Double-Giving in the Presidential Campaign

Washington-A new analysis released by Public Campaign today of double-giving in the presidential campaigns shows that forty-seven companies and organizations that appear on the donor list of three or more presidential candidates gave at least $50,000 overall. Forty-five of these companies are playing the entire field, showing up on all four of the front-runners’ donor lists.

"No matter which presidential candidates win next Tuesday’s primaries, an elite group of major political contributors will come out the winners," said Ellen Miller, executive director of Public Campaign. "They’re the double-givers, who have hedged their bets by currying favor with all the leading candidates," she added.

"Our analysis shows that double-giving-which is solely about buying access and influence, not supporting any particular candidate or philosophy-is at the heart of presidential campaign financing," Miller noted. "It is especially a top priority for many of this country’s most powerful financial, communications, and law firms."

Financial companies in particular are in the forefront of double-giving. Every company on the top ten list of double-givers is in the finance business, with the exception of the entertainment giant Time Warner. Goldman, Sachs and Morgan, Stanley Dean Witter show up on the top twenty contributor lists of all four candidates, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. So does banking and insurance giant Citigroup. The accounting firm Ernst & Young made the top twenty donor list for three out of four of the leading candidates, as did Time Warner.

"All of these companies have a long lobbying ‘to-do’ list, including efforts to shift Social Security funds into the stock market, protect elaborate tax shelter schemes, normalize trade with China, gain approval for complex merger deals, and influence federal regulation of the commodities and derivatives markets," Miller observed. "With so much at stake, these companies have obviously concluded that it will pay to have a friend in the White House-and their double-, triple- and quadruple-giving guarantees that they will."

These contributions do not flow from the companies themselves, but rather from executives and their families. "Double-giving to the presidential candidates has solely been in the form of hard money, though of course most of the companies involved are also generous soft-money donors too, often to both parties," Miller added. "What this shows, once again, is that soft money-the most visible and outrageous form of campaign finance corruption-is not the core of the problem."

Miller concluded, "The only way to end this cynical purchase of political influence is to create an alternative way for candidates to finance their campaigns-‘clean money’ full public financing for candidates who agree to raise no private money whatsoever."

Public Campaign’s new report, "Whoever Wins, They Win," analyzes all the large individual contributions ($200 and up) to the presidential campaigns of Bill Bradley, George W. Bush, Al Gore and John McCain through the end of 1999.