Volunteer PAC shaping up a potential Frist asset for 2008

Frist’s Volunteer PAC raised $4 million for GOP candidates in the 2004 election cycle, and his Senate colleague and former presidential candidate Lamar Alexander says that could be an important asset for 2008.

“If you’re looking at the building blocks of a presidential campaign, if he decides to run, he’s in very good position,” Alexander said.

Frist, a heart-transplant surgeon, has said he does not plan to seek a third term in the Senate in 2006 and he has not discouraged talk that he could be a candidate in the presidential election two years later.

An analysis of Volunteer PAC’s financial filings by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan watchdog group, identified the securities and investment industry as the most generous category of donors, with an estimated total of about $662,000.

The Goldman Sachs investment firm and its top executives were the biggest donors to Frist’s political action committee in the 2004 election cycle, with records showing contributions totaling $105,000.

Goldman Sachs spokesman Adam Levine told the Washington bureau of the Chattanooga Times Free Press that the donations were not part of a corporate effort.

“These are individuals who gave,” he said.

Levine said company sources provided an equivalent amount to then-Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D.

Volunteer PAC donated $132,500 to the campaign of Daschle’s successful Republican challenger, John Thune.

Records show Frist provided Volunteer PAC funds in the 2004 campaign to dozens of Republican candidates. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, it was the top congressional leadership PAC and contributed $1 million to GOP candidates nationwide.

Observers said Volunteer PAC helped Republicans maintain a Senate majority in the 2004 elections and could help lay the groundwork for a Frist presidential bid in 2008.

Larry Noble, director of the Center for Responsive Politics, said benefits of a leadership PAC are substantial.

“It allows you to give money to other members, which in turn increases your power and increases the number of your friends (in Washington),” he said. “And that becomes important when you want to either move up in the leadership or go for a new office such as president.”

Nashville attorney and Chattanooga native Mark Tipps, a former Frist chief of staff, said “for anyone who might choose to run for president down the road, that can only (be) to their benefit.”

Volunteer PAC was organized in 1998 by chief fundraiser Linus Catignani and Frist’s brother-in-law, Lee Barfield. Catignani said it was started “to build grass-roots support to help Senator Frist as he leads the Senate in maintaining and growing the (Republican) majority … and to help (House) Speaker Dennis Hastert as best he can.”

Catignani said helping Frist run for president was “definitely not the intent” behind Volunteer PAC.

Beneficiaries included former U.S. Rep. Johnny Isakson, who won Georgia’s U.S. Senate election.

“It was very helpful,” Isakson said.

Records show the health industry gave an estimated $610,000 to Volunteer PAC. Executives at HCA, a Nashville-based hospital chain started by Frist’s father, gave $22,500, according to the Center for Responsive Politics analysis.

An estimated $725,000 was donated by Tennesseans or Tennessee-based political action committees.

Michael Lebovitz, a senior vice president of Chattanooga-based CBL & Associates Properties Inc., which owns and operates malls nationwide, gave $10,000 over a two-year period.

Noble said commercial banking interests, credit unions and finance and credit card companies gave about $150,000 to Volunteer PAC. Those companies were interested in various issues, including recently passed bankruptcy changes, he said.

Noble said contributions don’t automatically translate into favorable votes.

“It’s something more subtle, which is the friendly ear: the access, the ability to talk to the member or the members staff when you have an issue,” he said.

Catignani said donations have “no tie to legislation. People invest in individuals. So they invest in Senator Frist’s efforts because they’re aligned with how he believes government should operate, and they believe in his vision.”