Fundraisers Tap Those Who Can't Say No
'Bundlers' Look to Associates, Employees for Campaign Cash
By Matthew Mosk /Washington Post /Staff Writer Tuesday, August 7, 2007; A01
When Michael A. Mingolelli pulled out his checkbook on June 25 and made a $500 pledge to Sen. John McCain, he was not thinking about the promise of a McCain White House. The financial and estate planner from Farmington, Mass., was thinking about keeping one of his best customers satisfied.
"One of my dear clients asked me if I would help contribute and I said yes, even if I don't think McCain's going to win," Mingolelli said. "And to be honest, if it came down to McCain and Romney, I'd probably go with Romney," he added, referring to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R).
The kind of solicitation directed at Mingolelli is not unusual as presidential candidates grow more reliant on their stables of "bundlers" -- well-connected supporters who can tap vast networks of associates for money and whose special status in a campaign is enshrined with such honorifics as "Ranger" (President Bush's 2004 reelection campaign) or "Hillraiser" (Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign).
The bundlers are under their own kind of pressure to produce for their candidates. And they pass it on -- corporate executives hitting up employees, real estate developers seeking checks from vendors and law partners prevailing upon less-senior lawyers.
One sign of where this pressure -- direct and indirect -- is applied is the rising number of contributions from secretaries, administrative assistants and executive assistants for whom a $1,000 political contribution is a major expense. At this point in the campaign four years ago, 127 donors making contributions listed one of those three occupations. In the first six months of this year the number was 526, and the average check was for nearly $800.
"Almost everyone raising the big money these days will tell you: You start your fundraising network by thinking of people . . . who can't say no," said Clyde Wilcox, a Georgetown University professor who has studied the psychology of political giving. "They may not tell the person they have to give, or even imply it, but both of them know that's not true."
Democrat Bill Richardson, for example, the lone sitting governor in the 2008 presidential race, collected 274 contributions totaling more than $236,000 from New Mexico state employees. The outpouring ranged from $2,300 from Richardson's lieutenant governor, Diane Denish, to $150 from Alfred Newman, who identified himself as a state disability adjudicator when he made his donation June 29.
Richardson spokesman Pahl Shipley described the number of New Mexico employees who donated as "a great show of support from the people who get the work done every day for this state."
The 2008 candidates have already collected $277 million -- more in the first six months of this year than candidates in the last presidential election cycle gathered during all of 2003. With the demand to find new sources of money, White House hopefuls have shifted their attention from the merely wealthy to the well-connected. They shower attention on those with the networking skills to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in increments of $2,300, the legal limit.
"All this has created intense pressure on folks to work the Rolodexes really hard and really beat the bushes," said Scott Thomas, a former Federal Election Commission chairman. "It's not unusual to expect circumstances where someone higher up is leaning on an employee to cough up money."
And for the most part, it is not illegal, he said. The Federal Election Commission prohibits corporate executives or labor leaders from "facilitating" contributions from their subordinates. But that's as far as the language goes, he said.
In interviews, several first-time donors said they were asked by their bosses to write checks, but almost all said they considered their contributions voluntary. Pedro Canas, a chauffeur employed by the private equity firm TSG Consumer Partners in San Francisco, said he made his $2,300 donation to McCain (R-Ariz.) after a company official called him.
"He asked me to help," Canas said. "I thought it would be a good idea. I thought, well, I could contribute."
Laraine Agren, a marketing executive in Penn Valley, Calif., said she gave $500 to Romney because she "liked what he did during the Olympics." She had never made a contribution before and might "have done it anyway," she said, "but the president of my company asked me to."
Those who donate to please their bosses have always represented a slice of overall giving. Wilcox recalled a memorable fundraising moment when a corporate executive was holding an event for Jack Kemp during his 1988 Republican presidential campaign. The host told his guests: "Jack, make it short. These people are here for me."
In 2003, Wilcox helped conduct a survey on congressional giving and found that among donors who contributed to advance their business interests, 12 percent noted that they had been "asked by someone they didn't want to say no to."
That dynamic has at times created a legal minefield for campaigns. In January 2003, for instance, an Arkansas law firm worked with staff members from then-Sen. John Edwards's campaign to plan two fundraisers. The firm's managing partner instructed his assistant to ask four other employees to make $2,000 contributions to the North Carolina Democrat and then to reimburse them, which is illegal.
Edwards now circulates a three-page memo of guidelines to volunteer fundraisers, including a reminder in large print that the law "strictly prohibits reimbursement of contributions made by others."
Bundlers have become so ingrained in the fundraising process that some Web sites keep track of who they are. But Congress recently acted to create more transparency when the bundlers are lobbyists. Under the ethics legislation passed by both the House and Senate last week, members of Congress will have to disclose the names of lobbyists who bundle contributions of more than $15,000 for them.
But the pressure to give persists in all settings. Producers and agents flocked to events that movie mogul Steven Spielberg held earlier this year. Donna Bojarsky, a Hollywood political consultant, said those attending may already have been inclined to give. "But if the head of your studio is doing a fundraiser . . . I would think the people who work for that person would see it as a good idea to go."
When asked how he brought in money, longtime Atlanta fundraiser Kirk Dornbush joked: "You mean besides guns, knives and threats?"
Dornbush, the president of a medical research firm who is helping Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) raise cash for his presidential bid, acknowledged that he does turn to business associates -- " 'People I can rely on to help out' is how I'd put it." But he says Obama has made fundraising relatively easy.
But while Obama, in particular, has seen a flood of money come in via the Internet, most of the candidates keep pace by pushing well-connected fundraisers into service. When former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani was designing his fundraising plans, for example, he looked for chief executives, top lawyers and bankers -- and even considered asking former Minnesota Vikings quarterback Fran Tarkenton to solicit contributions from pro athletes.
And whether those bundlers have dreams of an ambassadorship or an invitation to a White House dinner, or simply think that the candidate would make the best president, their fundraising targets are higher than ever.
"The raisers at this point, because the pace is so accelerated, they really have to get creative," said Tracy Sturman, who served as Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman's finance director when he sought the White House as a Democrat in 2004. She is not attached to a 2008 campaign.
"They're reaching out to people who aren't traditionally givers," Sturman said. "But because the base of support is expanding so fast, people are scrambling to just find anyone who hasn't given yet."
The evidence that candidates and their supporters are working their connections can be abundantly clear on campaign finance forms. The phenomenon would explain, for instance, why 67 lawyers at the Texas location of Giuliani's law firm, Bracewell & Giuliani, donated a total of more than $100,000 to his campaign. Or how Fortress Investment Group, the firm where Edwards worked, became the source of 87 contributions totaling more than $150,000 for his presidential bid -- including checks that came not only from top executives but also from analysts and executive assistants.
Several Fortress employees who contributed to Edwards in April declined to comment when contacted at their offices. Human resources director Michele Cohen said her $1,000 to Edwards was a "personal contribution that had nothing to do with Fortress" and added: "I can't say what other personal decisions my colleagues have made."
For the most part, people who are asked to donate at work say they are doing so willingly. That is what Joanna M. Baricevic said when asked about the $4,200 that she and her husband gave McCain on Feb. 28. Baricevic, 64, is an executive assistant at Lehman Brothers; her husband is retired. And these were their first political gifts. Asked how she came to donate, Baricevic said: "Through my office. Many people here are involved in his campaign." / Database editor Sarah Cohen, research editor Lucy Shackelford and staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report./