Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, July 4, 1995 TAG: 9507050045
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: SAN DIEGO LENGTH: Medium
- As party animals, it's hard to beat the Republicans and the Democrats.
Every four years, they hold a multiday wingding in a major American city to determine their presidential tickets. The dining, drinking, singing, celebrating, sightseeing and mugging for television are nonstop for the delegates and their guests. Freebies, frivolity and VIP treatment are in abundance.
While most Americans have yet to be swept away by the early stirrings of the quadrennial slug-fest, among party professionals, the feverish countdown to the 1996 nominating conventions is well under way.
The Republicans will head to San Diego and the Democrats to Chicago for what promise to be the most expensive, most lavish conventions in history. Together the two parties will spend more than $80 million on their conventions. It may come as a surprise to discover who is footing most of the bill for the political merriment: the American taxpayer.
``I doubt if you took a poll that many Americans would know that their tax money pays for the conventions,'' said E. Mark Braden, a Washington lawyer and former counsel to the Republican National Committee.
The public subsidies start with the $12 million each party will get from the federal treasury for its 1996 convention, from the $3 contribution many Americans make on their 1040 tax forms. (The 1040 form and booklet mention campaigning but nothing about conventions.)
Then there are the municipal subsidies for the political conventions: The multimillion-dollar allocations from room-tax funds, countless hours of police protection, free trolley and bus rides, and other city services.
Last, but hardly least, are the tax breaks enjoyed by party faithful who donate to the conventions' fund-raising appeals.
Due to an interpretation of the tax code by the Internal Revenue Service, a well-heeled Republican or Democrat or a politically savvy corporation can get the same tax writeoff for contributing to a political convention that others get for giving money to organizations such as United Way or the Salvation Army.
The IRS contends that contributions to a political convention are not really political contributions but rather contributions to the economic well-being of the host city because conventions help promote tourism and other businesses.
All that is needed is that the contributions be made to a nonprofit organization that has been given tax-deductible status by the IRS.
Recently, the San Diego City Council quietly jiggered around the bylaws of a charitable organization established by the city in 1988 to host a festival of art from the Soviet Union and provide for the city's cultural enhancement.
With scant public notice, the Republican-dominated council, upon Braden's advice, changed the festival corporation's name and moved to add donations to political conventions among its fund-raising purposes.
The local committee in San Diego serving as the host for the GOP convention hopes to raise $11.2 million from donors to pay for such things as hospitality suites, sound systems, video screens, computers and a two-story rostrum for the convention center.
Thanks to the council, donations to the newly renamed Civic Events Corp. can be listed as charitable contributions, with commensurate tax writeoffs. The money will be passed on to the host committee, comprised primarily of politically connected business leaders.
The same is happening in Chicago where the host committee (Chicago '96) hopes to raise between $10 million and $12 million in private contributions for the 1996 Democratic convention, the first convention in Chicago since the bloody debacle of 1968. Chicago '96 has applied for tax-exempt status.
All of this comes during a time when both national political parties are on the prowl to eliminate public subsidies wherever they find them, and as nonprofit organizations, including the American Association of Retired Persons, are under continuing scrutiny lest they lose their tax-break status by engaging in politicking.
In San Diego, Peter Navarro, a failed mayoral candidate in 1992 and an associate professor in the graduate school of management at the University of California, Irvine, finds something peculiar in the way the Republicans, in particular, are preparing to pay for their 1996 bash.
``Here we have not only the federal taxpayers but the taxpayers of San Diego providing massive subsidies to the party of free markets, lower taxes and balanced budgets,'' said Navarro. ``It may replace the existing definition of `irony' in Webster's Dictionary.''
by CNB