Hillary Clinton: Campaign Finance

Wealthy Donors and Lobbyist Bundlers Are Largely Bankrolling Hillary Clinton's Campaign
http://ift.tt/1Og0rhr

Quote:

… The bulk of Clinton's campaign funds came from an elite, wealthy class of donors—those who can afford to give the maximum donation. In 2014, roughly 0.04 percent of Americans made the maximum donation for a primary campaign of $2,600 (adjusted to $2,700 in this election cycle). Bush's campaign raised more than 80 percent of its cash from this upper-crust of donors, and Clinton raised 64 percent. Clinton may well have had 250,000 donors—but just 11,400 of them accounted for almost two-thirds of her total fundraising. Clinton also got a big boost from her bundlers—supporters who tap their personal and professional networks to amass donations for the campaign. Candidates are only required to list the names of registered lobbyists who have bundled for them, and Clinton did go above and beyond that by releasing on her website the names of 122 people who had raised $100,000 or more for her campaign. With much less fanfare, she also disclosed to the Federal Election Commission the names of 40 registered lobbyists who bundled just over $2 million for her campaign By comparison, Bush's campaign listed the names of eight registered lobbyists who bundled $228,000 for his campaign. Sanders had no registered lobbyists fundraising on his behalf. The top lobbyist bundling for Clinton was Jackson Dunn, who represents Mastercard, Dow Chemical, Pepsico, and Noble Energy, a Houston-based oil and gas company. Dunn bundled more than $231,000 for the campaign. He wasn't the only lobbyist with ties to the oil and gas sector who went to work fundraising for Clinton. Lobbyist Ankit Desai, who works for natural gas company Cheniere, raised $82,000. Theresa Fariello, of ExxonMobil, raised $21,200 for the campaign.

Of course it would be wrong to assume that candidates are beholden to those who give large donations to those candidates, but I have yet to see anyone (small or large donor) who gave money to a candidate that didn’t at least feel like the candidate reflects their perspective about issues they are most concerned about, and I'm sure these large donors have a lot more contact with her than most ordinary people have.

via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/1MbZPvh