Obama Tops in Large Money Donations

Sen. Barack Obama far and away outpaces any other presidential candidate in the total amount of money he has raised for the Democratic primary and the general election, having raised almost $340 million. But Sen. Obama also leads the other candidates in another, more dubious, category: most money raised from big money donations of $1,000 or more. Fully one-third, or $112 million, of Obama's fund-raising total has come from a network of big donors, bundlers, and the well-connected, including lobbyists.

The New York Times took a look at the records and finds that Sen. Obama's big money network contains over 500 bundlers, fund-raisers who combine smaller donations into one larger one, thereby skirting campaign contribution limits. One hundred and thirty of those are lawyers, many of whom work for firms with lobbying operations. Each of the bundlers had brought in at least $50,000 to the Obama campaign. Three dozen collected $500,000 each. Six brought in over $1 million; and a couple raised more than $2 million. The Times further reports that many of the bundlers and well-heeled donors to the Obama campaign are long-time Democratic Party insiders and activists that Sen. Obama began courting soon after securing his Senate seat in 2004.

Sen. Obama has billed his campaign finance operation as a new model for publicly financed campaigns. He touts the millions he has been able to raise from small donations of $200 or less as a justification for his reversal of his promise to accept federal funding for the general election campaign. But just like every coin and bill that comes in to the Obama campaign, his fund-raising operation has two sides. It is unsurprising that a politician with national aspirations would have high-powered and moneyed interests backing his campaign. Sen. John McCain certainly does. For Sen. Obama, however, who has presented himself as an atypical politician and the bringer of a new kind of politics, the revelation that his campaign funding is more ordinary than once believed is a bit more damaging. Obama needs to maintain his image as a post-partisan figure to balance questions about his relatively short resume.