Two year old gives $3200 to Obama

It appears that Clinton AND Obama are accepting illegal campaign contributions.

Elrick Williams's toddler niece Carlyn may be one of the youngest contributors to this year's presidential campaign. The 2-year-old gave $2,300 to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

So did her sister and brother, Imara, 13, and Ishmael, 9, and her cousins Chan and Alexis, both 13. Altogether, according to newly released campaign finance reports, the extended family of Williams, a wealthy Chicago financier, handed over nearly a dozen checks in March for the maximum allowed under federal law to Obama.

Such campaign donations from young children would almost certainly run afoul of campaign finance regulations, several campaign lawyers said. But as bundlers seek to raise higher and higher sums for presidential contenders this year, the number who are turning to checks from underage givers appears to be on the rise.
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Just how much campaign cash is coming from children is uncertain -- the FEC does not require donors to provide their age. But the amount written by those identifying themselves as students on contribution forms has risen dramatically this year, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics. During the first six months of the 2000 presidential campaign, students gave $338,464. In 2004, that rose to $538,936.

This year, the amount has nearly quadrupled, to $1,967,111.
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This is the second time in two months that the Obama campaign has returned contributions from young children. The first involved donations from Maryland developer Aris Mardirossian's two children, Matthew, 8, and Karis, 7; each contributed $2,300 to Obama's primary campaign and $2,300 more for a possible general-election contest.

Although the campaign immediately returned the money, Mardirossian, who along with his wife also gave maximum contributions to Obama, said he saw no need for the campaign to do so.

"My children are very engaged in politics, Mardirossian said. "The whole family is engaged. Every Sunday we get together, all the cousins, everybody comes and talks about politics. The children sit down and listen to the debates and everything."

Helen Maloof Aranda offered a terse explanation when asked how her two children, ages 10 and 16, came to donate the maximum allowed to New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson's Democratic presidential bid -- some of the more than $32,000 in contributions that Maloof family members gave Richardson.

"We just support him," Aranda said when reached at the family's Santa Fe beer distributorship.

I love the smell of crime in the Democrats camp in the moring.