Much of the attention on the record amounts of money coursing through the presidential race this year, including in Senator Barack Obama's announcement on Sunday of his $150 million fund-raising haul in September, has focused on the explosion of small donors.
But there has been another proliferation on the national fund-raising landscape that was not fully apparent until the latest campaign finance reports were filed last week: people who have given tens of thousands of dollars at a time to help the candidates.