By Phil Kuntz
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
WASHINGTON--Bob Dole's campaign may be broke, but that doesn't mean he's really out of money. As Mr. Dole prepares to campaign full time, his campaign is in a cash-strapped position. It has almost hit the $37 million spending ceiling for candidates during the preconvention period. While this cash crunch presents numerous logistical hurdles for the Dole organization, the situation isn't as dire as it seems.
That's because the Republican party is flush with money and can spend generous amounts promoting the GOP ticket and issues espoused by Mr. Dole. The party's interest-group allies will spend oodles more. More importantly, the campaign-law spending rules that some say will crimp Sen. Dole's stumping actually are, to a greater extent than ever, more loophole than law.
"This year, when power is so much in the balance and when the differences between the candidates and the parties is so great, no law is going to restrict the amount of politicking that goes on," Jan Baran, a GOP election lawyer, says. Proving the point, the Republican National Committee yesterday launched a $20 mil-lion issue-advocacy advertising campaign "to show the differences between Dole and Clinton."

Limited Options
To be sure, Mr. Dole's options will be somewhat limited. He spent so much to secure the nomination that he has to wait until after the August convention for the $62 million Treasury check for the fall campaign. President Clinton will get the same amount, but between now and then his campaign still has plenty, about $20 million in reserves, to spend because he had an uncontested primary.
So the Dole campaign itself will operate on a shoestring. But his biggest budget item, staff, is already being subsidized by the Republican party, with many campaign staffers now working in their same campaign roles at Republican headquarters. The campaign still must pay for some of Mr. Dole's travel expenses, but the press subsidizes that by buying seats on his plane and, if need be, the party can, too.
Democrats say they will scrutinize these transactions for campaign-law violations. "If he does all the things he says he's going to do, then we have a serious issue here," says Joe Lockhart, the Clinton-Gore campaign spokesman. But any complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission likely won't be settled for years.
"It limits some of his options, but it isn't going to make his campaign grind to a halt," says political science professor Anthony Corrado of Colby College in Maine. He adds, "There is probably going to be a more visible presence than the public is used to."

Figures for Both Parties
Both parties have raised record amounts. The RNC and the GOP's House and Senate campaign committees have taken in $184 million so far this election cycle, much of it in the form of unregulated "soft money." That's 44% more than they had raised by this point in the 1992 cycle. The RNC says phone pledges went up tenfold immediately after Sen. Dole's poignant resignation speech Wednesday, and the party plans to raise many millions more between now and the convention. The Democrats have raised $113 million so far, almost three times their take by early 1992.
Both parties have tons of money that they can't legally spend the way they want to, so you're going to see them inventing new ways to spend it that more, or less comply with the law," Vin Weber, a top adviser to the Dole campaign, says.
The new wrinkle this year is a wave of so-called issue ads, such as those announced yesterday by the RNC. The Democratic National Committee has already subsidized ads praising President Clinton's crime-fighting record. They don't explicitly promote the candidate, but they have that effect.

New Major Campaign Tool
Issue ads aren't unheard of; the DNC used them during the 1993-94 health-care debate. But they are for the first time being used as a major campaign tool. The parties are limited to spending $12 million each expressly advocating the election of their respective presidential candidate, but the courts recently have curbed the Federal Election Commission's power to restrict issue ads on First Amendment grounds.
As a result, the two parties and their allies have become more and more daring in promoting candidates with ads ostensibly aimed at promoting, or criticizing, public policy positions.
Meanwhile, the Republicans' business-and conservative-group allies are preparing their own onslaught of issue ads. The Christian Coalition says it plans to launch a major campaign in the coming months. That would supplement a business campaign aimed at countering a $35 million effort by the AFL-CIO that, in effect, will aid Democratic candidates.