JUDGE DROPS KEY ACCUSATION IN GINGRICH-GOPAC LAWSUIT.

Byline: Adam Clymer The New York Times

A federal judge Thursday threw out a major accusation involving House Speaker Newt Gingrich, ruling that GOPAC, a political action committee he headed, did not make illegal campaign contributions to him and other Republicans, as the Federal Election Commission had charged.

That accusation is also the central allegation in a case made to the House Ethics Committee by Rep. David Bonior of Michigan, the second-ranking House Democrat. Bonior also accuses Gingrich of improperly helping contributors to GOPAC, and of taking GOPAC money for personal use. The committee has not yet decided whether to consider the accusations.

Gingrich and his allies hailed the judge's ruling as a vindication for him and for GOPAC. But addressing another complaint involving the speaker, the Ethics Committee issued subpoenas to more than a dozen individuals and organizations involved in a course Gingrich taught at Kennesaw State College and Reinhardt College, both in Georgia.

The committee's special counsel, James M. Cole, is investigating whether the course was used for partisan purposes and whether tax laws were violated.

The committee declined to say who had been subpoenaed. But James Fleming, vice president for advancement at Kennesaw State College and head of the Kennesaw State College Foundation, said both the college and the foundation had been asked for documents. He said Timothy S. Mescon, dean of the college's business school and Gingrich's host for the course, had also been subpoenaed.

Richard Teske, vice president for external affairs of the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a futurist research organization that helped arrange the course, said the Ethics Committee had asked the foundation not to discuss their communications, "So I can't confirm or deny if we have received any subpoenas."

The Federal Election Commission had filed a lawsuit against GOPAC, accusing it of spending money to influence elections for federal offices at a time when its charter limited it to state and local races.

But in his decision dismissing the suit, Judge Louis F. Oberdorfer of U.S. District Court in Washington ruled that the commission had failed even to offer documented arguments that GOPAC was providing "support for an actual, particular federal candidate or candidates" before 1991, when it registered with the FEC and acknowledged that it was now trying to influence federal elections.

He said under federal election law and the First Amendment, GOPAC's desire to see Republicans control the House, and its effort to develop a "farm team" of state and local legislative candidates and help with redistricting, had not been enough to require it to register as a federal political action committee.

Gingrich called the judge's decision "a complete vindication of the First Amendment and a flat rejection of misusing the regulatory process for negative political purposes."

Oberdorfer wrote, "Although GOPAC's ultimate major purpose was to influence the election of Republican candidates for the House of Representatives, GOPAC's immediate major purpose in 1989 and 1990 was to elect state and local candidates and to develop ideas and circulate them generally to Republican Party candidates and supporters including, but not limited to, unidentified Republican candidates for federal office."