The Democrats
Obama’s Rainmakers
BY Caitlin Ginley | June 12, 2008
Traditionally, the practice of “bundling” — pooling together a large number of donations — is a common and often essential part of campaign fundraising. Presidential candidates rely on the work of their wealthy and well-connected supporters to haul in huge amounts of cash, sometimes bringing hundreds of thousands of dollars each.
More >Hillary Clinton: The Wal-Mart Videos
BY Bill Hogan AND Alan Green | April 09, 2008
Throughout the 2008 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton has studiously avoided discussing her five-and-a-half-year tenure as a director of Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer.
Clinton, who served on the Wal-Mart board from November 1986 to May 1992, while she was First Lady of Arkansas, makes no mention of the experience in speeches, nor is it listed in her official biography or referenced anywhere on her campaign’s website. Indeed, as The New York Times put it last year, her stint as a director of Wal-Mart “remains a little known chapter in her closely scrutinized career.”
The Longest Campaign — Part Five
BY Jules Witcover | March 28, 2008
All it took was a single clever idea. As a result, the federal financing of presidential campaigns, which was showing signs of decrepitude a quarter-century after the Watergate scandals that inspired it, is all but dead.
More >The Longest Campaign — Part Four
BY Jules Witcover | March 27, 2008
A dollar is a dollar—except in politics, where some dollars are “hard” and some are “soft.” This hard-versus-soft distinction was invented by election lawyers and other political operatives looking for a way around the sweeping campaign-finance reforms ushered in by the Watergate scandal. It didn’t take them long.
More >The Longest Campaign — Part Three
BY Jules Witcover | March 26, 2008
Politics abounds with irony. Only four months before the Watergate break-in that would set off the greatest political scandal of the 20th century and lead to his resignation in disgrace, President Nixon finally signed the Federal Election Campaign Act—but it did nothing to stem the flow of big contributions to his reelection campaign.
More >The Longest Campaign — Part Two
BY Jules Witcover | March 25, 2008
Henry Ford ushered in not only the age of mass production, but also the age of scandalous excess in political campaigns. World War I riveted his interest in politics, and, in 1918, he ran for the U.S. Senate from Michigan. He lost, surprisingly, to a Republican opponent who ran what was branded a “money barrel” campaign.
More >The Longest Campaign
BY Jules Witcover | March 24, 2008
Back in the 1960s, when Jesse Unruh, the speaker of the California General Assembly, famously branded money “the mother’s milk of politics,” the extremes and excesses of the years ahead were probably beyond his imagination.
Today, running for the nation’s highest office has become so costly that by the time the November election rolls around total presidential campaign spending will, in all likelihood, easily exceed $1 billion for the first time in history. From Day One of every presidential campaign, how well candidates fare in amassing their war chests is a critical factor in how they are portrayed by the press and in how well they can make their cases to the public.
More >Hillary Clinton’s Double Donors
BY Josh Israel | March 05, 2008
Five of the six individuals who have given $10,000 or more to the American Leadership Project, a 527 committee formed recently to promote Hillary Clinton, had already given the legal maximum of $4,600 to her presidential campaign, an analysis by the Center for Public Integrity shows.
The Kerry Precedent
BY Josh Israel AND Devin Varsalona | February 26, 2008
By the time John Kerry had virtually locked up the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, he’d already been branded “a handmaiden of special interests,” a Washington elitist, and a hypocrite — and that just by members of his own party. Early in the year, The Washington Post reported that the Massachusetts senator had raised more money from lobbyists over the previous 15 years than any other senator. Kerry’s campaign had sought to portray him as a presidential candidate who would block special interests from the corridors of power. The Post story suggested that he might hold the entryways open for them.
Democrats Win Super Tuesday “Money Primary”
BY Devin Varsalona | February 08, 2008
The two contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination each raised more money in 19 Super Tuesday states than the three Republican hopefuls combined, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis.
Hillary Clinton topped fundraising in those states at just over $58 million, while fellow Democrat Barack Obama raised $47 million. They were followed by Republicans Mitt Romney ($27.5 million), John McCain ($16 million), and Mike Huckabee ($2.3 million).
More >Mitt Romney’s Deep Pockets
BY Josh Israel AND Sarah Laskow | February 04, 2008
With the winnowing of the presidential field, Republican Mitt Romney is the only remaining contender who has donated or loaned money to his own campaign, according to Federal Election Commission filings made available last week.
More >Fourth-Quarter Scores
BY Josh Israel | January 31, 2008
The candidates have filed their campaign-finance reports for the fourth quarter of 2007, covering the period from October 1 to December 31.
More >Going Radioactive
BY Sarah Laskow | January 17, 2008
In her response to a question during Tuesday’s Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton made it a point to link Barack Obama to Exelon Corporation, a Chicago-based company that says it accounts for roughly a fifth of the U.S. nuclear industry’s power capacity.
More >Obama Wins New Hampshire ‘Money Primary’
BY Josh Israel | January 07, 2008
The people of New Hampshire have invested more than just hope in Barack Obama this past year. After his decisive win in the Iowa caucuses, Obama rocketed past Hillary Clinton in surveys of likely voters in tomorrow’s Democratic primary, but he’s also been decisively outpacing Clinton in fundraising in the state for more than a year.
With $50 Million, Kucinich says, “I can win”
BY Josh Israel | August 17, 2007
Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) says that he will buck a trend among presidential hopefuls and participate in the federal matching funds program.
More >Recently Added Stories
Categories
