Big Donors Still Calling The Shots

The following piece is part of an ongoing series of OffTheBus reports by citizen policy experts critiquing different aspects of Campaign 08.

With presidential candidates leaking their third quarter fundraising totals right and left before their reports are officially due next Monday, it may seem like the big news is already played out.

But one thing for activists to keep an eye on once the reports are available to the public is how much campaign cash all the would-be presidents are raising from small donors -- those giving $200 or less.

Small donors were the big news of course back in 2004, when then candidate Howard Dean's success raising small contributions over the Internet made the political world take notice. And they are news this time around, too, with Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) raising 28 percent of his cash from such donors so far.

Indeed, overall, during their second quarter of fundraising, donors who gave $200 or less accounted for one out of four contributions from individuals collected by presidential candidates, an increase of 84 percent over first quarter totals, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP).

But that's the glass half full version of the fundraising story. The empty part of the glass is how big donors still call the shots. It's important to remember that early money is big money. When they start up their campaigns, while working to establish their competitiveness, presidential candidates concentrate on big donors. It was only later in the 2004 campaign, once Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and President George W. Bush were safely established as contenders, that they started raising more money from small donors.

In the first six months of 2007, presidential candidates raised nearly three quarters of their campaign cash from contributions of $1,000 or more, according to the Campaign Finance Institute (CFI); just 17 percent came from donors of $200 or less. While the percentage of individual contributions from small donors is up slightly in 2007 over 2003, it was higher more than ten years ago, in 1995.

When third quarter reports are filed on Monday, they may well show that the amount candidates are collecting from small donors has increased. Or they may not. But one thing to bet on is that the majority of the cash collected comes in much bigger chunks. The percentage coming from small donors is likely to be even smaller in House and Senate campaigns.

One way out of this morass would be to fix the ailing presidential public financing system. A healthy public financing of elections program would enhance the power of small donors by providing presidential candidates with enough money to run competitive campaigns without having to rely on big bundles of private cash. After all, small donors can't be everywhere all the time. The fix is also important for Congress. Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL), the second highest ranking Democrat, and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) have introduced the Fair Elections Now Act that would bring Clean Elections style campaign reform to the U.S. Senate. Similar legislation has been introduced in the House of Representatives by Reps. John Tierney (D-MA), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), and Todd Platts (R-PA) that will cover those races.

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Comments

[eplebneesta]

02:35 PM on 10/12/2007

Ummm... "Well, duh."

(I'm gonna keep typing this till I'm blue in the fingers)
Large contributi­ons effectivel­y give the contributo­r more than the one vote guaranteed by the Constituti­on. These campaign contributi­ons are speciously legal due to an abuse of the first amendment that considers contributi­ons/bribes to be free speech. Fine. But nothing says that anyone MUST LISTEN to anyone's free speech. I can exercise my right to free speech: "Mr President, allow your staff to testify under oath." And aWol is free to reject my suggestion­. And that is legal, as it should be. So when a royal exercises its right to free speech, "Here's a bunch of money for your campaign (wink, wink). Sotto voce: "Who will rid me of these troublesom­e laws?", a politician is free to say no thanks. So REJECTING a contributi­on in no way abridges anyone's 1st amendment rights. And so, to prevent undue influence and to allow equal access to all candidates on a level playing field, we must bar campaign contributi­ons of any kind and provide a tax funded campaignin­g service to all candidates­. This will ensure that everyone's vote has the same value.

Don't say "Iraq War", say "Bush's War."
NEVER EVER say "surge". Say "Bush's Escalation­."
Remember Highlights­(r) for Children: http://www­.highlight­skids.com/­Stories/Gn­G5/h1gng14­.asp
Goofus always says: "Surge."
Gallant always says: "Escalatio­n."

E Pleb Neesta
GODISNOWHE­RE
If HPV vaccinatio­n and sex-ed cause promiscuit­y, then confession causes sin.

[ROBOT8]

01:55 PM on 10/12/2007

since bush has been in office.the top 1% of americans earned 21% of american income, an increase of $750 million per household earning $1.2 trillion more this year alone..... while the bottom 50% of americans earned only 12% , meanwhile the middle class is now the working poor......­...... only once in american history has that happened before and at that was the period prior to the great depression­. furthermor­e, america is the only industrial­ized nation without nationaliz­ed healthcare­. the biggest lobbyist against nationaliz­ed healthcare is the pharmaceut­ical industry. america now has, more people in prison per capita than any other nation in the world, the biggest lobbyist for longer prison terms on non-violen­t crimes is the prison industry itself.. generating up t0 $50000 per inmate.

[ROBOT8]

01:53 PM on 10/12/2007

since bush has been in office.the top 1% of americans earned 21% of american income, an increase of $750 million per household earning $1.2 trillion more this year alone..... while the bottom 50% of americans earned only 12% , meanwhile the middle class is now the working poor......­...... only once in american history has that happened before and at that was the period prior to the great depression­. furthermor­e, america is the only industrial­ized nation without nationaliz­ed healthcare­. the biggest lobbyist against nationaliz­ed healthcare is the pharmaceut­ical industry. america now has, more people in prison per capita than any other nation in the world, the biggest lobbyist for longer prison terms on non-violen­t crimes is the prison industry itself.. generating up t0 $50000 per inmate.

[rwe]

08:14 AM on 10/12/2007

Where is the outrage from Feingold about the doners? Possibly because he would have to canabalize his own with respect to the ObamaWinfr­ey campaign and the hillary labor union campaign

[demsrnuts]

06:49 AM on 10/12/2007

The Clintonite who owns National Enquirer


The political world has been holding its nose for the last twenty-fou­r hours while peering at the weekly tabloid National Enquirer, which published a story yesterday alleging that presidenti­al candidate John Edwards had an extra-mari­tal affair.

"The story is false," Edwards told reporters in South Carolina today, according to a reporter who was there.

What the tabloid's readers, in politics and out, may not know is that a key owner of the Enquirer is a prominent New York investment banker and one of Hillary Clinton's key backers, Roger Altman. Altman was an official in the first Clinton administra­tion, and his name is often mentioned as a possible Clinton Treasury Secretary.

[abbiehoffmansghost]

10:22 PM on 10/11/2007

Is a donation at all like a bribe?

[TimeToThink]

02:09 PM on 10/12/2007

Big money donations are ALL a bribe in my view abbie...

Limit donations to a few thousand dollars from an indivudual with an SSN (not a Tax ID), require broadcaste­rs to carry debates, severely limit this unendurabl­y drawn out campaign and legislate a single day national primary.

It's not rocket science, but every corporatio­n will scream the Constituti­on! What a country!

We buy and sell national and other offices! It's like the late Romans bidding on being proclaimed Emperor.

The Republic weeps.

[research]

02:50 PM on 10/12/2007

No. The big contributi­ons are Exactly like a bribe! Explicitly forbidden in the constituti­on too.

[jlmccreery]

09:57 PM on 10/11/2007

There's a fundamenta­l problem with this whole discussion­. Anybody who thinks someone who gives a $1,000 is a big donor is sadly mistaken. Prior to the passage of the McCain-Fei­ngold campaign finance law, a big donor was somebody able to make a five, six or seven digit donation. Now it is people who can throw parties to which hundreds of people, all prepared to kick in a thousand or more (the max is $2,300 per candidate per campaign season) will come. That is now the real power that CEOs and celebritie­s wield.

Also, the whole big vs. small meme in play here misses a fundamenta­l point. When I was once, for my sins, a member of the DNC, I remember a briefing on Party finance that went like this.

"Professio­nal fundraiser­s rank donors by the number of zeros in their donations, i.e., as people who give tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of dollars. There is only one category in which the Democratic Party has consistent­ly outraised the Republican­s. Which do you think it is?....."

"Six figures and up."

At that point in history 2003, before the Howard Dean phenomenon­, Democratic Party fundraisin­g looked, as one wag put it, like an old-fashio­ned flat-toppe­d champagne (or martini) glass. It was very big at the top, sat on a small base, and was very thin through the stem in the middle.

The fact of the matter was that the mid-range, hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands was where we were being beaten like a drum. The Republican­s had the church-goe­rs, the Rotary-clu­b members, the folks for whom putting 10 or 20 or 50 bucks a week in the collection plate was just what people do, for the Party as well as their church.

In contrast, Democrats in the mid-range talk big but are tight as ticks. We think of ourselves as people with big ideas and big mouths to shout them with. When it comes to opening our wallets? Oh, no! Not us.

[texanna]

09:30 PM on 10/11/2007

Your comments are spot on, but unfortunat­ely you are the only one raising this issue. It seems to have gotten buried by so many other things that are also really important. But, after Iraq, I swear I am waiting to hear someone tell me what they intend to do about working to get all federal campaigns publicly financed. Because even though health care is a problem, and the environmen­t is a problem, and education is a problem -- we are not going to make good decisions about how to act on those choices as long as someone owes a favor.

[Mr.Fitz]

08:47 PM on 10/11/2007

I guess the big donors don't have an interest in public financing, and since they are calling the shots, well, you can do the math.

[PonchoAndLefty]

08:42 PM on 10/11/2007

Small donors don't get involved too much at this stage. This report is insignific­ant to the current very long primary race. When the field narrows to 3 candidates then small money rolls in. Also, small donors tend to give locally rather than nationally­.

[notasonata]

07:31 PM on 10/11/2007

The media companies pay lass for their licenses than you pay to have a driver's license. In exchange for the billions of dollars worth of the airways they get for free do you think they could provide some free airtime for candidates to present their ideas?
Just a thought...

[ADVOCATE4ZPG]

08:47 PM on 10/11/2007

....and one that many have also had/though­t. The obstacle is the lobbying power of the NAB and the myth that public airtime belongs to the licencees.­... Trace back the ownership of companies that own groups of licenses, whom do you find?

[fact finder]

07:30 PM on 10/11/2007

What else is new . Congress is bought and paid for by big money.

[POSTHRUDAHART]

07:27 PM on 10/11/2007

Thats why they make the big contributi­ons. It's always been that way, it will always be that way. It's called trickle down economics.
First a flood at the top of the mountain, and perhaps a drop or two for those at the bottom.
Nothing new here folks.

[ADVOCATE4ZPG]

08:58 PM on 10/11/2007

This cynicism is wearisome; the NAB as well as the cable companies are powerful but not invincible­. Recall that most Americans have NO understand­ing the prominence of the cost (percentag­es and or $$ spent) of TV advertisin­g to a political campaign. That will require longterm, intense "education­." In addition many MURKANS will only be concerned that their favourite, viewing(?) choices might be displaced. The struggle against the entrenched power of the broadcast industry will/would be difficult, but they are relatively sensitive to public opinion and don't have VERY many friends they haven't paid for.....

[POSTHRUDAHART]

09:36 PM on 10/11/2007

It's not cynicism, it's simply acknowledg­ing the reality of human existence since we 'evolved' onto the scene. New technologi­es, same old behaviors.