By Rowan Wolf
One of the better sites for tracking who is giving money to whom is Open Secrets. Their last contribution update for the 2004 Presidential race was in October, but it can give you an idea.
| Bush Top Contributors 2004: |
Kerry Top Contributors for 2004: |
| Morgan Stanley $599,730 Merrill Lynch $569,204 PricewaterhouseCoopers $508,300 UBS Americas $456,625 Goldman Sachs $373,100 MBNA Corp $351,000 Credit Suisse First Boston $334,040 Lehman Brothers $315,275 Citigroup Inc $312,100 Bear Stearns $302,600 Ernst & Young $296,140 Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu $280,350 US Government $266,501 Wachovia Corp $261,310 Ameriquest Capital $244,400 Blank Rome LLP $220,150 Bank of America $213,311 JP Morgan Chase & Co $199,650 Microsoft Corp $193,040 Southern Co $191,232 |
University of California
$606,625 Harvard University $341,589 Time Warner $286,950 Goldman Sachs $285,750 Citigroup Inc $274,431 Microsoft Corp $269,047 Skadden, Arps et al $241,827 UBS Americas $208,950 JP Morgan Chase & Co $194,865 Stanford University $187,249 US Government $183,275 Morgan Stanley $179,629 IBM Corp $176,590 Robins, Kaplan et al $172,650 Viacom Inc $172,646 Bank of America $160,252 Piper Rudnick LLP $160,203 Akin, Gump et al $152,004 Columbia University $150,397 University of Michigan $144,638 |
This always interests me because I never quite understood the theory behind it. Maybe I'm missing something...I'm trying to figure out why the corporations and the politicians don't work out a scheme where the corporations would have the same net effect on elections they do now, but spend less money (by reducing donations to both parties, and maybe spending a little to actively hurt third parties), and then the politicians would give them the same favors they give them now. The only explanation I can see is that politicians must not proportion their "gratitude" to a company's net effect on the elections; and the only reason I can see for that is if the politicians want to use their campaign funds to buy boats or something, not to win elections. Am I missing something?