Editorial: Disband 'Team Ohio' April 20, 2000 Now that it has been caught in the spotlight of public disclosure, Governor Taft's secretive "Team Ohio" fund-raising scheme should be disbanded. After all the justifiable heat President Clinton took over Democratic campaign contributors giving big bucks for overnights in the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House, you have to wonder about the ethically challenged advisor who suggested that Mr. Taft similarly reward major benefactors to the Ohio Republican Party. And, if the exercise in snagging donors for $25,000 and $50,000 annual, nonreportable contributions to party activities is entirely above board, as Mr. Taft's top aide and GOP officials insist, why is a key feature of this method of fund-raising now being abandoned? These are only a few of the questions that demand answers about "Team Ohio," the title given to a several-year-old GOP fund-raising effort that offered attendance at a reception at the governor's mansion and governor's-box seats at an Ohio State University football game last fall among other inducements to donors. Prospective donors were promised, according to a brochure, "access to key GOP officeholders and candidates from the state and national level." The scheme has raised a reported $3 million. News reports about "Team Ohio" exposed a gargantuan loophole in a 1998 state campaign finance law that allows setting up special funds to pay for political party operations. Put forward as a "reform" by Republicans, including Mr. Taft during his term as secretary of state, the law exempts political parties from reporting the names of contributors to such funds. Other state campaign finance laws require reporting. So we'll probably never find out who the members of "Team Ohio" are, or, more to the point, what they get for their huge contributions. Answers are in short supply because of a stone wall thrown up to inquiries by Bob Bennett, state Republican chairman. This is particularly galling because Mr. Bennett used the openness gambit in Washington recently in testifying before a Senate committee that state political parties desperately need their unregulated "soft money" slush funds or they'll be forced out of business. "We, as a party, report everything," Mr. Bennett said then. Now he says, "If the law requires me to disclose them, I will comply with the law. If it doesn't, I'm not going to report them." That's airtight reasoning, indeed, from the man who, in effect, wrote the loophole into state law and now is using it - legally! - to evade public disclosure of who is spending huge amounts of money to influence Ohio's top public official. Disclaimers by Mr. Taft's chief of staff, Brian Hicks, and Gary Abernathy, GOP spokesman, that the party will stop promising "access" to officeholders through the use of such public property as college football stadiums are of little comfort. Given the long history of public service in this state by the Taft family, the governor should recognize the harm that can be done by schemes which sound just like something President Clinton would do. While Mr. Bennett insists that Lincoln Bedroom sleepovers and governor's mansion receptions are an "apples and watermelons" comparison, there is increasing - and bipartisan - agreement that both are the bitter fruit of the system of legalized bribery we know as campaign financing. © 1999, 2000 The Blade, All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use and Privacy Statement