St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 4

A4 ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH NEWS TUESDAY, JANUARY 16, 2001 postnet.comnews jgj John Ashcroft Confirmation Hearings 1 QT nr Hie Judiciary Committee Republicans Orrin G. Hatch of Utah. First Tlie Judiciary Committee Democrats Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, 1 chairman.

First elected 1974. A pro-abortion rights Roman Catholic, Leahy was harshly critical of attempts by Ashcroft and other Republicans elected 1976. A conservative who strongly supports Ashcroff nomination. Hatch on occasion has reached across the ideological divide, as when to block President Bill Clinton's nominees to the federal bench. Edward M.

Kennedy of Massa he joined with Kennedy to call for steep tax increases on cigarettes. He was less willing than Ashcroft to oppose Clinton's judicial nominees. Strom Thurmond of South chusetts. First elected 1962. He wrote Ashcroft in December praising his work on charitable choice letting religious institutions provide govern Carolina.

First elected 1954., The 98-year-old Thurmond has served in the Senate longer than anyone in history. He began his Senate career after he 7 ment-paid social services but more recently he has voiced "serious" reservations about Ashcroft's views on civil rights, abortion and other issues. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Former Sen.

John Ashcroft (at right) prepares Monday for hearings on his nomination as U.S. attorney general. With him are (from left) Ted Cruz, Bush transition legal adviser; Charles Polk, Ashcroft adviser; Paul McNulty, Bush transition policy adviser; Fred McClure, Bush transition for Justice Department team leader; and David Kuo, Ashcroft adviser. Business interests donated most to his campaign, records show abandoned the Democratic Party to run a segregationist "Dixiecraf campaign for president in 1948. Charles E.

Grassley of Iowa. First elected 1, Delaware. First elected 1972. Biden chaired the committee during the 1991 1980. Grassley has spent most of his career focused on farm issues and cutting government costs but takes over next week as wrings the Supreme Court Justice Clarence Republican colleagues in Senate also made generous contributions Thomas.

He also chaired the 1987 hearings on the failed nomination to the court of Robert H. Bork. Herb Kohl of Wisconsin. First chairman of the Finance Committee. He may be best known for publicizing such Pentagon extravagances as a $7,600 coffee maker and an $1,868 toilet-seat cover.

Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. elected 1988. Kohl is a multimillionaire grocery chain and department store owner who has self-financed his campaigns. He has advocated First elected 1980. Specter is a moderate on abortion rights who was one of five Republicans who voted to acquit Clinton on both articles of aggressive antitrust enforcement, strong gun control measures and restrictions on fees paid to trial lawyers.

Dianne Feinstein of California. impeachment. He has grappled with Ashcroft on some judicial nominations but was one of the most aggressive defenders of Clarence Thomas. Jon Kyi of Arizona. First elected campaign gift of all: a $400,000 check from the Kansas City-based direct sales firm House of Lloyd.

The company wrote that check in 1998 to American Values Political Action Committee, the fund Ashcroft opened for his exploratory presidential bid. Unlike the senatorial accounts detailed in this analysis, the PAC was based in Virginia, which has far less restrictive regulations for fund raising and spending. At the time, House of Lloyd vice president Saul Kass said the donation was more about Ashcroft's values as "a man who has religious principles and fights for them." In the senatorial campaign accounts, it is St. Louis' own Robert J. Trulaske who can take credit as the largest individual contributor to the re-election campaign.

He gave $55,300 to Ashcroft's funds, including $52,000 to the victory committee. Family members Robert Steve and Geraldine Trulaske gave $5,900 more to Ashcroft's campaign and victory funds. Trulaske owns True Manufacturing, an O'Fallon-based commercial refrigeration business that caters to the soft- drink and restaurant industries, according to Missouri corporate records. He's also a longtime donor to the Republican Party. He and Steven Trulaske did not respond to repeated phone calls seeking comment.

FEC records show that besides his donations to Ashcroft, he has given at least $71,000 to party coffers since 1994. He gave $34,000 to federal Republican candidates, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Sen. Jesse Helms and presidential hopefuls Dan Quayle, George W. Bush and John McCain in that order, over a five-month span in 1999. company gave $10,000 to his campaign and $80,000 to his victory fund.

Leggett executives and employees contributed $19,600 to his campaign funds. The company's donations climaxed with a final $50,000 soft-money contribution Sept. 7. It was a record-smashing day for the victory fund, the analysis shows: Ashcroft received checks totaling $370,275 on Sept. 7 alone.

St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch and its employees contributed just under $80,000 to Ashcroft's accounts. Enterprise Rent-A-Car and its employees wrote at least $56,650 in checks to Ashcroft. The company and its workers contributed $54,650 of that to his campaign account the largest contribution from a single company to the re-election fund. In the Senate, Ashcroft co-sponsored a bill in 1999 to ease liability burdens on car-rental companies like the St.

Louis-based Enterprise. That year, he also co-sponsored a bill backed by drug manufacturer Schering-Plough to extend its patent for drugs, such as the anti-allergy drug Claritin. Schering-Plough boosted Ashcroft's re-election campaign with a $50,000 soft-money check to his victory committee on Sept. 30, 1999. The New Jersey-based company wrote another $1,000 check to his campaign account that December.

The Lebanon, Mo. -based Evergreen Investments also was a large soft-money donor to Ashcroft's victory fund. It donated $51,495 on Aug. 25 the largest single corporate check written to Ashcroft's campaign accounts. But that donation for his senatorial victory fund pales in comparison with Ashcroft's largest will chair the Judiciary Committee that will cast the first vote on his nomination.

Topping the list of ideology-driven groups that gave to Ashcroft is the National Rifle Association. The NRA gave at least $34,900 to Ashcroft including a single $25,000 donation to his victory fund, set up jointly with the National Republican Senatorial Committee to accept larger "soft-money" donations with stricter spending limits. He received $17,100 from ministers and workers across the nation who work for the Assemblies of God Church, of which Ashcroft is a member. Anti-abortion groups gave him at least $14,125. But those contributions represent a tiny fraction less than 2 percent of the whole.

In contrast, business donors from fields ranging from financial services to manufacturing, retail and energy companies gave at least $4.85 million of the contributions of $200 and above that totaled $8.4 million. For every $1,000 contribution from Phyllis Schafly's conservative Eagle Forum or Charlton Heston's pro-gun Arena PAC, tens of thousands more came from business interests. Ashcroft had a significant amount of smaller contributions within those itemized contributions: 5,145 were checks for less than $1,000, which do not include the nonitemized contributions below $200. Another 4,668 checks were written for amounts of $1,000 or more. Most of those larger checks 3,958 were $1,000 checks.

Bedding and furniture manufacturer Leggett Piatt and its employees of Carthage, two counties west of Ashcroft's hometown of Willard, were the source for at least $109,600. The First elected 1992. Feinstein worked with Ashcroft on antidrug legislation. She supports abortion rights and the death penalty and was I By Karen Branch-Brioso Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau WASHINGTON Former Sen. John Ashcroft is best known as a religious conservative: anti-abortion.

Pro-gun. Tough on crime. But it was his pro-business ideology that prompted much of the money that fueled his $8 million-plus campaign for re-election. Business interests, some based in Missouri and some who benefited directly from his work in the Senate, were the Missouri Republican's strongest supporters, according to a Post-Dispatch analysis of the almost 10,000 campaign contributions to his spending accounts between Jan. 1, 1995, and Nov.

20, 2000. The analysis covers contributions of $200 and above by individuals and all political action committee donations those that Ashcroft is required to itemize under federal campaign disclosure laws. Ashcroft, who faces his former Senate colleagues in hearings beginning today on his nomination as U.S. attorney general, also found plenty of support among other Republican senators. Twenty GOP senators contributed $155,260 to Ashcroft's re-election campaign from their political action committees and personal campaign funds.

Eighteen are still in the Senate, and one Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah 1994. Kyi served in the House before joining the Senate as John McCain's junior colleague. On the Judiciary Committee, he has worked most principal sponsor of the 1993 law that banned semiautomatic assault-style weapons. She joined Ashcroft in supporting a constitutional amendment to ban flag-burning.

Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. on computer crime issues, sometimes with Ashcroft, and has fought for a ban on Internet gambling. Mike DeWine of Ohio. First mi First elected 1992. Feingold is best known as the campaign finance reform advocate who refused help from out-of-state special interest elected 1994.

A father of eight who has often worked with Democrats to pass legislation on drunken driving, adoption and other issues relat ed to children, DeWine is a staunch opponent of abortion and has joined with Ashcroft to press for enactment of mandatory sentencing laws. Jeff Sessions of Alabama. First groups during his re-election campaign in 1998, which he narrowly won. He worked with Ashcroft on the Africa subcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee and on the Judiciary Constitutional subcommittee. Charles Schumer of New York.

Father in right-to-die case opposes Ashcroft elected 1996. Sessions came to the Senate after the Judiciary Committee rejected his nomination to the federal bench in 1996. He has worked -si fiv First elected 1998. Schumer is an aggressive partisan who has expressed "deep concerns" about Ashcroft's record. He chaired the Crime subcom and nothing more could be done for her, Busalacchi said.

"Mr. Ashcroft was the chief executive at the time," Busalacchi said. "He could have easily stopped it and should have, especially after four appearances in court in Peter Busalacchi says attorney general nominee is too rigid in beliefs with Ashcroft to increase penalties for juvenile offenders and in 1998 sponsored a resolution supporting the display of the Ten Commandments in public buildings. Bob Smith of New Hampshire. mittee as a House member and led passage of the Brady Bill, which imposed a five-day waiting period for the purchase of handguns.

Dick Durbin of Illinois. First 1991. John Ashcroft has shown a tendency to project his personal beliefs into the rights of others." The state's intervention in the case ended when newly elected Attorney General Jay Nixon driven by the state Heath Department and Webster's office and that Ashcroft was not directly involved in it. "The fact that she was in a state facility meant that it was a part of his (Ashcroft's) administration, albeit a small part," Wagner said. "John Ashcroft's nature was to let things happen within the administrative agency responsible and to trust the department director to deal with the matter." Wagner said he would give Ashcroft the highest recommendation possible for attorney general.

He said that he was present when Ashcroft would interview candidates for state appellate judgeships. He said that while Ashcroft asked the candidates about their judicial philosophy, he would not ask about positions on specific issues like abortion. "He never ever asked that question," Wagner said. "He believes that would be inappropriate." Reporter Terry Ganey: E-mail: Phone: 573-635-6178 sion that he would have to make. "I think he really has a strong stance in one direction, and we would be better served by someone who is less rigid," Busalacchi said.

Ray Wagner, who once served as legal counsel in Ashcroft's governor's office, disagrees. Wagner believes Ashcroft is "someone who follows the rule of the law. "I have watched him on a number of occasions detach his personal views from the law," Wagner said. Busalacchi is the father of Christine Busalacchi, who suffered brain injuries in a car accident in 1987. Busalacchi says Ashcroft shares some of the blame with then-Attorney General William Webster for the court cases Busalacchi fought with Missouri officials over his efforts to remove the feeding tube that had kept his daughter alive.

State officials ignored the fact that he was acting on the advice of doctors, priests and medical ethicists that his daughter was in a persistent vegetative state elected 1996. Durbin, new to the committee this Congress, C- First elected 1990. Briefly a contender for last year's Republican presidential nomination. Smith 1 toyed with leaving the Republican Party and then Busalacchi Daughter suffered brain injuries -I 'k. 1 sou8nt tne 5631 A because he A believes it will By Terry Ganey Jefferson City Bureau Chief JEFFERSON CITY When the U.S.

Senate Judiciary Committee takes up John Ashcroft's attorney general nomination today, one question to be answered is whether Ashcroft's personal or religious beliefs will affect how he enforces the law. Peter Busalacchi, who waged a right-to-die legal battle with Missouri while Ashcroft was governor, has sent a written statement opposing Ashcroft's nomination to Sen. Patrick Leahy, and temporary panel chairman. Busalacchi said he believes Ashcroft "will allow his personal convictions to sway any deci have a critical role during the decided that he wouldn't even though he felt GOP moderates were far too quick to compromise with Democrats. Sam Brownback of Kansas.

First asked the state Supreme Court to allow the state to drop out of the case. The court agreed, allowing Busalacchi to decide the future of his daughter's care. She died after the feeding tube was removed on March 7, 1993. Wagner, who was Ashcroft's legal counsel, said the case was Bush administration, particularly on the filling of possible Supreme Court vacancies. He has voiced reservations about Ashcroft.

Maria Cantwell of Washington. elected 1996. Brownback took the seat held by former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, and he symbolizes the shift from Dole's pragmatism to First elected last year. A former congresswoman who went on to make a fortune in dotcoms, Cantwell won the seat by defeating long-term GOP About today's hearings Where: Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room. Format: Committee members will make opening statements today.

It's possible that Ashcroft will be the only person testifying on the first two days. mmtT i i I The numbers: Patrick Leahy, presides over the 18-member committee, made up of eight Democrats and eight Republicans. The entire Senate is split 50-50 along party lines, with Vice President Dick Cheney holding a tie-breaking vote, if needed. Introduction: Sen. Jean Carnahan is scheduled to introduce Ashcroft before the committee.

Voting: No date has been set for the committee vote. It could come as early as the week of Jan. 21, or be pushed back into February. The full Senate vote would then follow. the harder-edged conservativism of Republicans like Ashcroft.

He is a staunch opponent of abortion. Jon Sawyer veteran Slade Gorton by a razor-thin margin. Jon Sawyer.