Dollar Bill's dollar bills

After leaving the Senate, Bill Bradley built up a network of supporters in the private sector who are now helping to finance his surprise challenge to Al Gore.

By Jake Tapper

Nov 3, 1999 | Since leaving the Senate in January 1997 to spend more time with the common folk and advocate on behalf of campaign-finance reform, former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley has earned more than $2.6 million by mingling with fat cats.

According to tax returns released in the past few days, much of Bradley's earnings came from big-business sources with an interest in being on the potential president's good side -- including $300,000 from J.P. Morgan alone, which brought Bradley on as a consultant. The bulk of Bradley's earnings -- $1.6 million -- came from the Washington Speakers Bureau for speeches Bradley delivered at around $30,000 a pop. Many of these speeches were made to financial and pharmaceutical firms deeply involved in the political process.

"The Washington Speakers Bureau made the arrangements for the speeches with the groups that requested Bradley to speak before them," says Bradley spokesman Eric Hauser, who points out that Bradley didn't play any role in selecting the organizations to which he spoke.

Hauser says that speaking was only one of the many activities in Bradley's post-Senate, pre-presidential-candidate life outside the political arena. Bradley -- nicknamed "Dollar Bill" by his Knicks teammates because of his sizable NBA contract as well as his frugality -- taught at Stanford, the University of Maryland and Notre Dame. He authored a bestselling coffee-table book, "Values of the Game," and was active in organizations such as the National Civic League. Many of the groups to whom he spoke through the Washington Speakers Bureau were colleges and universities.

"He's spent most of his time between leaving the Senate and running for president focusing on public issues," Hauser says, "like campaign-finance reform, making appeals for racial unity and rebuilding community life. That was the focus of his public activities -- whether he was teaching, writing or affiliated with groups working on those projects.

"But he also made a living."

Indeed he did. Since 1996, many of the other presidential hopefuls -- like Vice President Al Gore, Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Arizona Sen. John McCain -- have been firmly entrenched in the regulated political system, whereby industries curry favor through the normal channels, including PACs and individual donations. Bradley, however, has been operating free of the nit-picky rules and intrusive media scrutiny that characterize that system. Instead, in an entirely unregulated and unlimited way, Bradley has been flown anywhere he chooses, from Anchorage, Alaska, to Palm Beach, Fla., by corporations that routinely attempt to influence public policy.

The fund-raising network secured in part by these speaking engagements has enabled Bradley to launch one of the strongest insurgent presidential campaigns in recent history. Bradley's superlative ability to raise cash for his presidential bid has made him competitive against a vice president whose presumed strength chased almost all of his prospective Democratic rivals -- like Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey and Minority Leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri -- out of the race long before it even began.

In raising campaign cash in the third quarter of this year, Bradley not only surpassed expectations but bested Gore himself, according to Federal Election Committee filings. Currently, the Bradley campaign has about as much cash on hand as the vice president's campaign -- roughly $10 million.

And many of the businesses and individuals who hired Bradley for speaking or other services are currently supporting his presidential bid.

"He would speak on those issues before audiences that probably had entirely other points of view," Hauser says. "Just as he does today. He says the same thing to a Boys and Girls Club in New Hampshire that he does at a Wall Street event. He'll go to a high-dollar fund-raiser and talk about campaign-finance reform and child poverty. He does not narrow-cast his message."

But while Bradley's own motives may have been unassailably pure, the same cannot necessarily be assumed of those writing the checks.

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