Listening to the U.S. Senate rivals rag about the way the other handles money, you'd think an alarm goes off whenever one of them walks by a bank.

Mark Warner suggests Jim Gilmore cooked the books to cut the car tax. Gilmore claims Warner cooked up the excuse of a lousy economy to raise taxes.

A telling measure of a candidate's discipline with a buck is how he manages campaign cash. Such lucre is the closest thing to a more important version of other people's money: tax dollars.

While Warner hoovers millions from donors, Democratic and Republican, Gilmore -- nearly broke, according to the latest finance reports -- is quietly shifting gears in the money hunt.

Gilmore last month reconstituted his campaign committee to simultaneously feed three: his Senate effort, the cash-strapped Republican Party of Virginia and the debt-laden corpse of his brief presidential bid.

The Gilmore camp, having already repaid the millionaire candidate his 50-large loan from the spring, says this is about efficiency. It's legit, too.

As confidante Boyd Marcus -- his consultantcy is due nearly $30,000 of the $131,000 owed by the Gilmore prez committee -- said, "it allows you to ask for more money legally, and I emphasize legally, with one phone call."

Donors have the honor of helping one, two or all three entities, though it's possible they may never know they have a choice. If they did, some might be disinclined to give at all, given Gilmore's status as GOP pariah.

His is a remarkable transformation, too, and likely attributable to a what-you-see-is-what-you-get personality that obscures a record of which a more engaging Republican would be proud.

George Allen talked about it, but Gilmore delivered sustained tax relief and Republican majorities in the House and Senate.

Perhaps it's a sign that a fatigued, fatalistic Gilmore is fishing for a few big donors, but his new approach allows him to simultaneously harvest in a single stroke the maximum allowable contributions: $2,300 for the Senate, $10,000 for the Virginia Republican Party and $2,300 for the presidential committee -- a total of $14,600.

Marcus says Gilmore et al. have a formula for distributing cash, though he won't elaborate. However, if a donor has not topped out in donations to all three entities and cuts a check for 14-6, proceeds will be divided in the maximum amounts among the Senate treasury, state GOP and the presidential committee.

A wrinkle in federal law allows candidates to take in money from a single source and direct it to multiple beneficiaries. Often, this is event-driven.

For example, Allen structured his big annual fundraising fete, the Hoedown, to benefit in 1999 his U.S. Senate candidacy and the state party, and the following year, his campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

That's the political arm of the Senate GOP caucus, and with nearly two dozen seats to defend this year, it has all but abandoned Gilmore in holding a Virginia slot that has been Republican for three decades.

Even Warner, a high-tech gazillionaire with a habit of writing seven-figure checks to his campaigns, has been a party to this practice.

In June, Warner set up a committee to disburse proceeds from a joint fundraiser for himself and former Nextel pal Jack Markell, a Democratic candidate for governor of Delaware.

Say, did an alarm just go off?
Contact Jeff E. Schapiro at (804) 6496814 or jschapiro@timesdispatch.com. Watch his video column Thursdays on inRich.com. Listen to his analysis Fridays at 8:33 a.m. on WCVE radio (88.9 FM).