GOP Chief Beneficiary of Card Firms’ Gifts in 2000 Election Cycle

A close look at financial company campaign donation data for the 2000 election from the Center for Responsive Politics revealed some surprising details — and some not so surprising.

The figures, all of which lump together corporate and employee gifts, showed divergent political preferences at the two major bank card associations, Visa U.S.A. and MasterCard International. Though they have similar stakes in bankruptcy reform, privacy legislation, and e-commerce restrictions, they did not support the obvious party (Republicans) in equal measure. While 86% of MasterCard’s contributions went to Republicans during the 1999-2000 election cycle, just over half of Visa’s went to Democrats.

Rhonda Bentz, a Visa spokeswoman, said her company tried to be evenhanded. “That was a conscious effort,” she said. “It’s our strategy always to be bipartisan.”

Visa’s gifts of $339,100 — 51% to Democrats, 49% to Republicans — placed it sixth on the Center for Responsive Politics’ list of top contributors among finance and credit companies. But the center keeps several lists of financial services companies and their divisions, making apples-to-apples comparisons somewhat difficult. For example, one list breaks out Bank of America Corp.’s credit card division, which gave $161,050 to political candidates in 2000, 11% to Democrats and 89% to Republicans. But the card subsidiaries of some other major issuers — such as Citigroup Inc. — are not broken out, either because they did not give individually or for other reasons.

So far this year, Visa has given $30,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and $5,000 to the Republican National State Elections Committee. MasterCard has given $202 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

In general, the amounts that credit card and consumer finance companies and their executives donate to political campaigns continued their upward climb in 2000. The Center for Responsive Politics — a Washington nonprofit group that monitors such contributions — said that the sector shelled out a collective $9.3 million for political campaigns in the 2000 cycle, with 68% of it going to Republicans.

By contrast, during the previous presidential election cycle, in 1996, this category of companies donated a collective $4,301,526 to political parties and candidates, with 66% going to Republicans. In 1998, the figures were $4,417,103 and 70% to Republicans.

Among credit card companies, the biggest donor last year was MBNA Corp., which ranked fourth among finance, insurance, and real estate companies in total contributions for the election cycle (Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and the National Association of Realtors were first, second, and third). MBNA, the second-largest U.S. credit card issuer, gave over $3.5 million to candidates in the 2000 elections, 86% to Republicans and 14% to Democrats.

MBNA’s chairman and chief executive officer, Alfred Lerner, gave $264,000 from his own pocket, and Charles Cawley, the company’s president (and a close friend of former President Bush and his wife), gave $36,910. Mr. Cawley’s home in Maine was also the site of the much-publicized 1999 Republican Party Dinner, for which a separate PAC was formed to raise $85,000. MBNA declined to comment for this story.

Among individual donors from big card companies, the former and current chairmen of American Express Co., Harvey Golub and Kenneth Chenault, respectively, came in third and fourth. The watchdog group’s records said that Mr. Golub gave $17,000 to his company’s political action committee and Mr. Chenault, $11,500 to the same PAC.

Some major card executives gave selectively to individual politicians. The record shows that David Nelms, the president and chief operating officer of the Discover card division of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., gave to candidates on both sides of the aisle who looked like current or prospective heavyweights on the House and Senate banking committees.

Doug Weber, a researcher at the Center for Responsive Politics, said that examining card company political gifts shows “that between 1994 and 1996, the Democrat/Republican split did a flip-flop. That’s [when] Republicans gained control of Congress.”