Racing for dollars.

INDIAN tribes are essentially wards of the Federal Government. Without federal recognition, tribes would be subject to a wide range of state and local taxes and regulation from which they are now exempt. It's the Federal Government that protects Indian tribes' enormously profitable gambling operations from any taxation. And it's the feds that spend some $5 billion a year providing tribes with everything from health care to schools. So, it's important for the tribes to know who their friends are, namely the Democrats. In fact, Indian tribes can be considered the Democrats' model minority -- utterly and completely dependent on the Federal Government, therefore eagerly solicitous for Democratic Party support and willing to pay to get it.

With nearly $1 million in contributions to campaigns for national office since 1991 -- 85 per cent of it to the Democrats --it shouldn't be surprising that Indian tribes have carved out their own niche in the Clinton fundraising scandals. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, five tribes in Minnesota and Wisconsin hired top Democratic lobbyist Patrick O'Connor -- a former treasurer of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) -- to help them kill a proposed rival casino. In April 1995, O'Connor ushered representatives of the tribes to meet with DNC co-chairman Don Fowler, and the tribes subsequently pumped more than $70,000 into Democratic coffers. Then, Fowler called White House chief of staff Harold Ickes, who allegedly leaned on the Interior Department, which ultimately obliged by killing the competing casino project.

The Interior Department says it denied approval to the casino because of local opposition. But, as the Journal points out, last year the department brushed aside opposition from state and local politicians to approve the expansion of a Connecticut reservation --which just happened to belong to a tribe that had given $465,000 to the Democrats. The Washington Post recently splashed on its front page another example of the Democratic - Indian relationship at work. The Cheyenne - Arapaho Indians of Oklahoma gave the DNC more than $100,000 in the hopes of winning back tribal lands, only to see the ante upped dramatically. Al Gore fundraiser Nathan Landow reportedly told the tribes that unless they hired him and a Democratic-connected lobbying firm for tens of thousands of dollars he'd work to ensure that they never got their lands back.

This thread runs through Democratic politics in general and the Clinton fundraising scandals in particular -- the cultivation of the support of minority groups through official favors, with the implicit understanding that the Democratic Party and certain well-connected hucksters will, in effect, get kick-backs for their trouble. Indian tribes are a stark, but relatively small, example of the phenomenon. The party has a similar relationship with blacks, on a larger scale. Over the course of the last four years -- with the late master of racial politics, Ron Brown, taking the lead --Democrats have been working to bring Asian-Americans on board as well. The more tenants on the liberal plantation, the better for its owners. And if anyone points out the exploitative nature of the relationship, the Democrats have a ready rejoinder: their critics are racist.

In a January 3, 1996 memo, Harold Ickes asked Administration and party officials of various ethnic groups to draw up "working plans" to win the support of other members of their group. The plan for blacks called for setting up an African Americans for Clinton -Gore steering committee, which would include vice chairmen drawn from the fields of "the arts and entertainment, clergy, athletes, and civil rights" (suggestions: Whoopi Goldberg, Magic Johnson, and Shaquille O'Neal). African Americans would get an enticement to contribute "by joining the African American Leadership Forum," which would give them "the opportunity to interact with senior Administration officials and the Democratic Party's political leadership through policy briefings, luncheons, and work groups." The plan advised that the DNC should "ensure that contributors receive personal attention beyond personal invitations to White House affairs."

The "proposed outreach plan" for white ethnics, drafted in February 1996, also displays a loving attention to the details of balkanized politics. In the fall of 1995 the National Democratic Ethnic Coordinating Committee (NDECC) was formed, and the outreach plan called for expanding it to "include at least two representatives of each key constituency" by March 15, 1996. Also, "through a working group of the NDECC, a series of recommendations for code words, ethnic specific language, and hot button issues" can be developed for use by the White House. The plan recommended "utiliz[ing] ethnic surname identifying software available through the Democratic National Committee to identify ethnic public officials" who would be enlisted for state ethnic coordinating committees. It even contemplates "Develop[ing] an ethnic Internet web site. (if resources available)."

At least since the 1970s -- when the party shed its anti-Communism and cultural conservatism and, hence, lost its appeals to ethnics on those grounds -- the Democrats have been the party of bean-counting, of specifically tailored appeals to specific groups. People like Labor Secretary nominee Alexis Herman make careers out of it. Miss Herman headed the women's bureau at the Labor Department during the Carter Administration. Then she formed a "diversity" consulting group that got a cut of Jesse Jackson's shakedowns of various U.S. corporations. In 1993, she landed her job as head of the White House's Office of Public Liaison, where she occupied herself drawing up the African-American outreach plan as well as stroking other minority groups on behalf of the White House. She even led her own trade missions -- naturally enough, for women only.

Her work on the African-American outreach plan may have violated the Hatch Act, and Miss Herman may well have gotten a sweetheart real-estate deal thanks to her connections with other Democratic practitioners of racial politics like Jackson and Ron Brown. But any questioning of her is illegitimate -- precisely because her shady operations occur in the realm of Democratic race-hustling. When Trent Lott suggested some of Miss Herman's activity skirted the law, White House spokesman Mike McCurry immediately reached for the race card: "I would want to check with Sen. Lott or his staff, but I can't believe the majority leader would suggest that she's disqualified from serving as secretary of labor because she attempted to encourage African Americans to participate in the political life of this nation." (McCurry later half apologized.)

This tack, of course, is nothing new. Consider the Democratic defense in another area, voter fraud. In California, the Hispanic group Hermandad illegally registered non-citizens and encouraged them to vote in an effort to get its leader elected in a local school-board race and to help elect Loretta Sanchez. It's an offense for which the illegal voters, many of whom didn't know any better, could get deported. But it's the Republican critics of the practice who get criticized for being "anti-Hispanic." In the Jenkins -Landrieu Louisiana Senate race, evidence suggests that the New Orleans mayor's political machine encouraged poor inner-city blacks to commit a felony -- namely, vote multiple times -- and didn't even pay them what they had been promised for their wrong-doing. Yet, it's Woody Jenkins whom the mayor and other New Orleans politicians brand as a racist.

Almost immediately, this defense was dusted off in Asiagate. As Larry Klayman, chairman of the feisty conservative legal group Judicial Watch has pointed out, the roots of the scandal, in some ways, go back to Ron Brown. He had been plying the so-called Asian Pacific American (APA) community years before anyone had heard of John Huang. Brown's appeal to Asian-Americans was typical --promises of bean-counting hires and special help to advance Asian-American group interests. Writing in AsianWeek shortly after Brown's death, DNC executive committee member Maeley Tom recounts how, during his campaign for chairmanship of the DNC, Brown "promised that he would commit staff and resources to help empower the APA community"; then at the DNC he "launched an unprecedented, aggressive national APA outreach program." Later, he would appoint "the largest number of Asian Pacific Americans to prominent policy management positions in the Department of Commerce" (including John Huang).

When it turned out that Red China may have been among the beneficiaries of Clinton Administration "outreach," the DNC didn't miss a beat. In an October 14, 1996, memo to Donald Fowler and other officials at the DNC, APA Director Bill Kaneko outlines a strategy for dealing with the budding scandal. He writes that "an aggressive [Asian-American] community response aimed at addressing this race-based inquiry by the Republicans and media is in pro-gress." He advocates a similar effort by the DNC, arguing that the inquiry is "targeted at the Asian American community as a whole, focusing on only on [sic] Asian countries." According to Kaneko, the fundraising fuss is meant "to taint the credibility and challenge the legitimacy of all Asian American contributions during the past decade." John Huang, in his view, should not be just defended, but lauded: "Mr. Huang has created a new political voice in this country" (the Peking government?).

The Democrats weren't brassy enough to take their defense quite this far. But in his State of the Union address President Clinton just happened to introduce the new Asian-American governor of Washington state, Gary Locke, in what was surely meant as a subtle signal to Asian-Americans. In a press conference Clinton went further, noting that "a lot of Asian-Americans who have supported our campaign have come up to me and said, you know, I'm being made to feel like a criminal." The President went on "to remind everybody here and throughout the country that our country has been greatly enriched by the work of Asian-Americans. They are famous for working hard for family values and for giving more than they take." The latter, of course, isn't a virtue practiced by Clinton himself, or his party. Just ask the Cheyenne-Arapaho Indians.