This report from Bloomberg Politics:
About 60 people have already donated at least $1 million to independent political committees supporting Democratic and Republican presidential hopefuls in what promises to be the most expensive election ever.
The number of major contributions, drawn from Wall Street to oil country to Silicon Valley, underscores the breadth of wealth that candidates can tap into for the 2016 election. So-called super-PACs and other outside groups raised more than $250 million during the first half of this year, according to filings Friday with the U.S. Federal Election Commission.
That amount far exceeds what was raised during the same period leading up to the 2012 race and is fast approaching the $374 million spent by super-PACs on the presidential campaign during the entire 2012 cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Priorities USA Action, the primary super PAC backing Hillary Rodham Clinton in the 2016 presidential race, secured $14.5 million in commitments in July, according to a person familiar with the total, nearly as much as the $15.7 million it raised in the first half of the year.
ReplyDeleteThe pledges indicate that the group is continuing to make inroads among Democratic donors who had been reluctant to donate big checks -- either because of their distaste for super PACs or their sense that there is not yet an urgent need to finance the operation.
The new team running Priorities, lead by Democratic strategist and former Clinton campaign aide Guy Cecil, has been working to persuade wealthy liberal donors that the group must ramp up, noting that the super PAC backing former Florida governor Jeb Bush has amassed an eye-popping $103 million.
I was gonna make a whole nuther post about this, but this post makes me think about NASCAR. Within the confines of NASCAR, you have a very highly regulated contest that, despite the gobs of corporate sponsor money, remains a true contest of individual skill to win. We should do the same with out elections.
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