Got Money?

• Author: SCHAUMBURG, RON
• Position: Campaign finance and Watergate - Brief Article

The scandal that drove President Nixon from office was also a campaign finance scandal

On March 23,1971, a group of dairy-industry leaders met with White House officials to ask for an increase in the federally supported price of milk. President Richard Nixon was gearing up for his re-election campaign and needed cash.

"Look here," Treasury Secretary John Connally told the President before the meeting. "If you have no objection, I'm going to tell them they've got to put so much money directly at your disposal."

The dairy industry had already pledged $1 million to Nixon's campaign, but the President wanted Connally to try to squeeze as much money from them as possible.

"He's used to shaking them down," Nixon later told an aide. "And maybe he can shake them for a little more."

It was that simple: The dairy industry wanted a favor, so in return, the President was asking, Got money?

Most people remember the Watergate scandal for the Nixon campaign's break-in at Democratic Party headquarters and the President's illegal efforts to cover it up. But the scandal that forced Nixon to resign in 1974 was also a campaign finance scandal, involving illegal contributions by the milk industry and others. And laws passed in response to it helped create the campaign finance system this year's Presidential candidates want to reform.

Money has been called "the mother's milk of politics," and it has long been employed in shady ways to buy political clout. In the late 1800s, companies routinely gave politicians money for governmental favors. This stirred calls for reform, and by the second decade of the 20th century, there were laws banning campaign contributions by companies and setting limits to what a campaign committee could spend for a candidate. But politicians and contributors always found ingenious ways around each new rule.

Charges of a White House deal with the dairy industry first came to light in 1972. But they were never explicitly confirmed until certain White House tapes were released in 1997, documenting one of the most blatant acts of campaign finance abuse in U.S. history.

On March 12, 1971, Secretary of Agriculture Clifford Hardin had announced that the price of milk would not be increased. On March 23, Nixon sat down with top dairy-industry leaders and said:

... you are a group that are politically very conscious.... And I must say, a lot of businessmen and others that I get around this table, they'll yammer and talk a lot, but they don't do...