The WaPo is leading with
this story for Saturday's edition:
Kerry, a 19-year veteran of the Senate who fought and won four expensive political campaigns, has received nearly $640,000 from lobbyists, many representing telecommunications and financial companies with business before his committee, according to Federal Election Commission data compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
For his presidential race, Kerry has raised more than $225,000 from lobbyists, better than twice as much as his nearest Democratic rival. Like President Bush, Kerry has also turned to a number of corporate officials and lobbyists to "bundle" contributions from smaller donors, often in sums of $50,000 or more, records provided by his campaign show.
It seems the press has finally snapped out of its "Yay Kerry!" stage and is starting to go for the jugular, no doubt with the stealthy assistance of Chris Lehane.
Maybe Dean's plans for sticking it out and making his move post-February-3rd isn't so crazy after all. He could be positioned well to take advantage of a Kerry-stumble in the midst of oppo-research hell.
The note of reality is he has been brought to you by special interests," said Charles Lewis of the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity, a watchdog group that has closely studied the senator's relationship with special interests. "It's very hard [for Kerry] to utter this rhetoric without some hollowness to it."
"I think it's harder for someone like Kerry to take on" Bush over special interests "because he's taken money . . . from a lot of the same" corporate sectors, added Larry Noble, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, which monitors money in politics. Dean, who has raised more money than Kerry in this campaign, has taken considerably less from lobbyists.
As Kerry was pushing reforms and boasting of his PAC-free campaigns, he was aggressively soliciting money from individuals working for companies and ringing up much bigger checks from corporations in the form of soft money. Kerry has not been involved in any of the major fundraising scandals of the past three decades -- although he was one of several politicians who took money from Taiwanese American businessman Johnny Chung, who was convicted of contributing illegally to Bill Clinton and many others.
The Hill, a Washington-based publication covering Capitol Hill, this month reported that Kerry in 1999 lobbied the Coast Guard on a rule-making process that benefited a foreign company represented by Cassidy & Associates. Soon after, employees of Cassidy & Associates sent Kerry $7,250 in bundled contributions. Jim Ruggieri, the Coast Guard official who handled the matter, told the paper it was highly unusual for a senator to intervene on such a matter.A review of FEC and other data by The Washington Post found Kerry has raked in millions from U.S. corporations, especially financial companies such as Citigroup and telecom firms, including Rubert Murdoch's News Corp., which also flew one of his Senate staffers to California for a meeting.
What we have here is a bought and paid for politician. This is the last thing we need to reward in politics these days.
