and national visibility...
...Brooks Jackson, a Washington reporter who writes frequently on money and politics, noted in a recent book that “the longer congressmen served, the more vulnerable they seemed to be to the temptations of honest graft”-that is, of accepting money and other benefits from groups with an interest in legislation...
...Many of the financial benefits Durenberger received via these machinations were legal and didn’t need to be reported...
...and the cost of winning elections have risen drastically...
...The senator ignored the warnings and pushed ahead with the deals that would eventually lead to his formal denunciation on the floor of the Senate...
...At a party for visiting Minnesota Republicans at Boschwitz’s spacious home in McLean, Durenberger complained about his lack of resources...
...He rose swiftly in the Senate...
...The answer to Johnson’s question can’t be found in the trial transcript, the 106-page Ethics Committee report, or in campaign and personal financial disclosures required by Watergate-era reforms...
...It wasn’t always so...
...In explaining why he got into the book and condo deals last winter, he lamented his life on a congressional salary...
...This from the Minnesotan who, a St...
...But the Ethics Committee never questioned whether it was right to receive all that money from groups interested in Senate business, or how the money might have affected the senator’s votes on key legislation...
...Class warfare has erupted a couple of times in the Senate recently, once last November, when many of the Senate’s millionaires voted against a proposed pay raise, infuriating members who felt they needed the money...
...And consider the money that flowed from the Massachusetts Mutual Insurance Co., which, like the insurance industry generally, received favorable treatment from the Finance Committee in the 1986 Tax Reform Act...
...At dinner, senators and their wives began eyeing the right side of the menu...
...Health lobbies dominate his list of contributors...
...But his financial misdeeds and disclosure violations came before and after the crisis period...
...The Senate found that Durenberger had pursued these ventures even though he knew they were unethical and against the rules...
...But something went wrong...
...Since Massachusetts Mutual had offices near Boston, Durenberger accepted a company offer to provide air tickets, hotel, and limo service...
...But then came the swimming pool, the tennis court, the condo, the sweetheart loans, and the free trips...
...When the partnership deal went bust after a few years, Durenberger’s former campaign manager agreed to buy the condo and return it to the senator whenever he wanted...
...Others might also have to rethink their careers-like Herb Kohl, who spent $6.1 million of his own money to win his seat, and Jay Rockefeller, whose monthly mortgage payment on his Washington mansion reportedly equals the amount senators may legally earn in a year, and John Heinz 111, whom Forbes has listed as one of the richest 400 people in America...
...And Durenberger has a congressional salary with perks that include a generous pension, medical benefits, free postage, telephone, and travel, as well as per diem expense reimbursement...
...His wealthy friend Roger Scherer agreed to the 50-50 condo partnership, which required him to pay a share of Durenberger’s mortgage...
...To focus on the environment is not to excuse Wright or Durenberger...
...they were also learning that getting reelected might have less to do with constituent service than with fundraiser service...
...Durenberger recalled this period during his ethics trial to explain his behavior...
...And ask he did...
...As Durenberger’s appetite for campaign and personal cash expanded, his aides say he looked around and saw senators with lucrative book and television contracts...
...He leaped at an offer made in 1984 by a little-known Minneapolis magazine publisher, Piranha Press, to put his defense policy papers together in book form...
...Only a few of the groups bought copies of the book in bulk...
...What about his objection in years past to the campaign finance system...
...All of us are subject to pressures, and if you don’t have money, that’s an additional pressure...
...In 1985, Massachusetts Mutual provided Durenberger with airfare and lodging for a conference in Fort Myers, Florida...
...in his campaign he pledged to “restore trust in government...
...Even with low rates and no requirement for collateral, Durenberger seemed to have money on the brain...
...Durenberger found that raising money wasn’t so difficult...
...That advocacy ended in 1976, when a lobbyist friend arranged a dinner fundraiser for Wright so the congressman could retire nearly $100,000 in personal debts...
...Durenberger is the senator from central casting...
...Rudrnan answered simply, ‘‘It’s not difficult to be ethical...
...Now, two years later, Durenberger was before the panel again...
...Similarly, the $2,000 Massachusetts Mutual gave to Durenburger in 1986 went to his Foundation for Future Choices...
...According to The Wall Street Journal, about $45,000 went to Dole’s personal campaign fund and the PAC (Campaign America) he started to give money to others...
...Congress, under pressure to reform, passed legislation limiting honoraria to 30 percent of a senator’s salary...
...Long before disclosure was required, Wright released copies of his tax forms to reporters...
...Piranha politics oraria, too), getting good deals on real estate, and getting travel expenses and free media coverage through foundations they set up...
...Durenberger worked hand-in-hand on the Finance Committee with Senator Robert Dole to secure a tax break for gasohol, the alternative fuel made partly from grain...
...Durenberger’s ethical lapses bear striking resemblance to those of former House Speaker Jim Wright...
...The others were uncovered only when news organizations looked into Dole’s financial background during the 1988 presidential race...
...Most also came from people and organizations with an interest in matters before the Finance Committee...
...Not because those conflicts didn’t exist...
...Durenberger’s most outspoken defender in the Senate, Minnesota’s millionaire senator Rudy Boschwitz, said, “I think it’s a matter of fact that if he had had a very large and secure financial base that he might not have made the book arrangement or he might not have done the housing arrangement...
...The Durenberger defense was that his breach was unintentional...
...Even as Durenberger cranked up his speaking schedule, his relative lack of resources vexed him...
...The committee declined to charge Wright with that violation...
...In addition, they can provide up to $2,000 a year in honoraria...
Vol. 22 • October 1990 • No. 9
