No More Ladies’ Bake Sales

The juncture of politics and money affords a place at the table for anyone who can fork over the maximum contribution allowed by federal law of $1,000 per candidate per political season. Like other women lured by the contacts and inspired by opportunity to affect policies via the back room, I’ve put together a number of these tables. Unwittingly, at one of these prime events in October 1993, I was the person who introduced Thai businesswoman Pornpimol “Pauline” Kanchanalak, who figures in the current Clinton administration fund-raising contretemps.

It was at a small luncheon I had been asked to assemble, featuring the vice president’s wife, Tipper Gore. On a bright Washington day, my group of 10 women rode in vans to the Maryland home of a prominent physician and political activist. Altogether, 35 women power-lunched that day with the vice president’s wife, at $1,000 a head.

Pauline Kanchanalak was a member of my party. No doubt she had her photo opportunity with Tipper Gore, and afterward she expressed her amazement that she had been able to spend two hours in such august company.

Unknown to me at the time, but now revealed by a search of Federal Election Commission records, Pauline’s family, if not Pauline, had made contributions to Democratic candidates and campaigns in 1992. However, the first time the name Pauline Kanchanalak appears in the records is on the date of our fateful lunch. Ultimately, the Democrats had to return $253,000 given under the Kanchanalak name.

After the Gore lunch, Pauline and I spoke only occasionally. Eventually, our contact tailed off, and I thought no more about her until her name recently surfaced on front pages.

Why, one might ask, was a Thai citizen at a fund-raising gathering? Her identity was known. The Secret Service was highly visible that day; they wouldn’t let an executive who was going to the airport after the lunch bring her bags into the house. Presumably the Democratic National Committee checked the guest list with due diligence as to foreign corporate connections.

On a broader scale, did Pauline belong in a room with a group dedicated to ensuring American women’s legal, economic and social rights? On its face, her presence made sense. Women see global parallels in our domestic issues, with women around the world bearing a disproportionate share of the economic and social burdens; so we expect to have links to prominent international women.

But expediency, coupled with inattention of fast-paced busy people, probably best explains Pauline Kanchanalak’s attendance at the luncheon. Earlier that week, she was a participant in a conference of women interested in raising capital for women-led businesses. There, I announced the Tipper Gore luncheon and Pauline signed up. With check in hand, her entry was assured.

The lunch had been organized by the Women’s Leadership Forum of the DNC. This group arose on the heels of 1992 election success when we realized that money had to accompany women’s performance in electing a Democratic administration. For the first time, women would ante up $1,000 to join a special group in the party. To serve on the Women’s Leadership Forum board, executives, businesswomen and wealthy wives donated $10,000 or pledged to raise $35,000. This group quickly became the single biggest source of new donors to the Democratic Party, according to then-DNC Chairman David Wilhelm.

Jean-Paul Sartre’s observation, “I entered politics and it remade me,” has been a personal watchword for me, so as the fund-raising scandal broke, I considered the implications of unmindful participation in the money-generating process. Perhaps I had personally failed the causes I hoped to serve. Given women’s hunger for inclusion, the unoriginal thought recurred: that we might now be completely co-opted by what we originally sought to transform. But the weakness lies in the system, not with individuals or group participants. So long as politics requires donations, donations ensure access. That truth rests at the bottom of the Pauline story.

Campaign reform should be the logical outcome of the president’s current fund-raising trouble. The Hollywood Women’s Political Committee has set campaign reform as a goal, and Clinton needs to look back to the sources from which he drew early money in 1992, including the Hollywood women, for support to tackle the task.

And, while women haven’t risen to the standard set by the legendary Lew Wasserman, celebrated for locking the doors until big donors write the stipulated check, we now move significant money in politics. Women do need a place at the money table, but we need it in business, not as players in the murky corridors of political fund-raising.