Big Donors Rule Despite McCain-Feingold
by Ryan Sager
Wed, 18 Apr 2007 at 10:21 AM
updated Wed, 18 Apr 2007 at 10:28 AM
After all the hoopla from pro-campaign-finance-reform groups on the fifth anniversary of McCain-Feingold, it's refreshing to be reassured that small donors, though more numerous nowadays, still don't matter all that much.
According to a report just out from the Campaign Finance Institute, among the Big Six candidates for the presidency, no one got less than 68% of their money from donors giving more than $1,000. The one who got 68% was Barack Obama. John McCain came in second, by this measure, with 74%. Then came John Edwards (77%), Hillary Clinton (86%), Rudy Giuliani (87%), and Mitt Romney (88%).
What's more, those candidates who do get a significant percentage of their donations from small donors have a name: losers ...
Take Rep. Dennis Kucinich (please! -- I'll be here all week, folks). He got 68% of his cash from donors giving less than $200. That's how you end up with $200,000 in the bank. Similarly, on the Republican side, Rep. Tom Tancredo got 78% of his cash from donors giving less than $200.
What amuses me most, however, are the guys who have absolutely no grassroots support, yet still manage to rope in some rich suckers to write some checks. Take Senator Dodd of Connecticut (trust me, no one else will). Just 2% of his cash came from small donors. Yet, he's still managed to raise $8.8 million, despite having no popular support.
The only candidate for whom the small donors really delivered was Mr. Obama. He got 22% of his cash from donors giving less than $200 — that's a little more than $5 million of his $26 million. (Mr. McCain had a similar percentage of small donors, but he didn't raise that much money overall.)
When all is said and done, I don't think this is much of a scandal, despite CFI's agenda in putting together its study. Big donors write big checks (err... by definition). It takes a ton of little checks to stack up against the big ones. But the Internet is expanding the small-donor base, and no candidate can afford to ignore that cash source anymore.
Now, maybe the Internet being the new small-donor-cash engine isn't perfectly democratic — it's disproportionately upscale and young — but that's certain to even out over time.
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