A story appearing on the front page of the web edition of the NY Times this afternoon has an eye catching headline: Secret G.O.P. Records Reveal Corporate Donors Paying for Access to Governors. Here's a taste:
Among the R.G.A. documents is a 21-page schedule of the policy committee’s Carlsbad meeting last year that lists which companies attended, who represented them and what they contributed. The most elite group, known as the Statesmen, whose members donated $250,000, included Aetna; Coca-Cola; Exxon Mobil; Koch Companies Public Sector, the lobbying arm of the highly political Koch Industries; Microsoft; Pfizer; UnitedHealth Group; and Walmart. The $100,000 Cabinet level included Aflac, BlueCross BlueShield, Comcast, Hewlett-Packard, Novartis, Shell Oil, Verizon Communications and Walgreen.
Other documents detail, in part, what they got in return.
Lots of interesting info in there - let's hope the digging will unearth more. Meanwhile,
NPR has noted Democrats, no strangers to Big Money themselves, are doing pretty well raising money the old-fashioned way -
lots of small donors.
Most online money comes in small contributions of $200 or less, and ends up on disclosure reports in a lump-sum category called "unitemized contributions." In that category, the DCCC has left the NRCC in the dust. So far in this cycle, the Democratic committee has raised nearly $62 million, the Republican committee just $20 million.
The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong (though that's the way to bet). A lot can happen between now and November.