MEANWHILE, ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE AISLE...

By Richard Lacayo

The intricate squalor of Democratic fund raising is the news of the moment. But here's a big surprise: funny money is a bipartisan indulgence. Here's another: Bob Dole--gasp!--is in on the game. For most of his Senate career, Dole was the pro of the quid pro quo. No one else has been more effective at working the filigree of legislation, digging out just the groove to let the American government's generosity flow unimpeded to his most loyal supporters. And the G.O.P. generally has engaged for years in imaginative fund raising, and favors trading that would make anybody blush. Anybody, that is, but a Democrat.

Consider New York Senator Alfonse D'Amato, Dole's campaign co-chairman, who, U.S. officials told TIME, recently held hostage the foreign aid of the African nation of Zimbabwe at the behest of American International Group, an insurance giant that is a major donor to the G.O.P. Since 1990, AIG has given almost $300,000 in "soft money" to Republican Party committees, including $178,000 in this election cycle. An AIG subsidiary, Unity Insurance Co., is the only U.S.-based financial-services firm in Zimbabwe. Since 1987 that country has been demanding that foreign-owned financial companies draft plans to sell 51% of their assets to Zimbabweans. When AIG resisted, U.S. State Department officials helped start negotiations on the dispute last spring. But the company abruptly quit the talks, U.S. officials say, and pressed friends in Congress to slash aid to Zimbabwe--$23.3 million this year--by more than half unless it repealed its law. Over State Department protests that programs like AIDS prevention would be affected, D'Amato threatened to add the language to an appropriations bill. Zimbabwe backed down. A D'Amato spokeswoman says he is proud to have helped a New York company "unfairly treated by a foreign country." AIG's spokesman says it had intended to restrict only economic, not humanitarian aid.

In recent weeks a former high-ranking Dole moneyman received the largest penalty ever connected to an illegal political contribution. On Oct. 23 a federal judge in Boston hit businessman Simon Fireman, 71, former vice chairman of Dole's campaign finance committee, with a fine of more than $1 million and six months of house arrest (in his luxury high-rise). Fireman's Massachusetts-based company, Aqua-Leisure Industries, which distributes pool toys and swimming goggles, was fined $5 million. His crime? Making $120,000 in illegal political contributions to individual candidates and the Republican National Committee, including $69,000 to Bob Dole.

The scheme worked this way: current law limits individual political contributions in federal races to $1,000. Fireman got around the rules by persuading employees to write checks for the individual maximum, then reimbursing them from a front company he established for that purpose in Hong Kong. Last spring when the Kansas City Star began investigating the scheme, Dole claimed to know nothing of it. "In this business, you don't know who's giving you money," he said.

When the money comes from low-level employees of Aqua Leisure, that may be true. But Dole is well aware that for years his biggest cash donors have been the winemaking brothers Ernest and Julio Gallo of California, who have given more than $1 million to his campaigns, think tank and charitable foundation. In return, he helped along the 1986 "Gallo amendment," which allowed the brothers to sidestep the 55% tax on transfers of more than $1 million from grandparent to grandchild. Dole's campaigns have also received significant cash from Dwayne Andreas, the embattled chairman of Illinois agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland. Since 1979, Andreas, his company and his family have provided Dole operations with more than $475,000. Dole showed his gratitude on the Senate Finance Committee, where he brought to his tax-writing duties the subtleties of a Chinese calligrapher. For years Dole managed ingenious defenses of the tax subsidies for ethanol, the corn-based fuel ADM produces, and also sustained the sugar-price-support program. That in turn sustained profits for fructose corn syrup, a sugar substitute that is one of ADM's biggest products.

Sugar could be the underlying theme of Dole's career. The same price supports that benefited ADM were also worth about $65 million a year to the Fanjul family, based in Miami and one of the world's largest sugar producers. Over the past five years, the Fanjuls and their companies have given Dole and his political-action committee more $62,000, plus an additional $419,000 to the Republican Party. During the Republican primaries, Cuban-born Jose Fanjul, who is himself a permanent resident alien, was one of Dole's finance vice chairmen. And since the Fanjuls are a prudent family, Jose's brother Alfonso is a trustee on President Clinton's finance-committee board.

--By Richard Lacayo. With reporting by Viveca Novak and Murray S. Waas/Washington

With reporting by VIVECA NOVAK AND MURRAY S. WAAS/ WASHINGTON