Big donors are the key to Obama's record haul

The bloom is really off this rose folks. If the International Herald Tribune (owned by the NY Slimes) is willing to look into who is really giving Obama his millions, the blinders must be coming off the MSM’s eyes. Or, it could be the polls. Maybe they see an Obama loss and don’t want to be viewed as totally corrupt.

By Michael M. Luo and Christopher Drew

In an effort to cast himself as independent of the influence of money on politics, Senator Barack Obama often highlights the campaign contributions of $200 or less that have amounted to fully half of the $340 million he has collected so far.

But records show that a third of his record-breaking haul has come from donations of $1,000 or more - a total of $112 million, more than the total of contributions in that category taken in by either Senator John McCain, his Republican rival, or Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, his opponent in the Democratic primaries.

Behind those large donations is a phalanx of more than 500 Obama "bundlers," fund-raisers who have each collected contributions totaling $50,000 or more. Many of the bundlers come from industries with critical interests in Washington. Nearly three dozen of the bundlers have raised more than $500,000, including more than a half-dozen who have passed the $1 million mark and one or two who have exceeded $2 million, according to interviews with fund-raisers.

While his campaign has cited its volume of small donations as a rationale for his decision to opt out of public financing for the general election, Obama has worked to build a network of big-dollar supporters from the time he began contemplating a run for the U.S. Senate.
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An analysis of campaign finance records shows that about two-thirds of his bundlers are concentrated in four major industries: law, securities and investments, real estate and entertainment. Lawyers make up the largest group at about 130, with many working for firms that also have lobbying arms. At least 100 Obama bundlers are top executives or brokers from investment businesses - nearly two dozen work for financial titans like Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. About 40 others come from the real-estate industry.
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Obama has pledged not to accept donations from federally registered lobbyists or political action committees. But some top donors clearly have policy and political agendas. Hedge fund executives, for example, have bundled large sums for Obama at a time their industry has been looking to increase its clout in Washington.
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Many fund-raisers sit on the campaign's array of policy working groups, getting a chance to weigh in on policy positions and speeches. Genachowski, a Harvard Law School classmate of Obama's, chairs the technology working group. Fund-raisers from private equity and hedge funds sit on Obama's economic policy group.
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Donations in June, the latest month for which he has disclosed his donors to the Federal Election Commission, illustrate the double-barreled nature of the campaign's fund-raising. Obama brought in nearly $31 million in contributions of less than $200, his best month for small donations. But he also collected more than $12 million in contributions of $1,000 or more, the most since the first half of 2007.

The share from large contributions appears poised to increase as Obama has stepped up his fund-raising schedule, rushing from one glitzy event to another.

"In 2007, the campaign relied on the tried-and-true-methods like fund-raisers, for both large and small-dollar donors, with the candidate or his surrogates, and the Internet largely financed it in 2008," said Kirk Dornbush, the head of a bio-tech firm and a top fund-raiser in Atlanta. "When you combine the traditional fund-raising methods with the continued online contributions, you have a very, very powerful fund-raising engine."