Michael Goland Active in Cranston-Zschau Senate Race

By John P. Egan

Readers of The Washington Report should be familiar with Michael Goland. A wealthy Southern California real estate investor and major contributor to pro-Israel causes, Goland spent an estimated $1 million of his own money in 1984 to defeat Sen Charles Percy (R-IL), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Pro-Israel PACs and individuals targetted Percy because he had supported President Reagan's decision in 1981 to sell AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control Systems) and sophisticated fighter-bombers to Saudi Arabia.

Goland took a particularly keen interest in California's US Senate race this year, which pitted challenger Ed Zschau against three-term incumbent Alan Cranston. Although Zschau, a Republican Congressman, was no slouch on support for Israel, the Los Angeles Times reported that he had upset Jewish individuals and pro-Israel PACs with two of his votes in Congress: his support for "across-the-board budget cuts that included supplemental aid to Israel and his vote in May of this year in favor of a US arms sale to Saudi Arabia." Cranston, on the other hand, is one of Israel's most consistent supporters in the Congress: he has repeatedly voted for higher aid levels to Israel and against arms sales to moderate Arab states.

Total election expenditures in this race topped $18 million, making this the most expensive Senate race in history, surpassing the 1984 Helms-Hunt contest in North Carolina, where the candidates spent an estimated $16 million.

Out of nearly 8 million votes cast, Cranston's margin of victory was only about 117,000 votes: he received roughly 3,575,500 votes to Zschau's 3,458,900. Two other candidates, Breck McKinley (Libertarian Party) and Ed Vallen (American Independent Party) split roughly 175,000 votes.

According to articles published in The Los Angeles Times, Mark Barnes, a political consultant representing Michael Goland, approached both McKinley and Vallen with offers of financial and administrative assistance in an effort to drain conservative and anti-Cranston voters away from Zschau. McKinley refused the assistance, but Vallen accepted a $120,000 contribution from Barnes in the last week of the election campaign.

A November 3 article by Times staff writers Tracy Wood and Kenneth Reich revealed that television station KNBC refused roughly $50,000 worth of political advertisements for Vallen "because of questions about the source of the money." The Federal Elections Commission requires that candidates file quarterly disclosures documenting how much money a candidate raised and how the money was spent. The Times article noted that "Federal law prohibits large anonymous donations (to political campaigns) and limits individual contributions to $1,000 per candidate in each election. Political action committees can contribute a maximum of $5,000 per candidate." When KNBC checked with the Federal Elections Commission and the California Secretary of State, it discovered that the Vallen campaign had not filed the proper documents, and the station refused to run the ads.

The Times article said that Vallen asked Barnes where the donations came from, and Vallen said Barnes replied that "he was not at liberty to say. He (Barnes) said, 'We want to keep this hush, hush. We want to spring this as a political surprise.'"

Libertarian McKinley said, "These were people who were going to do the same thing they did in Illinois. They would rather have six more years of Cranston than 30 years of Zschau," reported the Times.

Neither Goland nor Barnes were available for comment before the article was published. Times writers Wood and Reich are investigating whether Barnes' last-minute contribution, made on behalf of Goland, violated FEC regulations.

Although Vallen received roughly 107,000 votes and McKinley about 70,000 votes, it cannot be said that Barnes' contribution was the deciding factor in Zschau's defeat. Zschau and Vallen are both conservative, and so share, to some degree, the same constituency. Zschau would have needed all of Vallen's supporters, and then some, in order to defeat Cranston. Nevertheless, spending $120,000 on Vallen's campaign along with far greater amounts on Cranston's was probably considered a relatively inexpensive insurance policy by the pro-Israel lobby.

John P. Egan is managing editor of The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.