| (full disclosure: I work for Courage Campaign, which is working on defeating the dirty trick)
The state campaign finance disclosure laws say that you have to report your contributions within 10 days of receiving them. The relatively short turn around means that we know what kind of money the dirty tricksters have and where it is coming from. Though they have been swearing up and down they have $3 million to get this on the ballot, the initial round of contributions only adds up to about $539,000 in the last two weeks. That is nowhere near enough money to get it on, though they could have cash rolling in over the next few days. John Meyers has the names.
So who are some of the donors? The larger contributions come from people like Glen Holden, an insurance investor and former ambassador to Jamaica under the first President George Bush; Duane Roberts, an Orange County businessman who's also given money this year to GOP presidential contenders Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, and John McCain; money manager Robert Day, listed on Forbes' 2006 list of "The World's Richest People"; venture capitalist Floyd Kvamme, appointed by President George W. Bush in 2001 as co-chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology; Jerrold Perenchio, former CEO of Univision who's also been a financial backer of Governor Schwarzenegger; and Bill Leonard, an elected member of the California Board of Equalization and former Assembly GOP leader.
I am sure Lehane and company with their oppo-research team are digging into these guys. We already know about Issa.
And as publicly reported before, seed money has also been contributed by U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) -- from both his own checkbook ($50,000) and from his campaign account ($9,500).
The last one is interesting, though not surprising. I say interesting because I am wondering where they are getting the money from.
The single largest contribution so far to the campaign known as California Counts: $80,000 from the California Republican Party.
The California Republican Party is bankrupt, so where did they find the cash for this? And is someone using the CRP as a way to funnel money into the campaign, without having their name disclosed. |
