On February 9th, 2009, the Federal Election Commission in Washington, DC released their final tallies for all Presidential campaign contributions during the 2007-2008 election cycle. The Center for Responsive Politics has compiled the data and made it available at OpenSecrets.org. This article is the second in a series analyzing the FEC final data for the last election. Read the first article.
Excluding donations to PACs, 504 Committees, and Parties, New Rochelle residents made 747 donations totaling $666,444 directly to the presidential campaigns during the 2007-2008 presidential election cycle based on recently released FEC data.
Last time we looked at the biggest losers during the campaign. This time will take a look at the biggest winners.
The Democratic Party in New Rochelle had a 3:1 fund-raising advantage in the most recent election cycle. Out of the $666,444 raised by the campaigns in New Rochelle, the Democratic Party took in $483,229 or 72.5%. The Republican Party took in $180,665 or just 27.1%. Independent candidates took in just $2,550 or less than 1%.
Not surprisingly the eventual nominees led their respective parties in fundraising by the end of the cycle but a look inside the numbers for each party can still be instructive. Obama, of course, raised the most with $255,565 with Hillary trailing at $159,439 but leading McCain who raised less than $100,000 in New Rochelle. NOTE: We will look at the trend line in donations between Clinton and Obama during 2007-2008 in a future article.
Perhaps the biggest surprise among Democrats was the strong showing of Bill Richardson who raised the the third most money in New Rochelle among Democrats with $29,990. Also surprising is the relatively weak showing of John Edwards who often ran third nationally, came in as the incumbent Vice-Presidential nominee from the 2004 campaign and came into the race with high name recognition. Edwards was 5th in New Rochelle fundraising among Democrats with just $12,550. Eventual Obama running-mate, Joe Biden pulled in $4,625. Near-native son Chris Dodd did reasonably well in New Rochelle, raising $15,800. Tom Vilsack who dropped out just weeks after joining the race may have the best ratio of days of campaigning to dollars raised; he raised $2,300 while campaigning for less than a month and not leaving his home state of Iowa. Anti-war candidate Dennis Kucinich was unable to attract much interest in what was largely a single-issue campaign, taking in just $3,050 from three donors.
The Republican candidates did not raise a great deal of money in New Rochelle but what they did raise went almost entirely to the eventual nominee, John McCain and native son Rudy Giuliani. McCain raised $95,365 and Giuliani raised $60,850. Perhaps the biggest surprise here is the poor showing of Mitt Romney, the former governor of a nearby liberal northeastern state. Romney, widely considered the likely front-runner for the GOP in 2012 if he chooses to run against Obama, was out-raised by the abortive Fred Thompson campaign which raised $11,700. Ron Paul and Sam Brownback rounded out the field raising $2,300 and $750 respectively.
Coming up in the series, we’ll look at how the party donations broke down during the 2008 presidential election cycle and look inside the numbers by location, employer and the quarterly/monthly trends including a comparison between Clinton and Obama.