Politics: Fund Raising Without Tears

For all the convivial gimmickry of $100-a-plate dinners and rah-rah cocktail parties, both Democrats and Republicans find it difficult to fill campaign fund quotas without dunning donors. Imaginatively seeking to solve the problem — and dissolve an $80,000 election year deficit — the Massachusetts Republican Party last week put out a picture-and-prose paean to the Bay State entitled Massachusetts — The Anatomy of Quality.

The party went into the publishing business, says G.O.P. State Chairman Robert Monks, after becoming "sick of depending upon a few wealthy individuals." To offset this traditional dependence, the party commissioned LIFE Senior Editor Gene Farmer to write a marketable history and description of Massachusetts that would even look good on Democratic coffee tables. Farmer did just that. Winging metaphorically from Boston ("a state of mind") to Harvard-M.I.T. ("a modern Macedonian phalanx"), he produced an attractive, knowledgeable study of the state without sounding like a chamber-ofcommerce come-on.

Despite the book's official sponsorship, it is not a political tract. The only Republican officeholder pictured is Massachusetts' present Governor, John A. Volpe. But besides presenting a new image, Bay State Republicans may have discovered an ingenious way of circumventing federal and state laws prohibiting corporation contributions to political parties. Massachusetts' attorney general, a Republican, conveniently ruled that corporations could purchase the book in quantity without violating corrupt-practice laws, which were tightened in 1966 by the Tax Adjustment Act to prevent companies from making contributions by buying advertisements for political fund-raising functions. Already, 30 corporations have placed enough bulk orders for the $12.50 volume, which has no advertisements, to cover the party's $100,000 initial investment. State Chairman Monks predicts that with luck profits could reach $550,000. "If it's successful," says an envious Democratic Party staffer, "we'll be doing it too."