When we’re done with the tax returns…..
In 2007, then-Sen. Barack Obama proposed legislation that would have required all presidential candidates to disclose information about supporters who raised at least $50,000 for their campaigns during the two-year period prior to Election Day. That legislation was never adopted, but as a presidential candidate Obama voluntarily released certain information about his top fundraisers.
Obama has continued that practice as he revs the financial engine of his re-election campaign. Between April and the end of September, the Obama campaign released the names of 357 bundlers who had collected at least $50,000 to benefit him and the Democratic National Committee. Together, these elite moneymen (and women) raised at least $55.9 million — or about $8 out of every $25 added to Obama’s account during that time.
Current law requires candidates only to release the names of bundlers who are registered federal lobbyists; that statute was adopted in the wake of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.
No candidate on the Republican side of the aisle has gone beyond the law and joined Obama in voluntarily disclosing information about his or her other bundlers. (Ron Paul’s presidential campaign says it doesn’t use bundlers, as OpenSecrets Blog previously reported). Republicans Rick Perry and Tim Pawlenty each disclosed exactly one lobbyist-bundler last year. Mitt Romney has disclosed eight, who collectively have raised nearly $1 million for his campaign. Obama does not have any lobbyists bundling money for him, and his policy is to refund any money donated to his campaign by a lobbyist.
Mitt Romney has eight lobbyist-bundlers, and he was legally required to report those names, but are there more Romney bundlers? He’d have to answer that first question, don’t you think, if it were put to him?
If Romney gets to the general, we can start bugging him about this. Why won’t he voluntarily reveal the names of ALL his bundlers? Better, If Gingrich gets to the general (and, you know, has some bundlers: his “donors” seem to be one incredibly rich person) because Gingrich is the one who has been screeching nonsensically and insincerely about transparency.
After listening to idiot conservatives and pundit enablers spend three years turning a mundane, ordinary, state-issued birth record into something incredibly complicated and ultimately (apparently) unknowable I think they owe us complete transparency in all things.
Not complicated. List of names.