CAN UNSOUND BUSINESS BE SOUND POLITICS

Elizabeth Holtzman -- West of the Hudson River, hers is not a well known name. In New York, she has been a person of significant political stature for 20 years. Last week her political career came near its end. She finished a dismal second, just barely qualifying for a run off in a three way race for the Democratic nomination for Comptroller of the city of New York. Her denouncement was tainted political money. There is a lesson to be learned.

In her career as Congresswoman, District Attorney and Comptroller, Holtzman projected a squeaky clean image. In 1992, for the second time, she made an unsuccessful race for the U.S. Senate. Her strategy was to annihilate her main opponent with a massive, virulent television campaign. Campaign money was tight. Up pops a bank -- Fleet Bank, by name -- which loans Holtzman's campaign $450,000 "secured" against future political monies yet to be raised. How nice.

Before the loan was made, Holtzman and her campaign finance director had a one-hour breakfast meeting with four Fleet Bank officers. They told her that Fleet wanted to be a big player in New York's $5 billion bond business. They handed over $3,000 in campaign checks. The Fleet executives are precise in their recollections of the breakfast meeting, but Holtzman cannot recall ever meeting with the Fleet executives despite the fact that their meeting was marked on her calendar.

When the Holtzman Senate campaign director asked for the $450,000 loan, the loan officer wrote a critical memo that "the loan is not a sound business transaction," but was being made only "to support the bank's relationship with Ms. Holtzman.' In due course, Fleet was designated to be a big player in New York's bond business.

The micro tragedy of Elizabeth Holtzman is the macro tragedy of American politics. Television overwhelms our election process. To run for a major state-wide or city-wide office, a candidate has to raise lavish funds to buy expensive TV time along with the pollsters and film makers who serve as character assassins in residence. Money and mud are inextricably linked on the tarnished road to American political success.

Holtzman herself was getting nowhere in her Senate race. Desperation dictated the need for even more mud and more mud calls for more money. Money and mud, money and mud: they are the sine qua non of political success in the land of the free and the home of the brace.

We will continue to wallow in campaign garbage and muck as long as we have unlimited amounts of tainted money infesting the political process. Too many people and too many special interests want too much of the political process and are willing to drop bundles of money into campaigns as calculated investments.

The loan officer at Fleet Bank said "the loan is not a sound business transaction." She was overruled. The loan was, so it sadly seems, sound politics, American style.