Lowery Grapples With Campaign Funds : Politics: Most recent filing shows thousands of dollars in ‘campaign-related’ payments made after the six-term congressman ended his reelection effort.

Campaign funds, those unseemly electoral necessities, seem to hang around politicians like shadows.

Most contributions come from individual citizens who put their money where their political beliefs are. Almost as much pours in from special-interest groups intent on promoting their point of view. Sometimes it takes humbling solicitations to get them. It takes savvy experts to keep track of them.

Rep. Bill Lowery (R-San Diego), who is returning to private life after six terms in Congress, is closing up shop and putting his campaign fund-raising machinery in mothballs.

In mid-April, he pulled the plug on his biennial autumn election battle when he abandoned the race for the 51st District nomination. But the task of clearing out his campaign treasury hangs over his final months in office.

A review of his most recent filing with the Federal Election Commission--covering the period May 14 to June 30--shows thousands of dollars in “campaign-related” payments made after he ended his reelection effort.

All told, Lowery paid out $31,273 for various campaign expenses during that period. For example, his final Washington fund-raiser in March cost $4,680.

Also listed are a $698 airplane ticket for a campaign trip and $6,423 personal reimbursements for campaign expenses. While some of these costs were surely incurred before he withdrew from the race, Lowery aides could not confirm that they all had.

And therein lies the problem.

Many critics of campaign funding practices claim that expenditures are often made after a member retires--expenditures that are difficult to track and hard to justify. But they are generally considered legal under flexible campaign spending rules.

Lowery, who has parried a number of FEC complaints during his congressional career, stoutly defended his handling of campaign funds.

“The days of the volunteer treasurer are long over,” Lowery said last week. “I’ve hired experts and paid them more than I ever thought possible. We have always assiduously accounted for all the campaign spending. But someone can always find something.”

Although FEC laws control how the funds can be spent, they are widely regarded by some critics as almost laughably elastic.

The FEC allows a congressman or senator to spend the campaign funds for any “lawful purpose”--even though he’s not campaigning for office.

A separate House rule gets more specific. No member “shall expend funds from his campaign account not attributable to bona fide campaign or political purposes.”

Even so, these guidelines leave a lot of maneuvering room.

On May 28, Lowery paid $698 to Capitol Travel in Washington D.C. for an airplane ticket, but he can’t remember who actually took the flight--or where it went.

“It might have been (wife) Katie,” Lowery said. “She was always an integral part of my campaign.”

One of the prominent recipients of campaign funds is Lowery himself. On June 19, Lowery reimbursed himself for $6,423 in expenses.

“Most of that was for the house we rented in Escondido so Katie could help on the campaign,” Lowery said. “She was a real campaign asset and my best surrogate when I couldn’t attend a fund-raiser.”

Their three children, who had been enrolled in schools in the Washington area, were placed in California schools during the winter and finished the school year in June. The family has now returned to its home in Vienna, Va.

The balance of the $6,423, according to Mark Strand, Lowery’s Washington chief of staff, went for telephone service, gasoline for a leased Jeep Cherokee, meals for campaign workers and supporters, and miscellaneous campaign expenses.

How many campaign-related meals were consumed after the April withdrawal announcement?

“I doubt there were very many,” said Strand. “If there were, they were right after the announcement.”

The Cherokee, which Strand said was little used after the Lowerys returned to the Washington area, cost $2,203 in campaign funds--$433 in California DMV fees and $1,770 to the First International Bank in Chula Vista for five lease payments.

“That car was actually leased last year for ‘official purposes,’ but to avoid any appearance of impropriety, we listed it this year as a campaign vehicle. We found it was cheaper to lease . . . than to rent,” Lowery said.

“It is important to remember, most of these decisions (for car, office and house rentals) were made assuming we’d be campaigning until November,” Strand added.

By far, the biggest disbursement during the period, $17,075, was to the law firm of Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro to defend Lowery against a lingering FEC complaint.

Since arriving in Washington in 1981 Lowery has successfully fought off five previous FEC complaints, each typically containing several allegations, ranging from reporting mistakes to converting campaign funds for personal use.

In several instances, the FEC found “reason to believe” that violations had occurred, but after further review decided to take no additional action.

“We’ve been exonerated every time,” Lowery said.

The remaining complaint is the third of three filed by Donald F. Kripke, a former Democratic opponent of Lowery. It involves an “in-kind” contribution that the Lowery campaign erroneously listed as coming from an individual, when in fact it came from a savings and loan.

“There’s got to be a higher threshold for filing these complaints,” Lowery said. “There’s tremendous abuse of the system. The FEC doesn’t have the resources or the political will to act quickly. They do what any typical bureaucracy does: they wait. These things can hang around for years.

“We hope to get this last one resolved in a couple of months,” Lowery said.

At its peak during the 1991-92 election cycle, Lowery’s campaign treasury grew to about $484,700. But a head-to-head primary battle against Rep. Randy (Duke) Cunningham (R-San Diego) and the burden of 300 overdrafts at the now-defunct House Bank forced Lowery to call it quits.

After paying off primary debts, he now has about $78,000 in campaign funds, some $38,000 of which will be returned to donors who specified it be used for a general election campaign, according to Strand.

Some political action committees have also requested their money back, and other expenses will eat away at the $40,000 balance.

But Lowery, fresh from several days of camping in Yosemite with several of his trusted political advisers, hinted that if any money is left over he might want to save it for a future run at political office.

“I haven’t decided what, but I haven’t ruled anything out.”