Just Follow the Money

THE DEFEAT of the tobacco bill represented a nice return on investment for Big Tobacco, which has lavished about $30 million in contributions on Washington politicians over the last decade.

About two-thirds of those contributions went to Republicans, who just happened to take the lead in stamping out the tobacco bill in the U.S. Senate this week. Last year's No. 1 donor to the Republican Party was . . . cigarette giant Philip Morris, which gave the GOP a grand total of $1,190,702 in contributions from executives and corporate coffers.

The RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company chipped in $475,500 to the Republican Party.

The Republicans are showing no signs of shaking their addiction to tobacco money -- or six-figure donations from other special interests.

At the same time the U.S. Senate was squeezing the last life out of the tobacco bill, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives was playing games with a significant campaign-finance reform bill by Representatives Christopher Shays, R-Conn., and Martin Meehan, D-Mass.

The centerpiece of the Shays-Meehan bill would be a ban on ``soft money'' - -- the term for unlimited donations to political parties from corporations, labor unions and wealthy individuals. It also would severely restrict attempts by special interests to get around the federal limits on direct contributions to candidates by running a wave of ``independent'' ads that praise or attack a candidate.

This was a tactic widely used by organized labor in the 1996 congressional elections.

Under Shays-Meehan, any such ad within 60 days of an election would be subject to the same disclosure rules and disclosure limits as direct contributions. One of more ludicrous attempts to undercut Shays-Meehan this week was a proposal to commission another study of campaign finance reform - -- as if there were some question that the system needed fixing.

Fortunately, that plan was rejected, 156 to 201.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott has called unlimited political contributions ``the American Way.'' Voters who disagree with Lott should let their elected leaders know that they have a very different view of the role of special-interest money in a representative democracy.

1998 San Francisco Chronicle Page A22