The Legacy of Truman Newberry

Because hapless Truman Newberry spent the then shocking sum of $195,000 to win a U.S. Senate seat from Michigan in 1918, Congress--six years later --passed the Corrupt Practices Act. The law's principal proviso is that no single donor may give more than $5,000 to any one national campaign organization. As a result, candidates who are seriously interested in winning commonly set up dozens of such organizations; thus a big contributor can simply spread his largesse around in $5,000 wads.

A tougher stipulation of the law is that each campaign committee must report its income and expenditures to Congress ten days, and then again five days, before the election. The theory behind this requirement is that the voters should know before going to the polls whether any candidate has spent an excessive amount.

Most Washington hands agree that if the Corrupt Practices Act were strictly enforced, many of the nation's Senators and Representatives would be in jail. They might even be enough for a quorum. This year, however, the incoming Republican Administration faces an unusual problem. Under pressure from Attorney General Ramsey Clark, the clerk of the House of Representatives, former Congressman Pat Jennings, a Democrat, has taken the unprecedented and even--by sedate congressional standards --slightly ungentlemanly step of turning over to the FBI a list of organizations that had been delinquent in filing their accounts. The offenders include the Cincinnati-based National Coordinating Committee for Humphrey and no fewer than 20 Republican committees organized to elect the Nixon-Agnew ticket. The G.O.P. contributions came to $14.6 million of the candidates' total $20 million-plus campaign expenditure. "It was something," says Jennings apologetically, "that I just couldn't sit on."

The G.O.P. groups claim that computer foul-ups and the hectic pace of the campaign's last days were responsible for the delayed accounting. Willful violations of the reporting provisions are punishable by a $10,000 fine and/or two years in jail, unintentional violations by $1,000 and/or one year. However, it is virtually inconceivable that any suits will be filed. Though Richard Nixon campaigned on a pledge to name a tough new Attorney General, his appointee, no matter how tough he may be, can hardly be expected to make prosecution of the boss his first order of business on Jan. 20.

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