A Third of Obama’s Record-Breaking Haul From Big Donors

Back in June, Barack Obama reversed his earlier pledge and became the first major party candidate to reject public financing. The Democratic presumptive nominee justified his decision by claiming the system was broken and pointing to his 1.5 million donors, most of whom give small amounts.

But the startling headline in today’s NY Times reads: In Obama Campaign, Big Donors Are a Major Force. The article reveals yet again that Obama is not the representative of the new politics that he claims to be. Rather he is one of the most skillful old-style politicians to step on the national stage in recent years, and he has long been adept at influence peddling and courting large donors.

According to the Times article:

(Bold emphasis in material quoted from the Times is mine.)

In an effort to cast himself as independent of the influence of money on politics, Senator Barack Obama often highlights the campaign contributions of $200 or less that have amounted to fully half of the $340 million he has collected so far.

But records show that one-third of his record-breaking haul has come from donations of $1,000 or more: a total of $112 million, more than Senator John McCain, Mr. Obama’s Republican rival, or Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, his opponent in the Democratic primaries, raised in contributions of that size.

Behind those larger donations is a phalanx of more than 500 Obama “bundlers,” fund-raisers who have each collected contributions totaling $50,000 or more. Many of the bundlers come from industries with critical interests in Washington. Nearly three dozen of the bundlers have raised more than $500,000 each, including more than a half-dozen who have passed the $1 million mark and one or two who have exceeded $2 million, according to interviews with fund-raisers.

While his campaign has cited its volume of small donations as a rationale for his decision to opt out of public financing for the general election, Mr. Obama has worked to build a network of big-dollar supporters from the time he began contemplating a run for the United States Senate. He tapped into well-connected people in Chicago prior to the 2004 Senate race, and once elected, set out across the country starting to cultivate some of his party’s most influential money collectors.

He courted them with the savvy of a veteran politician, through phone calls, meals and one-on-one meetings; he wrote thank-you cards and remembered birthdays; he sent them autographed copies of his book and doted on their children.

The fruits of his efforts have put Mr. Obama’s major donors on a pace that almost rivals the $147 million raised by President Bush’s network of Pioneers and Rangers in contributions of $1,000 or larger during the 2004 primary season.

Read more:

When Obama’s Away, Wapo Will Play, er, Investigate!

Yikes! While Barack Obama is off touring war zones and visiting Europe, the Washington Post decides to call him to account for not following the rules he set out in campaign financing:

“IT WASN'T so long ago -- last September, to be specific -- that a senator with a particular interest in campaign finance reform introduced a bill to provide important transparency in presidential campaigns. The measure, S. 2030, would require presidential campaigns to report the names of fundraisers who bring in "bundles" of individual contributions totaling $50,000 or more. The campaigns would have to report the occupations of the bundlers and the specific amounts they are credited with raising. This was a terrific idea. It's too bad that the bill's sponsor, Barack Obama, is failing to follow the rules he set out.

“If you spend enough time hunting around on Mr. Obama's Web site, you might be able to unearth a list of his bundlers. (Hint: go to http://barackobama.com, click on "contact us," click on "answer center," click on category "fundraising," go to Answer 24.) You will see the names of those who bundle between $50,000 and $100,000 for Mr. Obama, the $100,000-to-$200,000 folks, and the $200,000-and-up crowd. Recently, prodded by a letter from campaign finance reform groups, and after the New York Times pointed out that the Obama campaign had not updated its bundler list for months, the Web site added a flotilla of names, along with each bundler's city and state. However, the Web site does not provide the bundlers' occupations or employers, although those should be readily available to the campaign from the bundlers' individual contributions.”

Read more here.

Obama Campaign Suffering Cash Shortage

Obama campaign manager, David Plouffe, soliciting cash from supporters.

Not very long ago, Barack Obama’s campaign was so flush with cash he thought it was smart to break his pledge to accept public financing as he anticipated his fundraising would continue at its earlier record-breaking pace.

Now campaign manager, David Plouffe has released a video warning of Republican dominance if Obama’s supporters do not increase their giving. Obama has repeatedly boasted of the 1.7 million donors supporting his campaign with small donations that he claimed would keep him going through November. So it’s a little startling to see David Plouffe in the begging mode in mid-July.

You have to wonder if the threats from the left-wing base, concentrated among the net-roots, to withhold financial support in response to Obama’s recent flip-flopping are having an effect.

Obama’s Small Donors: Goldman, Sachs & Co., UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, etc., etc.

After all the fuss about Barack Obama’s broken promise to accept public financing in the general election, it was even more disconcerting to read this expose of his campaign’s funding sources in today’s Chicago Tribune by Dennis Byrne. Byrne leads off:

“David Plouffe, manager of Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign, keeps sending me e-mails asking me to cough up money because the presumptive Democratic nominee's fundraising is, supposedly, as pure as the driven snow. Somehow, my name got on Obama's list of prospective suckers, and for months I've read this song and dance about how he has freed himself from the tentacles of special interests.

“This is baloney.”

Further down, Byrne states:

“Biggest donors?

“Goldman, Sachs & Co., UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, National Amusements, Lehman Brothers, Google, Sidley Austin, Skadden Arps, Time Warner, Morgan Stanley, Exelon, Latham & Watkins, Microsoft and GE are among the biggest corporate contributors.”

Byrne then asks?

‘“How can this be? Didn't Obama say he doesn't accept money from lobbyists and PACs? Well, that means he still can accept money from "spouses of lobbyists, non-lobbying partners who work for lobbying firms or for law firms that do lobbying, ex-lobbyists and state lobbyists," said the Center. ‘Because of contribution limits, organizations that bundle together many individual contributions are often among the top donors to presidential candidates. These contributions can come from the organization's members or employees [and their families].’”

Read the rest of Byrne’s article here.

Plagiarism and Other Charges Cloud Obama’s Latest Wins

Associated Press: Barack Obama and Deval Patrick


Before Obama was declared the winner in Wisconsin on Tuesday, Gallup reported:

“Hillary Clinton has rebounded among Democrats in the Gallup Poll Daily tracking average for Feb. 16-18. She is now at 45% to Barack Obama's 46%. Clinton was seven percentage points behind Obama in the Feb. 15-17 average. In Monday night's interviewing, Clinton's percentage of the vote of national voters was higher than Obama's, but there has been fluidity in the nightly tracking numbers over the past several days as Democrats nationally process the intense, often heated, nature of the campaign. Monday's news coverage of the Democratic campaign was replete with a focus on the Clinton campaign's charges that Obama had plagiarized material from Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and other negative attacks on Obama by the Clinton campaign. It is unclear which, if any, of these factors could be responsible for changes in the candidates' standing.”

News coverage of plagiarism found in several of Obama’s major speeches, his waffling on a pledge to accept public financing for the general election if the nominee of the opposing party did the same, and other charges raised by his opponents didn’t surface in time to influence the outcome of the Wisconsin and Hawaii primaries that Obama won handily.

It’s also true that many in the media irresponsibly followed Obama’s lead in brushing off the charges of plagiarism by suggesting that stealing lines from the speeches of Mass. Governor Deval Patrick (pictured above), as well as adopting major themes from Patrick’s earlier campaign, is no big deal.

However, the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank covers all the bases this morning, noting that “A week of news that could have killed a lesser candidate only made Obama stronger,” Milbank continues:

“Obama made things worse for himself. First came word that he was backing down on his promise to seek public financing in the general election if the Republican agreed to do so -- infuriating the good-government crowd that had adored him. Then, on Saturday night, Obama responded to Clinton's criticism by borrowing, nearly word for word and without attribution, a favorite passage from Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick. 'Don't tell me words don't matter. 'I have a dream' -- just words. 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal' -- just words. 'We have nothing to fear but fear itself' -- just words.'

“On Tuesday morning, the Clinton campaign publicized another case of Obama apparently appropriating Patrick's words: a quote from last year ('I am not asking anybody to take a chance on me; I am asking you to take a chance on your own aspirations') that was strikingly similar to one that Patrick uttered a year earlier ('I am not asking anyone to take a chance on me; I am asking you to take a chance on your own aspirations').

After detailing other incidents of plagiarism by the Obama campaign, Milbank concludes by describing Obama’s victory celebration following his win in Wisconsin, including the origin of the 'signature slogan' the harbinger of the new politics repeats at every gathering:

“A couple of hours after that, Obama was at Toyota Center, waiting backstage for the networks to announce his victory. On the floor, a woman in a too-tight shirt danced about the stage and led painful-to-the-eardrum cheers of 'Fired up!' and 'Ready to go!"

“Axelrod, the Obama strategist who authored many of the phrases the candidate borrowed from Edwards and Patrick, preceded the senator to the floor. On the jumbo screen, the campaign played a music video by the Black Eyed Peas' 'will.i.am.' Its title, "Yes We Can," is a signature slogan of the Obama campaign -- and before that, of Deval Patrick, not to mention César Chávez and Bob the Builder.

“A chant of 'Yes, we can' filled the arena, and Obama, emerging underneath a banner honoring basketball great Hakeem Olajuwon, enjoyed a reception the Houston Rockets would envy. 'The American people have spoken out, and they've said we need to move in a new direction," Obama told the arena.'

Note: The Clinton campaign likes to counter the Obamaphiles’ “Yes, we can” with the stronger version, “Yes, we will.”