toledoblade.com --

COLUMBUS - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger terminated any efforts to get him to return $10,000 that Toledo-area coin dealer Tom Noe contributed to his campaign.

On Thursday, President Bush joined a steadily growing band of Republicans opting to rid their campaign accounts of Mr. Noe's money, but the Republican governor of California is not planning to return the campaign cash he received from Mr. Noe, who is facing a flurry of state and federal investigations.

"The allegations about Mr. Noe became public a year after we accepted his contribution," said Martin Wilson, a spokesman for Mr. Schwarzenegger. "As he was an active Ohio Republican Party fund-raiser and donor, we had no reason at the time to question his contribution and have no intention of refunding the money."

Last week, Mr. Noe's lawyers told Ohio authorities that up to $12 million in assets of the state's $50 million investment in rare coins was missing.

State Sen. Marc Dann, a Democrat from suburban Youngstown, who has been an outspoken critic of the coin investment, said he would be willing to go out to California and arm-wrestle the governor for the $10,000 because the "money belongs to the workers" of Ohio.

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"I would be willing to arm- wrestle the governor for this," said Mr. Dann, who wrote a letter to the California governor urging him to return the money. "I can take him one on one."

Better yet, Mr. Dann said Gov. Bob Taft should be the one to take on the former body-builder in California.

"It was through his negligence that this took place," Mr. Dann said. "They ought to square off in arm wrestling, and Bob Taft ought to be able to use two arms."

A number of Republicans, including Governor Taft, U.S. Sens. George Voinovich and Mike DeWine, and three candidates for governor have returned contributions that Mr. Noe made to their campaigns. Mr. Noe and his wife contributed more than $200,000 to candidates, political parties, and political action committees in the past 15 years.

Mr. Noe achieved status as a Bush "pioneer" for raising between $100,000 to $250,000 for the President's re-election campaign last year. The President has said he will return the $4,000 Mr. Noe contributed to his campaign, but opted to withhold returning money raised by Mr. Noe for him - at least for now.

In a scathing statement yesterday, Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said the President has not gone far enough and must return all of the money "raised by his disgraced fund-raiser."

"It's not enough to return a few thousand dollars when Noe is facing serious allegations and may have illegally collected more than a hundred thousand dollars for Bush's re-election," Mr. Dean said in the statement, which cited multiple Blade reports.

Mr. Noe is facing a federal investigation for allegedly laundering contributions into the Bush campaign by giving friends and colleagues money to give to the President. A grand jury convened this week in Toledo to hear the allegations.

Aaron McLear, a spokesman from the Republican National Committee, said Mr. Bush's advisers are continuing to monitor the situation in Ohio.

"At this time, all donations appear to be completely appropriate," he said. "It certainly is a situation we are going to continue to montior and we'll take additional action if the situation warrants that."

The RNC also returned $2,000 in contributions from Mr. Noe.

Mr. Dean said Mr. Noe is only the latest in a line of "disgraced" fund-raisers. He called Mr. Noe, and two other fund-raisers facing scrutiny - Jack Abramoff and Ralph Reed - "Bush's three musketeers of corruption."

"It's disturbing that now three of the Presidents top fund-raisers … are subjects of corruption investigations," Mr. Dean said. "The American people deserve better."

The RNC spokesman declined to respond to those charges.

The topic of the campaign contributions from Mr. Noe came up Thursday at the daily press briefing in Crawford, Texas. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan was asked about monies raised by Mr. Noe and why - other than the $4,000 from Mr. and Mrs. Noe - there were no plans to return that money.

Mr. McClellan answered: "Well, those are from other individuals, and in the past, I think the campaign, if you'll go back and look, has returned contributions from individuals that maybe have been convicted of crimes, and so forth. And this one is certainly a unique situation that raises some very serious allegations, and we felt it was the right thing to do to return the contributions that he [Mr. Noe] had made to the campaign."

- Steve Eder

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