THE NEW RICH MAN'S CLUB

By Romesh Ratnesar

Next year's political model may resemble a 61-year-old businessman named Guy Millner. In 1994, armed with $1.6 million of his own money, Millner jumped into Georgia's gubernatorial race and won the Republican primary before losing narrowly to incumbent Democrat Zell Miller. Two years later, Millner ran for Georgia's vacant U.S. Senate seat--again gaining the G.O.P. nod, and again falling short in the general election. Political wags figured he was finished, or possibly broke--Millner had footed $6.4 million of that campaign's costs. But this summer Millner surprised them and announced his candidacy for Governor in 1998. Polls show him ahead by 10 points.

The millionaires-only club of American politics--once the small domain of names like Roosevelt, Rockefeller and Kennedy--has expanded to include all sorts of Regular Rich Guys. In the past election cycle, 145 candidates for Congress (up 10% from 1994) spent at least $100,000 of their own money on their campaigns. Nineteen spent $1 million or more. And with nearly a full year to go before the 1998 elections, 133 House hopefuls have plunked down at least $50,000 of their own cash. In California, Senate candidate Darrell Issa, a car-alarm magnate, has pledged to put up as much as $14 million--and that's just to win the primary.

The parade of parvenus is the strange but direct result of federal campaign-finance laws that set limits on the amount of money most candidates can raise from any single donor. While typical wannabes might go to five donors to raise $10,000, a rich counterpart can just write a check and devote time normally spent at fund raisers to winning votes instead. That explains why the parties narrowcast for fat-walleted candidates who can shoulder the burden themselves. It also explains why elders of both parties quietly persuaded the authors of the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform bill to remove new limits on the amount wealthy candidates can contribute to their own campaigns. Grumbles law professor Jamin Raskin: "Working-class people have about as much chance of running for Senate as they have of winning the lotto."

Family fortune, though, doesn't predict campaign success. Some of the more profligate self-financers in recent years spent tens of millions on doomed candidacies, including Steve Forbes ($43 million in '96), Ross Perot ($68 million in '92) and Senate candidate Michael Huffington ($28 million in '94). In the past congressional campaign, only 21 of the 145 biggest spenders eventually won seats. One problem for well-heeled candidates is that they sometimes succumb to hubris. In 1994 Millner turned off some rural Georgians by jokingly asking a local farmer, "Do you work for a living, or are you in farming?" What deep pockets can do for novice politicians is boost their familiarity and fund-raising chops for the next go-around. Forbes has emerged as a front runner for the G.O.P.'s presidential nomination in 2000. Mark Warner, a cellular-phone tycoon who plowed $10.3 million into his unsuccessful Virginia Senate bid, is the Democrats' hot prospect for Senator in 2000 or Governor in 2001. And Millner has a head start on patching things up with the farmers.

--By Romesh Ratnesar. With reporting by John F. Dickerson/Washington

With reporting by John F. Dickerson/Washington