It’s a good thing New York Times reporter Glen Justice isn’t keeping the books over at the Kerry or Bush campaigns. He has a real problem with properly identifying campaign donors — a real no-no in accounting circles, and not a particularly admirable trait in the journalism world, either.
On Saturday, Justice reported on the fundraising efforts of the Kerry and Bush campaigns, concluding his account with this paragraph: “But for now, the [dollar] advantage is still with Mr. Bush. Of Mr. Kerry’s top 10 sources of money through February, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, half of them had given more to the president.”
As Campaign Desk noted earlier, Justice would have us all believe that big donors are hedging their bets, contributing to both candidates. That’s not the case, although Justice doesn’t seem to understand the difference. And the difference is important.
What Justice fails to tell us (again) is that the “donors” are corporations, whose contributions are calculated by adding up the sum of the donations of their employees. But these employees are not contributing under some giant corporate umbrella, hoping for a payback in November. Rather these are individuals answering their political consciences — Democrat or Republican.
It just happens that Republicans are giving more to Bush than Democrats to Kerry. Funny, put that way, it seems so simple.
–Susan Q. Stranahan
