posted on: Monday, January 09, 2006

Jack Abramoff’s misuse of the Capital Athletic Foundation’s tax-exempt funds might have done great damage to the public’s sense of philanthropic credibility, not to mention how much the public can rely on the IRS to catch philanthropic miscreants like Abramoff and company, but maybe there’s a perverse silver lining for a few charities from the nation’s biggest political scandal since Teapot Dome in the 1920s.

In their scramble to escape association with the likes of Abramoff, politicians, from President George W. Bush to state and local officials, are dumping campaign contributions received from or through Abramoff and in many cases donating the funds to charities.

Now there’s a fundraising strategy for hard-pressed development staff: Look for political scandals and lobby, whoops, wrong word, solicit, nope, that doesn’t work, contact the politicians that received the illicit swag and convince them to donate the spoils to charity.

None of the suddenly pristine politicians of both parties are disgorging the Abramoff-linked contributions as illegal, mind you. While Abramoff clearly misrepresented himself to his political donors and often advocated against what they thought they were getting him to lobby for, politicians frequently get campaign contributions from a variety of sources, many of which don’t look much more appetizing than Abramoff and his companions.

President Bush, for example, has decided to ditch $6,000 in campaign contributions from Abramoff himself (plus his wife and a contribution from the Saginaw Chippewa Tribe that Abramoff represented), even though Abramoff was well recognized as a “Bush Pioneer” for having regularly bundled $100,000 or more per cycle. The beneficiary, according to the RNC, will be the American Heart Association. That’s only a small part of the $300 million Bush raised in the 2004 election cycle, but who knows how much additional ill-gotten loot charities might be able to carve out of the RNC’s coffers?

A number are donating the proceeds to charity, and the AP wire has actually been running a tab of politicians ditching their Abramoff dollars in a belated attempt to avoid association with his cesspool of problems.

Some reports identify the specific charities benefiting from Abramoff-funneled funds:

Congressman Walter Jones (R-NC) has turned over $1,000 to the Salvation Army;
Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI), has divvied up all of $949 between the USO Operation Phone Home and the Bert Blaine Memorial Heart Association Heart Walk;
Senator Judd Greg (R-NH) $12,000 to Marguerite’s Place;
Congressman Eric Cantor (R-VA) has given $10,000 to the William Byrd Community House;
Congressman John Sweeney (R-NH) has turned over money to the St. Jude Children’s Research Center;
Congresswoman Kay Granger (R-TX) has given to the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Forth Worth,
Congressman Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO), $1,000 to Crossroads Safehouse;
Congressman Heather Wilson (R-NM), $1,000 to the Great Southwest Council of the Boy Scouts of America;
Congressman Lane Evans (D-IL) to the Community Caring Conference;
Senator John Warner (R-VA), $1,000 to the Pentagon Memorial Fund;
Senator George Allen (R-VA), $2,000 for housing for the families of wounded military service people;
Congressman Ernest Istook (R-OK), $6,000 to the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation; Congressman Mike Ferguson (R-NJ), $1,000 to the Children’s Specialized Hospital Foundation;
Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL), $2,000 to a Palm Beach drug- and alcohol-rehabilitation program;
Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX), $15,000 to various suburban Houston charities; and
Congressman Tim Holden (D-PA), $1,000 to an unnamed animal shelter. Clearly animals and kids do well as hard-to-criticize places to donate the campaign plunder and decontaminate itchy politicians’ images.
Some recycling of Abramoff campaign contributions into charity contributions went to groups addressing relief and reconstruction issues related to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita:

Senator Thad Cochran (R-MS) giving $8,000 and Congressman R. Wicker (R-MS) turning over $250 to the Mississippi Hurricane Recovery Fund,
Congressman J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ), $2,250 to the Salvation Army Katrina Disaster Fund,
Congressman Jim McCrery, as much as $35,000 to the Salvation Army,
Congressman Bob Simmons (R-CT) giving $1,250 to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund,
And in addition, Senator Craig Thomas (R-WY) gave $8,000 to victims of a 2005 tornado in the town of Wright, Wyoming.

A few members of Congress remembered that the donors most viciously misused by Abramoff were Indian tribes and therefore donated their campaign booty to Indian charities:

Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), $11,000 to the American Indian Center of Chicago and the American Indian Health Service of Chicago;
Senator John Thune (R-SD), $2,000 to the White Buffalo Calf Woman Society;
Senator Tim Johnson (D-SD), $8,250 to Billy Mills Running Strong for American Indian Youth; Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), $5,000, Congressman Bob Ney (R-OH), $6,500, and Congressman Ralph Regula (R-OH), $1,000 to the American Indian College Fund;
Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND), $3,750 to North Dakota’s tribal colleges;
Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), $18,892 to seven tribal colleges; and
Senator Conrad Burns (R-MT), some portion of the $150,000 he received given to Native American charities, the remainder refunded to donors.

Noteworthy recyclers of Abramoff campaign contributions into donations for as of yet unnamed charities include House Speaker Denny Hastert (R-IL), who has donated $70,000 to charities; Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), $2,000; Congressman Tim Holden (D-PA), $1,000; Congressman Roy Blunt (R-MO), $8,500; Senator Elizabeth Dole (R-NC), $1,000; Senator Jim Talent (R-MO), $3,000; Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, $2,000; Senator Gordon Smith (R-OH), $4,000,; and Senator John Sununu (R-NH), $3,000.

No word yet on how or whether recently resigned Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham plans to dispose of the $12,500 he received in campaign contributions from tribes represented by Abramoff. Of course, the Duke did find a way of offering to contribute some of his personal booty that he got in bribes from defense contractor MZM, donating some of the proceeds from a house sale to San Diego charities to help clean up Top Gun’s sullied image, though the charities had some interesting right-wing political relationships (see “The Duke’s Demise” in the Summer 2005 issue of Responsive Philanthropy). Unfortunately, Cunningham was unable to use charity to clean up his image fast enough with disclosure of the extent of his corruption, as evidence of more bribery spun him out of Congress and unlikely to devote more cash to charities (see “The Duke’s Demise: Part Deux” in our blog archives).

Unlike Cunningham, Abramoff hasn’t yet cried crocodile tears in front of the press microphones, but he has certainly looked as miserable as possible while copping his pleas in Washington, DC and in Florida on successive days. As members of Congress and others run as fast as they can from his campaign finance donations, they might soon appear equally distressed as Abramoff names names and provides details. Their panic-stricken donations to charities might not provide the ethical comfort or the political cover that they might need.

Nonetheless, a few charities might be able to benefit from the rapidly spreading phenomenon of Abramoff-induced guilty consciences. In the wake of the indictments and plea bargains surrounding Abramoff, some in the press have taken to calling him “Casino Jack”. Based on the flow of his money now diverted to named and unnamed charities, maybe Abramoff should be dubbed “Charity Jack” instead.