The Washington Post has an excellent piece today on Barack Obama's bundlers -- fundraisers who solicit multiple donations from a range of donors, and then combine those donations into much larger lump sums. The Post says there are 79 bundlers who raised more than $200,000 each -- for a minimum of $15.8 million from the creme de la creme of Obama's fundraisers. The Post identifies just a handful of the bundlers, but you have to be concerned that one of Obama's chief foreign and defense policy advisers -- Anthony Lake -- is also a top fundraiser. Are Lake's donors influencing policy? There's no way to know.
For perspective, it's good to take a look at thisPost story from just about a year ago. It makes clear that long before Obama found a way to raise unprecedented sums from small donors, he had already lined up a stable of well-connected fixers with deep pockets to raise the cash he needed:
Obama stood at the front of the room fielding questions for nearly an hour from his national finance team, each of whom has pledged to raise at least $250,000. He shared secret plans for a series of soon-to-be-released policy statements and urged them to call him personally to "tell me how to communicate talking points to you to make you more effective."
It was these Washington money men who got in on the ground floor -- not the small donors who came later.
And while the Post identifies 79 bundlers who raised at least $200,000 (with no indication of how much more than $200,000 they might have raised), there's no way to know how many bundlers there might be who raised less than $200,000. If there are 79 big bundlers, there might be hundreds of smaller ones. We get a hint when the Post says that there are 27,000 donors who've made the maximum legal contribution of $2,300. That's more than $62 million from the biggest donors.
This piece raises far more questions about the influence of the well-heeled on Obama's campaign. And for what it's worth, Barack Obama frequently takes credit for passage of ethics legislation that would require much greater disclosure about campaign bundlers.
The only problem is that Barack Obama has also blocked the FEC from actually taking action to enforce that rule. If Obama ever changes his mind, and calls on Senate Democrats to let the FEC enforce the law, then we might actually get some information about who his bundlers are, and whether they're advancing their interests through the campaign.
Be sure to read Ed Morrissey on this as well.
