Toddlergate.

ONE reason Democrats on the Senate committee investigating campaign-finance abuses seem so unutterably obtuse may be that they are guilty of some of the same fundraising shenanigans practiced by the Clinton White House and the Democratic National Committee.

The crime central to almost all the cases uncovered so far is using shell contributors to mask what would otherwise be illegal contributions that is the case at the Buddhist temple, with the Lums, with Ron Browns son, and the bags of checks delivered to the Clinton legal-defense fund. Federal Election Commission records from the last election show signs that three Democratic senators Bob Torricelli (N.J.), Carl Levin (Mich.), and Dick Durbin (Ill.) may have accepted $83,000 worth of similar "pass-through contributions, in this case, via the real donors offspring.

The easiest place to find young donors is by checking FEC records for "students who generally range in age from newborns to people in their mid twenties. The top twenty recipients of this "kiddie cash include Torricelli (12), Levin (20), and Durbin (9), while no Republican members of the committee showed up on the list.

None of the senators had much to say. Torricelli, in a one-paragraph statement, said plenty of kids have the dough to make donations. Durbins campaign manager argues it is not the responsibility of campaigns to check into suspicious donations. But their donors, when they would talk, were quite revealing.

Randy Shapiro is the mother of Leslie, a 22-year-old "student donor, who gave $2,000 to Dick Durbins 1996 Senate campaign. When I asked Mrs. Shapiro how I could get hold of her daughter to ask about the contributions, she replied, "You can call her, but shell have no idea what you are talking about.

Why not? "Well, the money came from us. Meaning from her and her husband, both large donors to Sen. Durbin.

The clueless honesty of the Shapiros isnt usual. More typical are parents like Michael Sonnenfeldt, whose children, Joya Clair and Forest, each gave $2,000 to Sen. Torricellis last campaign. Mr. Sonnenfeldt says bluntly, "Theyre too young and I prefer to keep them out of this. He refused to give their ages or to speculate on why his kids might have chosen to give on exactly the same day as he did. Then he slammed the phone down.

It is possible the young Sonnenfeldts gave legally children of any age can give according to federal rules as long as they give of their own free will and the money is theirs. My bet is the kids havent a clue how their names were being used, but only an investigation with the power to look at bank records can prove anything.

A few of the student donations are plausible. Sam Siegal, a 21-year-old Princeton economics major, worked for then-Rep. Torricelli over a couple of summers and last election gave $1,450 to his old boss. Mr. Siegal says the money is from summer jobs.

OK, maybe this is an honest kid who is just very interested in politics, but there is an interesting pattern that holds even when, as in this case, the "student donor appears to have had both the inclination and the resources: 100 per cent of the time, the young donors give to the same people their parents did and almost always after their parents had given the maximum contribution.

It is barely possible that every young person in this country with enough money to make a political donation feels the same about politics as his parents. It is very possible, however, that these questionable donations are the acts of people who want to give more than federal law allows.

A closer look at FEC records reveals that the top twenty campaigns received over 44 per cent of donations from "students, a sign that some campaigns receipt of such money is more than accidental. For instance, last year Bob Dole and Bill Clinton raised similar amounts of hard money, but Clinton received six times the number of "student donations that Dole did.

And the motive for this bi-partisan dodge (Phil Gramm and Lamar Alexander are also top recipients of kiddie cash) is made clear in numerous memos from last years campaign. One from the DNC put it simply: "There is only so much money we can raise from the same people. If the President wants more money [we] will raise less. One way to raise extra cash is to get your most stalwart donors to give a little more, maybe through their kids. Its clearly an idea that has occurred to the Democrats at least a half-dozen of their top fundraisers (including the new co-chair of the Democratic National Committee), responsible for millions in contributions, have children who have also donated.

But the media keep missing the story. Indeed, Clinton scandal coverage is replete with near misses.

The most ridiculous near miss is the case of the Lums along with Ron Browns son, the only people to admit to legal culpability so far. Nora and Albert Lum have admitted using their employees to launder campaign contributions to Democrats; they also admitted to using their daughter Trisha to make extra hard-money contributions to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ($10,000 worth).

Newspapers have been remarkably uninterested in following up this story: Are those the only contributions Trisha made? (No; she made $15,000 more since 1992.) How old was she when she started making donations? (She was 23 and listed as a "student in FEC records.) Is Trisha unusual? (Not really; 11 other "students made hard-money contributions of between $5,000 and $20,000 in 1995 - 96 to Democratic Party committees like the DCCC.)

The Wall Street Journal profiled Al Gore fundraiser Howard Glicken on its front page. While pointing out Mr. Glickens vast history of sleazy dealing, they neglected to mention the generosity of his two sons, Aaron and Stephen donors of $2,000 to the Clinton campaign.

Newsweek, in a story about a deal between two Clinton supporters to use a non-profit to benefit the Clinton campaign, doesnt notice that both donors kids also gave. The Los Angeles Times recently mentioned in a long story on the Buddhist fundraiser that one of the temples earliest dodges of campaign-finance law (back in 1989) was to use the nephew of a temple official to give the donations. He was listed in FEC records as a "student.

The Washington Post reported that the Clinton Administration has appointed Vinod Gupta, an Omaha businessman and Clinton fundraiser, to the choice beach-mansion job of consul general to Bermuda. The Post neglected to mention that Mr. Guptas three sons (then 11, 14, and 17) gave $4,000 to Clinton. The eldest denied to me having anything to do with the contribution.

Most disturbing, though, are the near-misses that came in July and August. In mid July, the New York Times revealed that President Clinton was asked to make a dozen fundraising calls. Few of the names on the list, including Gail Zappa and Dirk Ziff, belong to parents of apparent kiddie donors. (FEC records shows students giving from the same address, but neither would return my calls.) In August, Dirk Ziff showed up in the Wall Street Journal as one of Bill Clintons party pals on Marthas Vineyard. This is on top of a dozen kiddie-donor parents who attended fundraising coffees or slept in the Lincoln bedroom.

The single fact that separates kiddie cash from the Asian money and other campaign-finance scandals is that nobody has admitted that any of this was wrong. The Democrats have given back their Asian money, but politicians of both parties are sitting on more than $2.4 million in contributions from "students. Much of that money is clearly illegal. All of it is highly suspect.

Bill Clinton is sitting on the most. When will he give it back?