GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump noted.
Advertisement
In fact, the month of June accounted for $14.5 million in donations, or 89 percent of the total amount raised. Not all the reports are in, but we are already starting to learn which mega-donors are forking over big bucks, and how candidates are spending the money. Yet, this campaign almost all candidates have one.
Keep the Promise I raised $11 million from New York hedge fund investor Robert Mercer. To put that number in perspective, super PACs spent $374 million during the entire 2012 campaign cycle and we’re not even in the primaries yet. Rick Santorum (Penn.) and other Republicans were prolonged by funding in the tens of millions from a handful of supporters. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). And Wisconsin businesswoman Diane Hendricks gave $5 million to her governor, Scott Walker.
The latter two groups have not yet released their 2015 earnings. Perlmutter gave $2 million. Right to Rise vacuumed in $16.9 million directly from corporate treasuries.
But all the while, Bush insisted he wasn’t a candidate, a distinction that enabled him to operate outside the fray of federal campaign finance regulations, which limit individual campaign donations to $2,700. The group raised $11 million through the end of June.
The chairman of an Arkansas poultry producing business, Mountaire Corp., Cameron has ties to the Koch Brothers’ political network.
While the existence of high-dollar donors is more pronounced on the Republican side, they’re also among those giving to the super PAC backing Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton. Another: Laura Perlmutter, who gave $2 million to a super PAC supporting Sen. They also received a $10 million donation from Toby Neugebauer, an energy investor in Texas, while the Texas-based Wilks family pooled together a $15 million gift. The money went to Keep the Promise II, one of several similarly named super PACs all working to help elect Cruz. Because of that position, he’s legally restricted in what he can tell the super PAC.
Those firms – which include Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley – were collectively given over $1.7 billion worth of state pension investments by Florida officials while Bush was in office, according to state reports.
Also giving $1 million to America Leads, Christie’s super PAC, is a corporation linked to Reebok founder Paul Fireman.
Two other donors gave big to pro-Paul entities.
“The question is whether we are in a new Gilded Age or well beyond it – to a Platinum Age”, said Michael Malbin, president of the Campaign Finance Institute, which tracks the flow of campaign money.
Coral Gables healthcare mogul Mike Fernandez topped the list of major donors to a super PAC backing former Gov. Jeb Bush, with a $3 million contribution. Neugebauer said the move was for the benefit of his sons’ education.
A caveat, though: Absent this super PAC fundraising, the candidates themselves are lagging far behind the pace set in 2007, the last campaign with no incumbent seeking re-election.
But now, that group — which has indicated it would focus more on grass-roots engagement — seems to be faltering, having only raised $250,000 in the first half of 2015. The speed with which such “super PACs” can raise money – sometimes bringing in tens of millions of dollars from a few businesses or individuals in a matter of days – has allowed them to build enormous campaign war chests in a fraction of the time that it would take the candidates, who are restricted in how much they can accept from a single donor.
“Voters, as well as donors, may have preferences, but the numbers are really soft”, Saul Azunis, a fundraiser for the Republican Governors Association, said of the current landscape.
Seven others gave $25,000 each. San Francisco-based American Pacific worldwide Capital Inc., an investor and developer with projects in the United States and China, gave $1.3 million.
Advertisement
Bush’s political groups reported raising more than $108 million – and spending more than $10 million, often on catered fundraisers that Bush personally attended to meet and have photos taken with wealthy donors.
