Buchanan Inc. (Page 2)

A Direct-Mail Gold Mine

The Buchanans ran in thirty-three state primaries in 1992 and won 3 million votes. They humiliated President Bush in working-class New Hampshire by winning 37 percent of the vote. They carried their conservative crusade to the GOP convention in Houston, where Pat recruited the conservative faithful to join his "Culture War."

As successful as they were at the polling halls, however, the Buchanans were even more so in the "caging rooms" where envelopes stuffed with campaign contributions were ripped open. By the time the '92 campaign was over, the Buchanans had raised at least $7.2 million, most of it through direct-mail solicitations. It was a record-smashing haul. Not since Reagan had a candidate used direct mail so successfully.

The Buchanans were naturals at direct mail. Out on the campaign trail, Pat wrote and refined his own speeches, effectively test-marketing his own rhetoric. Back at their McLean, Virginia, headquarters, Bay transformed her brother's battle cries into tightly written fundraising letters. Using techniques pioneered by legendary GOP fundraiser Richard Viguerie and refined by former mentor Nofziger, Bay helped her brother tap into a sea of small donors. Whereas most top-tier campaigns depend on $1,000 contributions harvested from clubby networks of upper-middle-class donors, the 1996 Buchanan campaign had an average "large" donation of only $416. And the vast majority of Buchanan donors gave far less. Bay estimates that the average donation to the current campaign is a mere $27. (An exact average is not publicly available because the Federal Election Commission does not require reporting of donations under $200.)

Few donors realize that in addition to giving money to the Buchanan cause, they are also signing up for years of junk mail. Buchanan Inc. routinely sells its mailing lists for extra cash, just as Citizens for the Republic did. At the end of the 1996 campaign, for example, the 162,000-name Buchanan for President list fetched $360,000. The current campaign is so oriented toward harvesting names for its mailing lists that callers to the toll-free 800 number are asked for their names and addresses immediately after the phone is answered--before they have a chance to state their business.

A bias toward extremism is inherent in the Buchanans' "join the fight" style of direct-mail solicitation. Donors don't respond to letters that cry, "All is well." Rather, they whip out their checkbooks in response to emergencies. So in order to keep the money rolling in, the Buchanans reduce every complex issue to a black-and-white crisis. This has attracted extremists from the most disfranchised fringe of US politics. Gun-rights advocate Larry Pratt, for example, was a co-chairman of the 1996 campaign until it was revealed that he had participated in white-supremacist rallies. Also supporting the 1996 campaign were William Carter of South Carolina, who had ties to former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, and Michael Bray, who spent nearly four years in federal prison for his role in a series of abortion clinic bombings. The Buchanans bristle at accusations that they, too, are extremists, and they defend themselves by noting that they don't have the resources to screen every donor. This point was proven for them by TV satirist Michael Moore, who mailed the '96 campaign a $100 donation from a fictional organization he dubbed "Abortionists for Buchanan." The check was promptly cashed.

The American Cause

After the 1992 GOP primary was over, Pat rejoined the punditocracy. His quixotic campaign boosted the popularity of shows like CNN's Crossfire and Capital Gang, and his new ratings boosted his take-home pay. Before his first campaign he made $572,505 a year; by 1995 he was making $709,310. He now earns in excess of a million dollars a year.

Bay had no such career to which she could return. But there was enough money left over from the 1992 campaign to pay her a salary for two more years. She took home $112,538 from January 1993 through March 1995. In order to keep the rest of her staff intact between campaigns, Bay resuscitated Citizens for the Republic. In February of 1993 she changed the group's name to The American Cause and moved it to the Virginia office from which she had run the campaign. Just as it had done for Reagan, the nonprofit promoted conservative causes and kept Pat Buchanan's name in front of conservative voters between elections.

The American Cause also provided Bay with the means to squeeze more donations out of the mailing lists she had built during the campaign. The American Cause raised $2.5 million between the 1992 and 1996 elections, most of that from donors to the 1992 presidential campaign. (The group also resold the campaign mailing list several times.) Because it was not a campaign, The American Cause was able to accept donations far larger than the $1,000 maximum (for individuals) allowed under federal law. In 1994, for example, textile magnate Roger Milliken, who stood to be hurt by a flood of cheap textiles, gave $250,000 to The American Cause and another $1.9 million to a sister nonprofit called the Coalition for the American Cause. Buchanan Inc. helped Milliken lobby Congress against adopting the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, while Milliken helped boost Buchanan's image: The nonprofit bought a million dollars of television advertising, all of which starred a very presidential-looking Pat Buchanan.

With a staff and office in place, launching the 1996 Buchanan for President campaign was relatively simple. Late in 1994, Bay locked up the glass-and-concrete offices of The American Cause. When she returned the following week, the offices and accounts had legally been transformed into the campaign. The name on the door had changed, but the faces inside remained the same. Likewise, when the 1996 campaign was over, The American Cause was revived, mailing out "TAC-grams" newsletters. One such fundraising letter--mailed by a political nonprofit identical to those Buchanan had urged Nixon to sic the IRS on twenty years earlier--called for the abolition of a "rogue regime" at the IRS.

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