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COLUMBUS - The falcons are ceramic, wings folded back, eyes gazing sternly across the room.
They sit on some of the wealthiest desks in Columbus and throughout Ohio, unnoticed to all but a few political heavyweights, to whom they are a badge of honor.
A decade before George W. Bush pinned "Pioneer" status on his top presidential fund-raisers, Ohio Republicans sent avian statues to about 10 men who raised at least $100,000 each for George Voinovich's 1990 campaign for governor.
The businessmen and lobbyists who earned the "Maltese Falcons" - a reference to Mr. Voinovich's right-hand man, Paul Mifsud, whose family was from the Mediterranean island of Malta - went on to wield enormous influence during Mr. Voinovich's two terms in office.
The success of Mr. Voinovich's $8.7 million campaign, along with Republican Bob Taft's $2.7 million bid for secretary of state, ignited a political machine that would dominate Ohio for the next 15 years - and nurture a network of donors who helped Mr. Bush win the state's wallet and votes in 2004.
"George Bush comes to Ohio and inherits that very powerful Republican infrastructure to help him, and John Kerry comes to Ohio and inherits a very weak Democrat infrastructure," said Mark Weaver, a Republican consultant who has worked on Ohio campaigns since 1990. "In a race that was otherwise pretty much even, that was a factor."
A Bush Pioneer, former Toledo-area coin dealer Tom Noe, was indicted last week on charges that included laundering money to Mr. Bush's re-election campaign.
Some Republicans question the party's direction and the business dealings of its chairman, though others predict the GOP will weather next year's statewide elections with its hold on state government intact.
Democrats see an opportunity to crack the Republican hammerlock on state politics next year - the same sort of opening a Cleveland campaign operative named Robert T. Bennett envisioned in 1988, when he became state chairman and took control of an Ohio Republican Party shut out of power and mired in debt.
Democrats ruled the 1980s in Ohio. By decade's end, they held both U.S. Senate seats, all statewide executive posts - including the governor's office - and the state House of Representatives.
They also controlled the political cash flow, led by powerful House Speaker Vern Riffe. Jo Ann Davidson, a Republican leader in the House, said Mr. Riffe could raise more at his annual birthday party than she could in a year.
Mr. Timken erased the debt by the end of 1988, thanks, Mr. Bennett said, to large donations from big donors flush from the presidential victory of George H. W. Bush.
With elections looming in 1990, Mr. Bennett focused his resources: By winning at least two of the three races for governor, auditor, and secretary of state, he knew Republicans would be able to redraw the legislative and congressional map to favor their candidates and notch a foothold of power.
Mr. Voinovich - who had a history of winning Democratic votes as the mayor of Cleveland - stayed in the governor's race. Mr. Taft switched to secretary of state.
The campaigns' list of big contributors foreshadows Mr. Bush's Pioneers by a decade and a half. It includes Carl Lindner, Jr., Alex Arshinkoff, Mr. Timken, and Bill DeWitt, along with Mercer Reynolds, who would direct fund-raising nationally for the President's re-election campaign.
"The great wheel in the sky was turning," said Doug Preisse, chairman of the Franklin County Republican Party, who was political director of Mr. Voinovich's 1990 campaign.
Mr. Bennett said his biggest regret was not having the "guts" to put the party another $200,000 in debt so that Republican Jim Petro would have beaten Democratic state Auditor Tom Ferguson, whom the GOP portrayed as corrupt.
The loss didn't matter. Republicans still controlled the apportionment pen. They paired more favorable legislative lines with an increased focus on candidate recruitment.
Ms. Davidson signed promises of party support - polling, staff, ads - and peddled them to prospective candidates; party leaders flew the hopefuls to Washington to meet then-President Bush.
Recruiters scored their first great coup in 1990. A tobacco farmer named Doug White, lured into the race by persistent GOP leaders and backed by a party-funded campaign manager, defeated one of Mr. Riffe's top allies in the House, the Democratic chairman of the rules committee.
"There was a real effort to go out and find the person who should be running," said Joe King, who managed Mr. White's campaign and now works as a Republican consultant in Columbus, "instead of the person who was next in line."
The work paid off in 1994, when, bolstered by the national "Republican Revolution," GOP candidates swept to a majority in the Ohio House. Ms. Davidson became speaker.
"Superior message, superior people, and when you are in the majority, it is a lot easier to raise money," said Jeff Ledbetter, who joined the Ohio GOP as treasurer and now is Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell's fund-raiser.
Mr. Bennett was an "evangelist" who preached, "What's good for corporations is good for Ohio" to business leaders - and future Bush money men - said Andy Douglas, then a Republican justice on the Ohio Supreme Court whose pro-trial lawyer and pro-union decisions infuriated GOP leaders.
The GOP chairman's flock of donors included Mr. Lindner; Mr. Timken; Richard Farmer, chairman of Cintas, which sells uniforms, restroom supplies, and other goods to businesses; and Akron industrialist David Brennan, whom the state has paid more than $250 million to operate charter schools. All were future Bush Pioneers.
"They appoint people, they give out contracts, they have leverage that their opposition doesn't possess," Mr. Douglas said of the Republican lawmakers who had taken over the Statehouse.
Republicans have now surpassed the Democrats' 1980s dominance, controlling both legislative chambers, the state Supreme Court, and the congressional delegation - by a 12-6 margin.
David Leland, who was chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party from 1995 to 2002, said the major difference in how the two parties raised money in the 1990s was the huge amount of money that flowed into the Ohio Republican Party's secret operating account.
A loophole in Ohio's campaign finance laws permitted unlimited contributions to a party operating account. Those donations and expenditures never had to be disclosed.
State law said the money had to be spent on items such as party headquarters maintenance and sample ballots, but there was no requirement for the account to be audited, said Carlo LoParo, a spokesman for the secretary of state's office.
Mr. Bennett estimated his party raised between $1 million and $2.5 million annually for its operating account from "philosophical Republicans" such as Mr. Timken and Mr. Brennan, though he would not name all the donors or say exactly what they gave.
The party steadily built its base of small donors in the 1990s through improved direct-mail and telemarketing, Mr. King said. Several other GOP leaders from that time say power opened larger pocketbooks.
"Donors want to deal with the people who are affecting public policy," said Rex Elsass, the state Republican executive director in the early 1990s.
By 1997, Mr. Bennett was working to avert another gubernatorial primary, this time shuttling a young state treasurer named Ken Blackwell to the secretary of state's race so Mr. Taft could be governor.
In August that year Mr. Bennett traveled to a convention in Indianapolis that served as a sort of kickoff for the 2000 Republican presidential primary. The featured speaker was a Texas governor named George W. Bush.
Mr. Bush improved by 2000, when he made Ohio a critical part of his run for president. He had also built a national network of Pioneers - men and women who raised at least $100,000 for his campaign.
By 2004, Mr. Bush's Ohio ranks included 30 Pioneers and anew group, "Rangers," who each raised at least $200,000. More than a dozen had donated heavily to state Republicans through the 1990s. Many rose, postelection, to prominence in Mr. Bush's second administration, including Mr. Timken, now ambassador to Germany.
The Bush campaign also tapped a new vein of donors who had given little or nothing to state Republicans. They were largely Christian conservatives from the Cincinnati area.
Equally important, Republicans and Democrats say, the campaign plugged into a state GOP organization that dwarfed its Democratic counterpart. County parties had sophisticated voter-tracking systems. A stable of statewide leaders waited to deploy as surrogates or warm-up acts for the President whenever he visited.
In the 2000 primary and general election, Ohio backers of Bush-Cheney made 600,000 phone calls to potential voters. Last year 450,000 calls were made just on Election Day, Mr. Paduchik said.
The Blade broke the news in April that Mr. Noe, who was appointed by Mr. Voinovich to the Ohio Board of Regents and by Mr. Taft to the Ohio Turnpike Commission, was under federal investigation for allegedly laundering campaign contributions into President Bush's re-election campaign.
Three Republican statewide officeholders - Mr. Blackwell, Mr. Petro, and Auditor Betty Montgomery - are locked in the sort of bruising gubernatorial primary that Mr. Bennett has always headed off.
He now ranks among the most powerful Statehouse lobbyists. Recently, he criticized Mr. Bennett's business arrangement with lobbyist Tom Whatman, a former Ohio GOP executive director who was also a Bush Pioneer last year.
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They sit on some of the wealthiest desks in Columbus and throughout Ohio, unnoticed to all but a few political heavyweights, to whom they are a badge of honor.
A decade before George W. Bush pinned "Pioneer" status on his top presidential fund-raisers, Ohio Republicans sent avian statues to about 10 men who raised at least $100,000 each for George Voinovich's 1990 campaign for governor.
The businessmen and lobbyists who earned the "Maltese Falcons" - a reference to Mr. Voinovich's right-hand man, Paul Mifsud, whose family was from the Mediterranean island of Malta - went on to wield enormous influence during Mr. Voinovich's two terms in office.
The success of Mr. Voinovich's $8.7 million campaign, along with Republican Bob Taft's $2.7 million bid for secretary of state, ignited a political machine that would dominate Ohio for the next 15 years - and nurture a network of donors who helped Mr. Bush win the state's wallet and votes in 2004.
"George Bush comes to Ohio and inherits that very powerful Republican infrastructure to help him, and John Kerry comes to Ohio and inherits a very weak Democrat infrastructure," said Mark Weaver, a Republican consultant who has worked on Ohio campaigns since 1990. "In a race that was otherwise pretty much even, that was a factor."
A Bush Pioneer, former Toledo-area coin dealer Tom Noe, was indicted last week on charges that included laundering money to Mr. Bush's re-election campaign.
Some Republicans question the party's direction and the business dealings of its chairman, though others predict the GOP will weather next year's statewide elections with its hold on state government intact.
Democrats see an opportunity to crack the Republican hammerlock on state politics next year - the same sort of opening a Cleveland campaign operative named Robert T. Bennett envisioned in 1988, when he became state chairman and took control of an Ohio Republican Party shut out of power and mired in debt.
Democrats ruled the 1980s in Ohio. By decade's end, they held both U.S. Senate seats, all statewide executive posts - including the governor's office - and the state House of Representatives.
They also controlled the political cash flow, led by powerful House Speaker Vern Riffe. Jo Ann Davidson, a Republican leader in the House, said Mr. Riffe could raise more at his annual birthday party than she could in a year.
Mr. Timken erased the debt by the end of 1988, thanks, Mr. Bennett said, to large donations from big donors flush from the presidential victory of George H. W. Bush.
With elections looming in 1990, Mr. Bennett focused his resources: By winning at least two of the three races for governor, auditor, and secretary of state, he knew Republicans would be able to redraw the legislative and congressional map to favor their candidates and notch a foothold of power.
Mr. Voinovich - who had a history of winning Democratic votes as the mayor of Cleveland - stayed in the governor's race. Mr. Taft switched to secretary of state.
The campaigns' list of big contributors foreshadows Mr. Bush's Pioneers by a decade and a half. It includes Carl Lindner, Jr., Alex Arshinkoff, Mr. Timken, and Bill DeWitt, along with Mercer Reynolds, who would direct fund-raising nationally for the President's re-election campaign.
"The great wheel in the sky was turning," said Doug Preisse, chairman of the Franklin County Republican Party, who was political director of Mr. Voinovich's 1990 campaign.
Mr. Bennett said his biggest regret was not having the "guts" to put the party another $200,000 in debt so that Republican Jim Petro would have beaten Democratic state Auditor Tom Ferguson, whom the GOP portrayed as corrupt.
The loss didn't matter. Republicans still controlled the apportionment pen. They paired more favorable legislative lines with an increased focus on candidate recruitment.
Ms. Davidson signed promises of party support - polling, staff, ads - and peddled them to prospective candidates; party leaders flew the hopefuls to Washington to meet then-President Bush.
Recruiters scored their first great coup in 1990. A tobacco farmer named Doug White, lured into the race by persistent GOP leaders and backed by a party-funded campaign manager, defeated one of Mr. Riffe's top allies in the House, the Democratic chairman of the rules committee.
"There was a real effort to go out and find the person who should be running," said Joe King, who managed Mr. White's campaign and now works as a Republican consultant in Columbus, "instead of the person who was next in line."
The work paid off in 1994, when, bolstered by the national "Republican Revolution," GOP candidates swept to a majority in the Ohio House. Ms. Davidson became speaker.
"Superior message, superior people, and when you are in the majority, it is a lot easier to raise money," said Jeff Ledbetter, who joined the Ohio GOP as treasurer and now is Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell's fund-raiser.
Mr. Bennett was an "evangelist" who preached, "What's good for corporations is good for Ohio" to business leaders - and future Bush money men - said Andy Douglas, then a Republican justice on the Ohio Supreme Court whose pro-trial lawyer and pro-union decisions infuriated GOP leaders.
The GOP chairman's flock of donors included Mr. Lindner; Mr. Timken; Richard Farmer, chairman of Cintas, which sells uniforms, restroom supplies, and other goods to businesses; and Akron industrialist David Brennan, whom the state has paid more than $250 million to operate charter schools. All were future Bush Pioneers.
"They appoint people, they give out contracts, they have leverage that their opposition doesn't possess," Mr. Douglas said of the Republican lawmakers who had taken over the Statehouse.
Republicans have now surpassed the Democrats' 1980s dominance, controlling both legislative chambers, the state Supreme Court, and the congressional delegation - by a 12-6 margin.
David Leland, who was chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party from 1995 to 2002, said the major difference in how the two parties raised money in the 1990s was the huge amount of money that flowed into the Ohio Republican Party's secret operating account.
A loophole in Ohio's campaign finance laws permitted unlimited contributions to a party operating account. Those donations and expenditures never had to be disclosed.
State law said the money had to be spent on items such as party headquarters maintenance and sample ballots, but there was no requirement for the account to be audited, said Carlo LoParo, a spokesman for the secretary of state's office.
Mr. Bennett estimated his party raised between $1 million and $2.5 million annually for its operating account from "philosophical Republicans" such as Mr. Timken and Mr. Brennan, though he would not name all the donors or say exactly what they gave.
The party steadily built its base of small donors in the 1990s through improved direct-mail and telemarketing, Mr. King said. Several other GOP leaders from that time say power opened larger pocketbooks.
"Donors want to deal with the people who are affecting public policy," said Rex Elsass, the state Republican executive director in the early 1990s.
By 1997, Mr. Bennett was working to avert another gubernatorial primary, this time shuttling a young state treasurer named Ken Blackwell to the secretary of state's race so Mr. Taft could be governor.
In August that year Mr. Bennett traveled to a convention in Indianapolis that served as a sort of kickoff for the 2000 Republican presidential primary. The featured speaker was a Texas governor named George W. Bush.
Mr. Bush improved by 2000, when he made Ohio a critical part of his run for president. He had also built a national network of Pioneers - men and women who raised at least $100,000 for his campaign.
By 2004, Mr. Bush's Ohio ranks included 30 Pioneers and anew group, "Rangers," who each raised at least $200,000. More than a dozen had donated heavily to state Republicans through the 1990s. Many rose, postelection, to prominence in Mr. Bush's second administration, including Mr. Timken, now ambassador to Germany.
The Bush campaign also tapped a new vein of donors who had given little or nothing to state Republicans. They were largely Christian conservatives from the Cincinnati area.
Equally important, Republicans and Democrats say, the campaign plugged into a state GOP organization that dwarfed its Democratic counterpart. County parties had sophisticated voter-tracking systems. A stable of statewide leaders waited to deploy as surrogates or warm-up acts for the President whenever he visited.
In the 2000 primary and general election, Ohio backers of Bush-Cheney made 600,000 phone calls to potential voters. Last year 450,000 calls were made just on Election Day, Mr. Paduchik said.
The Blade broke the news in April that Mr. Noe, who was appointed by Mr. Voinovich to the Ohio Board of Regents and by Mr. Taft to the Ohio Turnpike Commission, was under federal investigation for allegedly laundering campaign contributions into President Bush's re-election campaign.
Three Republican statewide officeholders - Mr. Blackwell, Mr. Petro, and Auditor Betty Montgomery - are locked in the sort of bruising gubernatorial primary that Mr. Bennett has always headed off.
He now ranks among the most powerful Statehouse lobbyists. Recently, he criticized Mr. Bennett's business arrangement with lobbyist Tom Whatman, a former Ohio GOP executive director who was also a Bush Pioneer last year.
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