ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, March 4, 1997 TAG: 9703040085
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
Vice President Al Gore, under fire for his aggressive role in campaign fund raising, acknowledged Monday he solicited donations from his White House office but insisted he did not do ``anything wrong, much less illegal.'' Yet, he said he would never do it again.
``Everything I did, I understood to be lawful,'' Gore said, adding that he made only a few calls in search of contributions from his office, around the corner from the Oval Office. It is illegal for federal employees to solicit money in federal buildings, but Gore said he was not subject to that restriction.
He defended his actions in a high-stakes White House news conference, markedly different from his occasional appearances on behalf of administration initiatives. This time, Gore was trying to protect his political honor as he looks ahead to the presidential race in 2000.
Standing ramrod straight, he remained cool under sometimes-argumentative questioning.
His explanation came even as the White House released a 1995 memo from then-presidential counsel Abner Mikva instructing employees to avoid doing the very thing that Gore did. ``No fund-raising phone calls or mail may emanate from the White House or any other federal building,'' Mikva wrote.
Offering a lawyerly defense of his action, the vice president said several times, using almost exactly the same words:
``My counsel advises me that there is no controlling legal authority or case that says that there was any violation of law whatsoever in the manner in which I asked people to contribute to our re-election campaign.''
He added, ``I am proud of what I did. I do not feel like I did anything wrong, much less illegal. I am proud to have done everything I possibly could to help support the re-election of the president.''
Gore's deep involvement in raising money was the latest twist in the controversy about the fund-raising tactics of the Democratic National Committee and of Clinton, who approved White House coffees and sleepovers for big-money donors.
``On a few occasions,'' Gore said, ``I made some telephone calls from my office in the White House using a DNC credit card'' - a reference to the Democratic National Committee. He said that as vice president, he was exempt from laws that generally prohibit people from fund raising in public buildings.
He said he never asked any federal employee or anyone who was on federal property for a donation.
Asked why he was changing his policy to preclude solicitations from his office, Gore said, ``Because it's aroused a great deal of concern and comment and it's not something that I want to continue if it's going to raise this kind of concern.''
``If I had realized in advance that this would cause such concern, then I wouldn't have done it in the first place,'' he said.
As for criticism that he strongarmed potential contributors, Gore said, ``I never said or did anything that would have given rise to a feeling like that on the part of someone who was asked to support our campaign. I never did that and I never will do that.''
He brushed off questions about whether the controversy had hurt his chances for running in 2000. ``I've told you before I'm not focused on any political campaign in the future.''
Gore said Clinton never asked him to make telephone calls but was aware he was helping to raise campaign money. He insisted that only a small part of the money he raised came from White House telephone calls.
Some donors reportedly complained that Gore's direct solicitations were heavy-handed. Even within the Democratic Party, Gore's role was called inappropriate by Sens. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota and Robert Torricelli of New Jersey.
Defending Gore's role, presidential spokesman Mike McCurry said the vice president ``ran successfully and he ran vigorously and he helped raise money for the campaign. And he, like the president, was effective. And, yes, he did it legally.''
Gore's fund-raising zeal came to light in a Washington Post report that said the vice president became known at the DNC as the administration's ``solicitor in chief.'' The vice president's fund-raising network raised $40 million of the $180 million collected by the DNC for the 1996 campaign, the Post said. The president refused to make direct solicitations himself, officials said.
``I don't know that he violently objected to doing it, I just think that he felt that there would be others working to do that on his behalf,'' McCurry said.
LENGTH: Medium: 87 linesby CNB