The final battle of 2008

Saxby Chambliss had been in the U.S. Senate just two years when a retiring colleague left him an invaluable gift.

In January 2005, Oklahoma Sen. Don Nickles put the Georgian in control of the Republican Majority Fund, a political action committee that, since the 1970s, had raised money to support the party’s candidates. Taking over the committee would help Chambliss, a newcomer to the Senate, establish himself in a body where influence, seniority and money are intertwined.

Since then, the Majority Fund has enabled Chambliss to fuse lawmaking, fund-raising and leisure —- his profession and his passion.

As a pro-business conservative, Chambliss takes positions that conform with those of corporate lobbyists and their clients. Their political committees donate to the Majority Fund, which in turn pays for golf trips and other events where Chambliss plays host to the lobbyists. There, he can learn how issues before Congress —- the bailout of financial institutions, for instance —- affect the contributors.

Chambliss, 65, who faces a runoff against Democrat Jim Martin on Dec. 2, has spent 14 years in Congress, six in the Senate and eight in the House, representing South Georgia’s farm country.

In both chambers, he has tended to the needs of Georgia’s farmers and its military installations and defense contractors. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, he helped draft homeland security legislation. And he has proposed replacing the federal tax system with a levy on consumption, known to proponents as the fair tax.

Interest groups have bestowed on Chambliss a predictable mix of praise and scorn.

His votes to limit abortions got a 100-percent grade from the National Right to Life Committee, a zero from Planned Parenthood. He gets an A-plus from the National Rifle Association, an F from the National Education Association.

“I’m very proud of my voting record,” Chambliss told Fox News on Nov. 10. “I’m ranked consistently as one of the most conservative members of the United States Senate.”

He also is consistently ranked as one of the best golfers in Washington. With a handicap of 7 (since trimmed to 6.5), he tied for No. 41 in April on Golf Digest’s list of the capital’s top 200 golfers.

Chambliss’ zeal for the sport helped President Bush get a knowing laugh at the senator’s expense in 2003.

“So I’m walking up on stage,” Bush told supporters at the Ritz-Carlton Lodge on Lake Oconee, “and Saxby says, ‘If you keep it short, we might be able to get a round of golf in.’ ”

Two years later, the Senate met in a rare closed-door session to discuss intelligence data the Bush administration used to support the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Chambliss, a member of the Senate’s Select Intelligence Committee, was absent.

He was in Atlanta, playing golf with Tiger Woods.

The Majority Fund is one of about 300 so-called leadership committees run by members of Congress, used to raise money outside their personal re-election campaigns. Federal law lets each donor give $5,000 a year.

Such committees, said Meredith McGehee, policy director of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center in Washington, are “a widespread and common practice and are, at their core, a political slush fund.”

The Majority Fund has raised and spent about $1.4 million since 2005. Almost all of the money came from political action committees and their lobbyists: representatives of defense contractors, agricultural interests and financial firms.

Chambliss often uses the Majority Fund to pay for perquisites —- golf, meals, private jets —- that ethics rules would prevent others from providing. Since 2005, it has paid for Chambliss to take 20 golf trips with lobbyists to elite courses across the country.

Chambliss’ staff directed questions about the Majority Fund to its lawyer in Washington, Cleta Mitchell. She said the committee complies with federal rules and donors receive no special treatment. The group, she said, met its goal of raising enough money to donate to every Republican senatorial candidate.

Incumbents, Mitchell said, are “expected to make friends with people who control PACs so they can raise money.” Chambliss, she said, “has been a good soldier.”

“It’s a lot of work,” Mitchell said. “When you’re going to dinners and going to golf tournaments, hopefully you’re not totally brutalized and have some fun.”

A mixed record

Chambliss seemed an unlikely choice to take over the Majority Fund.

For three decades, the committee had been run by Washington heavyweights: Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker of Tennessee and Nickles, the chamber’s No. 2 Republican.

Chambliss, though, had spent a mere two years in the Senate. In the House, only two of his bills had become law. Both renamed federal buildings in Macon.

In the Senate, Chambliss focused largely on Georgia constituencies: military personnel and veterans, biofuel producers, defense contractors.

Chambliss also has promoted issues that play better among his supporters than his congressional colleagues.

Three times he has introduced legislation to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and replace the federal income tax with a national sales tax. Critics say the new levy would lower the tax burden for wealthy Americans while some people in lower tax brackets pay more.

“Senator Chambliss was the first person in the U.S. Senate to co-sponsor the fair tax,” said Ken Hoagland, a spokesman for fairtax.org, based in Houston. “That took a bit of courage. The fair tax is not terribly popular in Congress because it requires the Congress to give up its power over the tax system.”

Nevertheless, Chambliss is known in the Senate as affable and engaged, said Brian Darling, director of Senate relations for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington. Darling described Chambliss as “influential —- for a back-bench, first-term senator. It’s hard for him to be more influential when he’s so new to the Senate.”

In 2005, as he took over the Majority Fund, Chambliss also was becoming chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. Now, with Democrats holding a majority in the Senate, he is the panel’s ranking Republican.

Both posts opened up boundless fund-raising opportunities, said Brandon Arnold, director of government affairs at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute in Washington.

“There are huge interest groups, huge businesses, in the agriculture community that dump tons of money,” Arnold said, “especially into the pockets of Agriculture Committee members.”

Chambliss has disputed that notion.

“Raising money is still difficult,” he told the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call in 2005. “Leadership PACs are always tougher than raising it personally.”

In the same article, Nickles explained why he put the committee in Chambliss’ hands: “Saxby is just a natural fit. He’s very well liked by the business community, and he’s a very competitive golfer.”

Trips with lobbyists

Many lawmakers use leadership committees to help others —- and themselves.

Giving tens of thousands of dollars to colleagues could be rewarded with more desirable committee assignments, support for legislation or even prime office space.

Under Chambliss, however, 68 percent of the Majority Fund’s spending —- about $1 million —- has gone for travel, golf events, meals and administrative costs, reports to the Federal Election Commission show. Political contributions made up just 32 percent of the committee’s spending, or $472,500.

In 2007 and 2008, the Majority Fund’s political donations accounted for 26 percent of its spending, the second-lowest among the 25 largest leadership groups.

Mitchell, the Majority Fund lawyer, said overhead runs high because the committee meticulously follows bookkeeping rules.

Still, of the top 10 recipients of the Majority Fund’s money since 2007, only one was a political organization.

Five were golf resorts.

Two months after taking over the committee, Chambliss put on a golf outing at the Ritz-Carlton in Naples, Fla. —- the first of 20 at top courses and resorts: Pebble Beach in California; The Breakers in Palm Beach, Fla.; The Greenbrier in West Virginia, among others. Chambliss’ companions on these trips were, with few exceptions, registered lobbyists and their clients.

Once in 2007 and again this year, for example, Chambliss golfed with Jim Ervin, a lobbyist for defense contractors. Golfers at a spring 2007 event included Chris Cox, who represents the insurance giant AIG. A month earlier, Chambliss was accompanied by Sam Baptista, who lobbied for the mortgage buyer Fannie Mae.

Ervin and Baptista confirmed the golf trips but declined to comment further. Cox did not respond to requests for an interview.

Putting on events at luxurious settings, Mitchell said, gives the Majority Fund “cachet.”

“It is the PAC community, after all,” she said. “You have to find some way to differentiate yourself when you’re in the minority. This is what gets people to come.”

Chambliss’ associations with lobbyists have come under attack by his opponent. In response, Chambliss has tried to distinguish between trips “with” lobbyists and trips where lobbyists were present.

In a televised debate last month, Martin said Georgians “believe that the special interests have too much influence in Washington. They see the lobbyists, and they see expensive trips that people go on, and they’re outraged at that.”

“I don’t take those trips now, Jim,” Chambliss responded.

“You don’t take those trips now?” Martin asked. “Is that what you said?”

Chambliss: “It’s against the ethics law to take those trips, and I would not take those trips.”

Martin: “And do you go on trips with lobbyists?”

Chambliss: “There are lobbyists who go on trips that are sponsored under the ethics law. I do not take trips with lobbyists.”

Bailout decision

On Sept. 17, the nation’s financial system was roiling. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 4 percent, and several major banks and investment firms were in danger of failing. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was preparing for the next day’s announcement of the

$700 billion recovery plan.

At the Ruth’s Chris Steak House near Capitol Hill that evening, lobbyists representing financial firms and other interests gathered to honor their host: Saxby Chambliss.

The event’s timing was coincidental, said Mitchell, the Majority Fund’s lawyer. The committee sent invitations weeks earlier, with a fee schedule. Attending just a half-hour reception: $250 for individuals, $1,000 for representatives of political action committees. For the reception and dinner: $500 a person, $2,500 for PACs.

Despite the economic turmoil, the Majority Fund collected $22,500. The donors included representatives of the American Bankers Association, the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts, the New York Mercantile Exchange and Wachovia Bank.

A week later, Chambliss said he would vote for the financial bailout.

Noting that he had discussed the issue with bankers and others, Chambliss said, “We have to clean up this mess and keep America on track.”

SAXBY CHAMBLISS

Age: 65

Hometown: Moultrie

Education: Bachelor’s degree in business administration, University of Georgia, 1966; law degree, University of Tennessee, 1968.

Family: Married to Julianne Chambliss since 1966; two children, two grandchildren.

Background: Practiced law in Moultrie before entering politics.

Political history: Elected to Congress from Georgia’s 8th District, 1994, re-elected three times; defeated incumbent Democratic Sen. Max Cleland in 2002.

In the Senate: Ranking Republican, Agriculture Committee (chairman 2005 and 2006); member of Armed Services, Select Intelligence and Rules committees.

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