THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN Election '78
Election funding intricate game
By TIM SHEEHY Staff Reporter
Shaking hands, kissing babies and making a lot of speeches will not alone win an election. It takes money, more of it than most neonile will see in a lifetime.
Like anything else, the costs of campaigning continue to rise. In a senate race, one past candidate spent more than $1 million for each office that office paid a salary of $5,000 a year.
Candidates turn to the general public and organized political committees to raise the bulk of the needed money.
Before 1971, candidates were unrestricted in terms of raising money, but since the adoption of the 1971 Campaign Finance Act, amendments have been made to ensure money within the confines of guidelines set down by the federal government and state government ethics commissions. Many of these regulations, according to spokesmen for the various campaigns, are burdensome and nearly impossible to manage.
TO RAISE money, candidates rely heavily on a network of party volunteers, often sending the volunteers door to door to sell tickets and set up selling tickets for fund-raising functions.
Finance regulations require that all checks must be deposited within five days after being written. Often, volunteers who are ignorant of the laws will keep checks they have collected past the five-day deadline. The condition is that volunteers must take the check back if it be written on the control will be forfeited.
Ada placed by volunteers have also caused problems for several candidates because the person placing the ad did not tell the candidate's office he had run the ad. Therefore, the candidate could not report the contribution.
None of the offices tried innovations in the fund-raising process, relying instead on time-tested methods such as direct mail solicitations, fund-draining dinners and sales of bumper stickers, buttons and other campaign novelties.
"FUND RAISING is a very old art
whether it is for politics, charity or business; innovations have failed in the past so we have stuck to methods that have proved themselves in the past." Rusty Evans, finance coordinator for the University of Kasselau hd for the Senate, said.
Robert Taylor, manager for Democrat John Carlin's campaign for governor, said his office had relied heavily on the county to raise money from individuals.
Each county has a fund raising chairman who is given a quota and told to fill it. Taylor said.
Taylor said almost all of the contributions to Carlin's campaign had been solicited rather than just sent in.
when they want to give money to the campaign, but they want to be asked first," Taylor said. "They want you to know they gave."
ALTHOUGH THE BULK of the contributions coming into the various offices are less than $100, usually $2 or less, large contributions come from political committees representing business, labor and other special interests.
The finance act, as revised in 1978, bans corporations from contributing to federal elections. Candidates for state governor must accept contributions from corporations.
Political action committees, PACs, are permitted under the act so that corporations and other interests can have a method for contributing to campaigns.
Candidates for state office in Kansas are allowed to accept funds only from committees registered with the Kansas secretary of state. Examples of PACs in Kansas are Kansas bank political action committees, insurance action committees, savings and loan political action committees and teacher's political action committees.
TAYLOR SAID many committees contributed to both candidates for governor.
"It is really in their best interest to contribute to both campaigns," Taylor
See FINANCE page two
Control of House anybody's guess
Although the composition of the Kansas House of Representatives won't be decided by voters until Nov. 7, Republican and Democrat analysts both predict their party will hold a majority of House seats after the final ballot count.
All 125 members of the House face the recurrent fall; but 33 seats are uncontested—23 conceded to Republicans and 10 to Democrats. The 22nd District Senate seat, held by Donn J. Everett, is in the upper-house seat that will be contested.
Although the two parties disagree on the election's ultimate outcome, both figure it to be close. The result will be determined by the vote in about 25 districts that neither party counts in its column.
The Democrats, who two years ago gained control of the House for the first time in 65 years, predict they will keep their slim 65-60 majority—and, perhaps more importantly, their power to select committees and their chairmen.
"That's not just from a desire," Steve Milstein, administrative assistant to Hank Hillier, said. "He's lying, hey, said." "It't from analyzing the House races. It'ts going to be real close. The result may be as low as 63-42, but I am confident we will retain a majority in the House."
At the heart of Millstein's analysis lies the advantage of incumbency. Democrats have 58 incumbents compared with Republican's 50.
Van Riper said the state committee considered 50 seats as "safe Republican" and 35 seats as "safe Democrat." The remaining 40 seats are considered up for debate. The state committee said the split on the other 28 would determine who controls the House.
"This is a year for incumbents," he said, "because things in Kansas aren't bad. There is no dissatisfaction."
George Van Riper, executive director of the State Republican Committee, has predicted that his party would recapture control of the House by a 84-14 margin.
Van Riper said each party would lose some of the seats it was counting on, but that the Republican strategy was to concentrate on the marginal seats.
"Most of the close races are in districts held by democrats so there is more heat on them than there is on us," he said.
In the Senate race, Democrats' hopes to pull even with a 20-20 party split are riding on Ruth Schrum, of Manhattan, who lost the race to Everett two years ago. Republicans are countering with Merrill Worts, of Junction City.
"We feel pretty good about the Kansas House of Representatives, but I'm predicting 64 Republican seats."
"There's an advantage of having the Governor win by a good margin," Kay said. "We can't count on that being the single factor in winning the House election. But the Governor's popularity definitely should be a positive factor."
Morris Kay, chairman of the Republican's legislative campaign committee, said important campaign issues were taxes and the tax lid, inflation, farm problems in the rural areas and the urban areas, with local issues in some districts.
However, a victory by Schrum will bring no change in leadership because Senate rules call for reorganization only after an election. But, Millshead said, Senate Minority Leader Stiege曼, D-Kansas city, might wright committee chairmanships for Democrats or a democratic majority on some committees.
Republicans are grasping at Gov Robert Bennett's coattails,
Millstein said the Democratic party would be trying to fuse in Kansas the farm-labor coalition that has kept Minnesota Democrats ascendant in their state since it was formed by Hubert Humphrey in the 1940s.
"We represent the urban areas overwhelmingly," he said. "But the seats that put us in the majority were rural and the cities that can that put it together for Kansas."
With the election less than two weeks away, the House contests are more of a game. The candidates have to cause one no has been willing to spend the money to conduct state-wide polls. No
For the record, Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Carlin has predicted his party would return to Topeka with a majority again. Gov. Bennett will be the governor.
But with both parties anticipating a close contest to control the House, they found one last thing to on; the final verdict will be up to the voters.
Ads mold image of candidates
By JOHN WHITESIDES
Staff Reporter
Seated in his 110-floor suite in the Merchants Bank Building in Topeka, with windows on two sides of room 402 of the building, Sun Emerson could pass for the slick establishment type one would expect to be directing Bill Roy's Senate advertising.
That is, until he opens his mouth. When that happens, out pops a gravel-edges voice that could sand smooth a two-by-four. To listen, he lifts the glass to let listeners know that he no longer slicker him.
With his legs propped on his desk and his arms folded behind his head, Emerson chain-smokes cigarettes and gulps cup after cup of coffee as he explains why political advertising can't concentrate on only uncommitted voters.
"The uncommitted voter is often pictured as the careful observer who quietly studies the issues before making up his mind," Emerson draws. "Well, the plain fact is that most uncommitted voters just don't give a damn."
Emerson and Franke in Topeka has handled Roy since his first Congressional campaign, and is current directing Don Kelley, the director for a House seat from the 5th District.
"IF YOU AMY aim your ads directly at them
you just must own everyone asseer."
Fortified with that knowledge, Emerson will spend months carefully preparing the advertising campaign that he hopes will catapult Bill Roy into the U.S. Senate. It is not time spent frivolously, for Emerson and his Republican counterpart, Curt Uhrre, could very well decide who will win this contest between Roy and Nancy Landon Kassaubeen.
It's the world's political advertising, and neither Emerson or Uhre are amateurs at it. They're great.
UHR'E FIRM of Curt Uhre and Associates, Wilmington, Del., is handling several other candidates in Eastern Ohio. The Kassbeaer campaign, Kassebaer's campaign. Uhre is com-
mutting weekly from Delaware to Kansas to handle the Kauai account himself, and with good reason. Political advertising is looming large every year in the success of
See ADVERTISING page 10
Color and Cut to help Create your candidates image.
Staff Cartoon by DAVE MILLER
Politicians need extra eyes,ears
Staff Writer
By JOHN P. THARP
Politicians in Kansas promise to lead the people if elected, but they themselves are never promised.
They're led to press conferences, speeches, dinners and all the other political functions by aides. Without assistants, they can't be able to get around in the media schedule.
Scheduling rules candidates' lives. Bill Roy, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, usually eats when his folded schedule in his suit coat tells him it's time to eat. Gov
Robert F. Bennett, who is running for reelection, has an aide, who is always glancing at his wrist watch, to tell him what tavern he is supposed to be in, on schedule, during a Lawrence campaign swing, for instance.
Nancy Kassebaum, Republican Senate hopeful, is led by the arm at a Topeka mote to a seat she barely warms before she speaks to a group of electric cooperative managers. She is then led from her seat as she returns to the restaurant where she was told by assistants she will eat.
Jim Jeffries, a Republican running for
Congress, led by an aide, takes it upon himself to lead Ronald Reagan through a crowd of reporters at a Topkea air field press conference. Apparently tired of a TV newswoman's questioning, Jeffries bumps her out of the way. That wasn't on
CAMPAIGN '78 in Kansas has the logistics of a war. Political campaings have to be sold.
Bennett has a bodyguard who doubles as a driver. Roy has a driver who doubles as an assistant, Jeffries has a PR man who doubles as a security man. Kassabus has
people working on telephones who answer questions as skillful as a star infideler
The candidates in charge put some assistants in charge, but the candidates all have scheduling assistants. Like generals, they must be in the right place at the right time.
The "right time" is never "on time" with any candidate. Traffic, weather and hordes of hand-shaking people slow candidates. Leftover guests are breakfast lunches, brunches, dinners,
See CAMPAIGNERS page two
The campaign season has brought many political leaders to Kansas stumping for local and state candidates. Already this year, candidates from Gerald Ford; Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy and President Jimmy Carter have made brief campaign stops. Politicians are usually quick to endorse other candidates, but they often disappoint in return when they face relection.