The hottest tickets in New York this week are not for seats on the convention floor when the Republican Party anoints George W. Bush as its presidential nominee, but rather to the exclusive events hosted by corporate donors all over town.

Want to show off your Texas Two-Step and cowboy boots? You need to get into the "Good Ol' Honky Tonk Salute" honoring Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. It'll help if you know someone at the Nuclear Energy Institute, the National Mining Association or the Edison Electric Institute (the utilities' trade association), because they each paid $20,000 to throw the shindig.

Feel like something classier, like hearing Frank Sinatra Jr. perform in the Rainbow Room? Just give at least $25,000 to a "charity" called the American Council for Excellence and Opportunity, which promotes "programs that encourage and support free market philosophies."

You'll get to attend this event honoring Rep. Michael Oxley (R-Ohio), the council's honorary chairman. He also just happens to be chairman of the powerful House Financial Services Committee, a fact that hasn't escaped notice of the Securities Industry Association and the Bond Market Association, which are roping in donations for the evening's festivities.

It's too late, of course, to get into the parties held in Boston last month around the Democratic convention, but there the scene was similar, as corporate lobbyists mingled with lawmakers at some 200 events. One of the biggest was a half-million-dollar bash thrown at the New England Aquarium honoring retiring Sen. John B. Breaux (D-La.). Ziggy Marley and Buckwheat Zydeco performed for a crowd of 1,600, thanks to the beneficence of Bell South, RJR Reynolds, Union Pacific, the Edison Electric Institute and several other companies. Why would they want to butter up a retiring senator? One reason: Congress is quietly working on a giant corporate tax bill, and Breaux will be on the conference committee working out the final details before he leaves office.

Though there are controls on personal political spending and the 2002 McCain-Feingold law prevents the national political parties from accepting unlimited contributions from special interests, corporate cash is still buying all sorts of special influence. One unclosed loophole: fund-raising by the nonprofit host committees for the Democratic and Republican conventions, which are under no such restrictions. Together, the two committees are estimated to have raised more than $100 million from private sources - 12 times as much as in 1992. Here, as in the presidential fund-raising race, the Republicans are in the lead, projected to raise $63.6 million to the Democrats' $39 million.

For many of these donors, the decision to give has little to do with political ideology and everything to do with access and influence. Hence the overlap between the donor lists to the two conventions: 21 corporate contributors financed both the Democratic and Republican conventions.

When the parties are over, these donors come knocking, asking for paybacks on their investments. All too often, they receive them. The Edison Electric Institute, for example, successfully lobbied the Cheney Energy Task Force to include a number of items from its legislative wish list in the Bush administration's energy plan, including weakened pollution controls. The drug giants Bristol-Myers Squibb and Pfizer are benefiting from Bush's new Medicare law that contains billions of dollars in new subsidies for the pharmaceutical industry.

Who is left out of this? Ordinary voters. In a pay-to-play political system, votes don't matter nearly so much as cold, hard cash. That's why we need comprehensive campaign finance reform like a proposed Clean Money/Clean Elections federal law that would actually change the rules of the game. Under the Clean Money system, candidates who collect a large number of small contributions and agree to abide by spending limits would receive a public grant to run their campaigns. If somebody is going to own the politicians, it might as well be us.

Micah L. Sifry and Nancy Watzman of Public Campaign are the authors of "Is That a Politician in Your Pocket? Washington on $2 Million a Day."

Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.

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