When news broke on Tuesday that Barack Obama claimed his campaign had created a “parallel public financing system” by raising millions in small donations—and that those picayune donors would have, in his words, “as much access and influence over the course and direction of our campaign that has traditionally been reserved for the wealthy and the powerful,” most of the press dryly read between the lines and suggested that Obama was laying the rhetorical groundwork to be the first major party candidate since 1976 to turn down public financing in a general election campaign—despite an earlier pledge to use the system:
Jeff Zeleny and Michael Luo, The New York Times:
“Mr. Obama, who has shattered fund-raising records for candidates of either party, is sending fresh signals that he may bypass public financing for the general election.”
Jim Kuhnhenn, The Associated Press:
Barack Obama, whose fundraising prowess has set records, appears to be paving the way to bypass the public financing system in the fall without yet spelling out his intentions…
This week, he appeared to be making a case that his broad base of small dollar donors is as egalitarian as the government’s public subsidy.
Politico’s Ben Smith:
Obama starts making a case for opting out of public financing…
The case against this: He seems to be breaking a pledge.
The case for it: The world has changed, and his online, small-dollar base embodies the spirit of campaign finance reform.
Most of that’s well and good. Any steps towards opting out—especially since doing so would seem to contradict Obama’s past commitment—is big news. But that wasn’t the only newsworthy nugget in Obama’s remarks: the latter part of his comments, that small donors had “as much access and influence” as the “wealthy and powerful,” was a glaring falsehood. And you didn’t see much of the press point that out, until an excellent piece came out in this morning’s Washington Post.
Obama, like any other serious candidate, used a cast of well-connected fundraisers to bundle donations from wealthy folks. In return, they get unusual access to the candidate and campaign.
That shouldn’t have been too hard to suss out, especially given the fact that, yes, Obama made his claims while speaking at a fundraiser. Not to belabor the point, but just in case anyone’s forgotten, here’s how this works: when a candidate appears at a fundraiser, the audience is made up of people who have given to the campaign. Their. Money. Buys. Access.
At Tuesday night’s fundraiser, reception slots went for $1,000 each, and dinner slots went for the federally allowed maximum, $2,300 each. That’s a far cry from the “$5, $10, $25, $100 contributions” from online donors that his campaign guru, David Axelrod, mentioned to the Times in Obama’s defense.
That’s obvious and garden variety compared to the access afforded to big-check collectors. Today’s Washington Post story breaks rank and pulls back the curtain:
“their generosity has earned them a prominent voice in shaping his campaign. … [Bundlers] are made to feel part of the campaign’s inner workings through weekly conference calls and quarterly meetings at which they quiz the candidate or his strategists. At one meeting, bundlers urged the campaign to link Iraq war costs with the faltering economy. And they got an advance copy of Obama’s Philadelphia speech in which he addressed the incendiary remarks of his longtime pastor.”
There are also individual phone calls, prolonged questions and answer sessions, and the like.
To be clear, the Post doesn’t turn up any evidence suggesting old-style quid pro quo corruption. But clearly the elite 79 bundlers who have each shepherded over $200,000 have Obama’s ear more than the hundreds of thousands of folks who’ve kicked in $200 or less.
Now, I don’t mean this as a big knock on Obama. He’s free to raise money more or less how he chooses. And there is a quantitative difference to his fundraising profile, even if big bundlers and big checks are still a major part of the mix; the Post reports that he gets about half of his funding from small donors, while Clinton gets a third and McCain about a quarter.
But I do mean it as a nudge to the press. While it’s easy (and maybe a little exciting) to be distracted by Obama’s boom in small donors, the big money is very much there. And it’s an outsized part of our campaign finance system, and will be for some time, barring difficult and major reforms. Those changes will certainly never come if the press doesn’t investigate feel-good claims like Obama’s, and clearly show big donors’ big access. Thankfully, The Washington Post, unlike many others, did.
Clint Hendler is the managing editor of Mother Jones, and a former deputy editor of CJR.