Wealthy Donors and Lobbyist Bundlers Are Largely Bankrolling Hillary Clinton's Campaign

[Cheese Sandwich]

Her campaign filings reveal that 40 lobbyists are fundraising for her presidential bid.

Hillary Clinton hauled in $47.5 million in the first three months of her campaign, besting both Republican Jeb Bush, who raised $11.4 million, and her surprising Democratic challenger, Bernie Sanders, who racked up $15.2 million. According to her campaign, she had more than 250,000 donors, of whom 61 percent were female, an unprecedented number of female donors. But what Clinton did not highlight was that she had relied on wealthy donors and lobbyists to pull together most of her money.

Clinton reported raising $8 million—or 16.8 percent of her total—from small donors who gave $200 or less. Many politicians raise far less from small donors. Jeb Bush, for example, raised just 3 percent of his campaign cash from small donors. But Sanders blew Clinton out of the water when it came to grassroots fundraising, taking in $10.4 million (or 68 percent) of his warchest from $200-or-less donors.

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.
...

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.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/hillary-clinton-fundraising-bundlers-lobbyists

[Duckhunter935]

1. Of course

And some of her supporters here are very proud of that fact. I find it somewhat disappointing.

[sabrina 1]

28. Because they are still living in the 'nineties when the DLC took over the party and

decided that Dems were going to get in on the action wrt to Corporate financing of elections. At the time, worried about losing, many Dems, me included I admit since I didn't KNOW what it really meant, thought that it was a sign that HONEST wealthy people were now seeing that supporting Republicans was not such a good idea.

But since then, starting not so long ago, people have awakened to the corrupting, corrosive effects of the obscene amount of money flowing into our elections.

Puzzled by our own party leadership consistently refusing to back good progressive candidates, while backing Blue Dogs/DLC/Third Wayers EVEN when they had little chance of winning, leaving the seat to Republicans, it began to dawn on people WHY that was happening.

Not to mention the excellent research by many good reporters, REAL journalists, not the MSM kind, confirmed the suspicion that there was something very wrong and very corrupt about this.

Nor have they realized yet, still back in the 'nineties, that the Money in Politics is going to be THE most important issue in this campaign. And the presence of Sanders in the campaign, following on OWS's worldwide exposure of this issue, including providing the lingo to explain it in simple terms, is going to shatter the notion that there is ANYTHING good about this.

But some of those in power DO realize it, and they are going to spend a fortune of that money trying to silence Bernie Sanders. They've already started.

They are going to find that their paid for talking points won't work the way they did, eg, during the Dean campaign. Back then we had only Corporate Media handling these matters.

THAT also has changed. drastically, see what is happening re the attempt to paint Sanders as a Racist or Nazi, the pushback has been swift and effective as armies of ordinary people tell the FACTS about all of their attempts, see the Red Baiting meme, forcing them to die a quick death.

[onehandle]

2. Oh Noes!

This article has been posted for the fifth time in GD-P!

Now Hillary will just have to give up.

[Cheese Sandwich]

4. It just shows she's bankrolled by by super-rich elitists and that's who she represents.

No big deal. Normal corporate politician stuff.

[brewens]

3. I'd love to see all that dough thrown at Hillary and every dime the Koch's

put out, be a complete waste. Start the turnaround by denying them buying this election.

[Walk away]

5. Why can't she be more like Bernie and not have much money?????

What's wrong with her? Doesn't she know that money is useless in a presidential campaign?

Is this serious? Every candidate that is actually attempting to win, uses bundlers.

[Cheese Sandwich]

6. Any politician can get tons of $$ from corporate lobbyist bundlers. All you have to do is be a huge

servant of corporate interests.

[Thinkingabout]

7. Or one could have $18,000 thrown in against an opponent and then vote with them.

Yep, he is a servant of NRA.

Hillary is given money because of confidence in her ability.

[Cheese Sandwich]

8. Her ability to protect the 1% by conning the American people maybe.

Is that what you mean? Yes I agree.

[Thinkingabout]

9. No, I mean Bernie voting on gun control on the side of the NRA.

Since Hillary wants to work on issues important to me and I sure don't fit in the 1%. Hillary doesn't have to impress the 1%, after all it is a very small portion of the population. Why would she want to please only this portion of the population? Doesn't make any sense. Furthermore probably the majority is GOP it would be a silly waste of time. You position does not hold water. Try another.

[Cheese Sandwich]

12. Nice talking points. Too bad your info is blatantly false.

Bernie voted to expand background checks, for universal background checks, to close the gun show loophole, to ban "assault rifles", and to ban high capacity magazines over 10 bullets.

Jezus Christ how much more gun control can there even be?

And that being from a pro-gun state with virtually no gun control at all.

I'm sure Bernie earned his D- or whatever from the NRA.

[Thinkingabout]

13. Bernie voted against the Brady Bill, it is a part of his record, it is not a lie.

Why would you try to deny his record. It is a well known fact. It is also a fact NRA threw $18,000 to run ads against Bernie's opponent. On gun control he has earned a F from me and many others.

[Cheese Sandwich]

14. evolved.

[beam me up scottie]

15. And Hillary voted to give Bush his war in Iraq.

On caring about the lives of our service members and brown people overseas she gets an F from me and many others.

[Thinkingabout]

16. And Bernie gave Bush the money for the war and continued to fund the war.

[beam me up scottie]

17. So she gets an F from you too?

[Thinkingabout]

18. No, but then you probably not buy into the reasoning behind the vote, she has also

Given a statement on the vote so there isn't any reason to continue to explain since the same talking point returns over and over. Why isn't the vote on AUMF also troubling to you?

[beam me up scottie]

19. Since my brother almost didn't make it back from Ramadi, no.

I'm not buying what you're selling.

[Thinkingabout]

20. Remind your brother Bernie voted for AUMF and other funding bill to expand troops, etc. He will

Probably appreciate his vote.

[beam me up scottie]

21. My brother has voted for Bernie in every election.

And he's voting for him again.

I'll pass along your concerns, though.

I'm sure he'll be as impressed by your compassion as I am.

[Thinkingabout]

22. Thought you would be, now Bernie can see what he voted for your brother.

[WDIM]

26. So did Hillary.

Atleast Bernie voted against the war. Once our troops are over there it is hard to say no we arent going to fund you send you supplies or pay you. We sent the troops to we had to support them. Voting against the war in the first place would have saved countless lives. Not probably funding our troops would have cost countless more lives.

[Thinkingabout]

32. She did, no denial here. Voting for funding was both Hillary and Bernie.

[Walk away]

11. I'm looking forward to seeing how Bernie runs an entire primary canpaign without money!

This should be festinating albeit fruitless

[Scuba]

10. Yeah, but there's no quid pro quo. Honest!

[L0oniX]

23. ^^^this^^^

[azmom]

24. +1000000

[Cheese Sandwich]

25. what!

[raouldukelives]

27. And not so wealthy donors are funding them. Everyday. nt

[WDIM]

29. We need public funding of campaigns.

Our system for funding campaigns is out of control. This is the definition of absurdity. $47.5 million could feed many hungry mouths. But instead it goes to the pockets of the media and the wealthy.

[Zorra]

30. This is one reason why many Democrats and liberal independents don't trust her.

Without public funding candidates funded by wealthy private interests can only assumed to be owned by their wealthy donors.

[WDIM]

31. It is yet another system to take from the working class

And give to the wealthy and insures that only people with wealthy connections can be in office.