Dollar Bill's dollar bills

The company that seems most enraptured by Bradley's speaking, for instance, is the relatively obscure Key Corp Bank; Bradley spoke with members of the Key Corp Bank more than a dozen times in 1998.

In the chasm between business and labor, Key Corp Bank established itself as solidly on the business side in 1997 when the bank kicked in $75,000 to help fund a Republican-led initiative to overhaul workers' compensation standards in Ohio. Called "Issue Two," it was opposed by trial lawyers and labor unions, which argued that its changes would slash benefits. In the end, the labor side won, supported by 57 percent of the voters despite being outspent 3-to-1.

Through his speaking engagements, Bradley made more than $320,000 from Key Corp Bank in 1998 alone.

"Some executive at the Key Corp Bank thought the world of him," Hauser explains, "so he put together all sorts of events, and told the satellite offices and bureaus to bring Bradley in to speak to them."

A spokesman for Key Corp Bank did not return a call for comment.

In addition to speaking to Key Corp Bank, Bradley spent 1998 chatting up executives of various industries that regularly donate large amounts of cash to federal candidates, including:

• pharmaceutical companies like Rhone-Poulenc Rorer, which donated $42,750 to federal candidates in 1997-98, and $50,000 in soft money during that same time. Bradley spoke to Rhone-Poulenc Rorer executives in San Diego, Calif.;

• masters of high finance like Arthur Andersen/Andersen Consulting, which gave $442,086 in donations to federal candidates in 1997-98, and $116,250 in soft money. Bradley spoke with Andersen Consulting execs in Aventura, Fla.;

• influential big businesses like the American Trucking Association, which coughed up $419,196 for federal candidates in 1997-98, and $249,847 in soft money. Bradley spoke to ATA execs in Key Largo, Fla.

Many of the organizations ponying up the $25,000-$30,000 to hear Bradley wax poetic have a direct interest in legislation. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the agenda of the American Trucking Association "includes promoting as much spending as possible on highway projects and opposing efforts to tighten clean air standards."

Common Cause legislative director Meredith McGehee says that speaker's and consulting fees are just part of the whole Washington "big money game."

"If you sit back and say, 'Here I am, as a big-business person, someone who wants to play the big-money game in Washington, what are all of the things at my disposal to make sure my business' interests get heard in Washington?'" says McGehee, "you have the ability to give political contributions, the ability to give soft money, to hire lobbyists, to take people in your organization skiing with one of the candidates and you have the ability to invite people to give speeches. They're all part of the tools for people there who want to play that game."

McGehee allows that Bradley makes sense as a choice of speaker. "It's hard to argue that Bradley isn't a compelling figure -- as an athlete and a former senator and a potential presidential candidate."

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