As I was browsing through sites like opensecrets.org and the nytimes donor index, I discovered something odd. I was under the impression there was a $2,300 limit per election, per candidate. So if someone really liked Dodd, they could donate a total of $4,600 to him. Even assuming this resets every year, or something like that, that would still mean a limit of $9,200. So why do I see donors having donated as much $11,500?
Are these people who accidentally donated over the cap? What happens to that money? Is it refunded to the donor? Does the campaign get to keep the interest?
Some of these people clearly didn’t do so by accident. They donated in increments of $2,300, just four or five times. What’s up with that?
There are several reasons why this could be so. One is that individual limits increase if an opposing candidate uses a certain amount of his own money. When that spending reaches a certain threshold, the maximum contribution increases in increments of $2300. I suspect that’s what you’re looking at. Google “millionaire’s amendment” for more details.
Basically, if the same person has two seperate campaign organizations, you can donate to each. So, you can donate to the Hillary/Obama/McCain for President organization, and also the Hillary/Obama/McCain for Senate campaign.
There are also Political Action Committies, also mentioned there.
Gotta love opensecrets. The Huffington post also has an application that plots all the donations on a map, so you can see what you’re neighbors have been up to. It’s like those sex offender maps (except not totally abhorrent)–you can see who’s a closet Ron Paul supporter or whose marriage must get rocky every time Obama and Clinton debate.
Maybe your boss is really anti-war. He started off with Hillary, not knowing about Obama. As Obama gained name recognition, he switched to Obama’s better anti-war credentials. Realizing that, ultimately, the President who is more likely to keep us in Iraq is John McCain, he hedged his bets by supporting Romney too (perhaps believing Romney does, in fact, intend a secret withdrawal).
I guess my question is answered, so permit me a small campaign finance-related hijack: How did Bill Richardson squeeze so much money out of NM?
Consider the following:
Richardson got about $5.6 million from NM, which has a total population of under 2 million. John Kerry got 370,000 votes in NM in 2004. Let’s assume this represents the total pool of possible Richardson donors (Democrats plus some Republican crossovers). At Richardson’s height in NM, he got 44% in polls among Democrats for the 2008 primary. So let’s cut that number of potential donors to 162,800. Granted, some people donate to their second choice, but we’re just looking at the broad numbers here. That equals a stunning avg. total of $34 per NM supporter.
Compare that to McCain.
He raised $2.7 million in AZ. He’s had a similar proportion of support there (though it has wildly fluctuated). Let’s call it 40%. In AZ, 908,211 went for Bush in 2004. McCain’s potential well of support is probably a bit higher than this, but not by much (in his last lopsided Senate victory he about a little over a million votes). 40% of the total is 363,284 potential donors. So, McCain raised an avg. of $7 per AZ supporter, or approximately 1/5 of Richardson’s average.
Even given the fudge factors and assumptions made, this is a pretty sizable disparity. Especially considering that McCain has been a viable candidate for most of the race, while it was obvious pretty early that Richardson wasn’t gonna get it. And, the NM economy is considerably worse than AZ–about 10 states lower in terms of median income. That plus the income disparity between Dems and Pubs means it’s safe to say that Richardson’s pool of donors would have been on average poorer than McCain’s to boot.
Not strange at all. If you’re passionate about one candidate, you donate just to that one candidate. If you’re a person who wants to have access to power, you donate to anyone you think can win.
If you check the Washington Post story I linked to, you’ll get a possible answer. Right now, corporations can’t contribute directly in federal elections, but they can in New Mexico’s state elections, and he got corporate contributions to his gubernatorial fund. That could represent part of it.
