Glenn Thrush & Kenneth P. Vogel
Politico
7/15/2011
About 40 percent of President Barack Obama’s record-breaking $86 million second-quarter fundraising haul came from big-money bundlers, according to a POLITICO analysis of donors listed on Obama’s campaign web site.
No fewer than 27 mega-bundlers managed to collect at least $500,000 for a joint account run by Obama’s 2012 campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
That exclusive circle included marquee fundraisers like Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, Hollywood titan Jeffrey Katzenberg, DNC treasurer/personal finance guru Andrew Tobias and former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, who was CEO of Goldman Sachs before entering politics.
That group chipped in a minimum of $13.5 million, according to records. In addition, $21.4 million was bundled in amounts of between $50,000 and $499,000.
In all, 244 people were listed on the website as soliciting – or bundling – donations totaling at least $50,000 from their networks of friends and professional acquaintances.
Unlike his Republican opponents, Obama refuses to take money from lobbyists and PACs. But the vagaries of campaign finance reporting render it nearly impossible to make an apples-to-apples comparison of Obama’s big-money support for 2012, compared to his vaunted reliance on small-cash donors in 2008…
…Obama’s report is hardly that of an insurgent candidate fueled by grassroots donors.
Obama for America, the reelection campaign, raised $47 million,while the DNC raised $38 million through Obama’s joint committee. Of OFA’s total, less than half – $21.4 million – was listed as “unitemized,” meaning that they were contributions of under $200 that require no donor identification data…
The complete article is at Politico.
