Monday, October 20, 2008

Obama's Indiana Contributors

Atlas Shrugs reports that Obama's presidential campaign is raising money at the rate of $200,000 an hour based upon the campaign's report claiming $150 million raised during the month of September. More than half of Obama's campaign contributions have come from contributions of less than $200. The campaign will not disclose the names of those contributors. The site has identified a number of irregularities which it claims exists in Obama's campaign finance reports. Previously, the blog noted that names of contributors appeared made up, such as DooDad and Good Will, while other contributions were clearly made by foreign nationals who cannot legally contribute to a U.S. federal candidate. One of the irregularities the blog identifies in its report today is a pattern of small contributors making multiple contributions over a period of time, which taken together, amount to significant contributions. I noticed several contributors in this category were from Indiana. They aren't names of people you normally see on a list of big contributors. Here are their names and the amount they contributed:

  • Harold Bennett (Indianapolis) made 26 contributions totalling $1,187.45
  • Nancy Krump (Indianapolis) made 119 contributions totalling $3,463.80
  • Robert Parks (Springport) made 53 contributions totalling $1,635.70
  • Terry Delacy (Dyer) made 64 contributions totalling $2,670
  • Patricia Adams (Metamora) made 64 contributions totalling $3,022
  • Lisa Powell (Corydon) made 65 contributions totalling $3,237.78
  • Lisa Dykhoff (Summitville) made 70 contributions totalling $3,031.10
  • Donna Krumm (Munster) made 72 contributions totalling $2,850.00

9 comments:

Vox Populi said...

What's really funny is that McCain's own campaign finance reform bill is the one that set these requirements. So Obama follows McCain-Feingold and gets attacked for it. Priceless.

Sir Hailstone said...

Isn't there still lack of a quorum at the FEC so even if there were violations, nothing could be done about it at the federal level to being action against a campaign?

Lawyer said...

AI, interesting choices to illustrate your point. I did not check them all but Robert Parks and Lisa Dykhoff both have page entries on my barack obama.com. http://my.barackobama.com/page/dashboard/public/C5Gz and http://my.barackobama.com/page/dashboard/public/Cr78. I also found evidence of most of the others in an internet search. It appears the contributions were legitimate.

The reason why there are so many contributions is that the Obama campaign does email fundraising where you are asked to give $5 or $15 or whatever amount. It makes it much easier for everyday folks to contribute because they do not have to write one big check.

Concerned Taxpayer said...

Sounds like he took Fundraising 101 from Professor Bill Clinton.

Anybody who thinks these $millions are legit lives in Never Never Land.

The liberals and democrats cry about all the "poor" people in this country, yet those people have supposedly contributed hundreds of millions of $$ to Obama?

These would be the same people that on radio interviews said they were fine with Sarah Palin being Obama's VP!

Right!

Chris Stephen said...

Vox: I don't think he is getting attacked (necessarily) for following the finance guidelines. It's the ones that he isn't following that are the problem. Plus, disregarding the inherent "flip-flop"iness of the fact that Obama first said he would limit himself to public funds, and then didn't (while McCain did) and the problems associated with him having all his money coming from individuals who don't have to be identified, let's look at the fact that you have individual folks being listed as giving hundreds of thousands of dollars. For instance, Nancy Krump (homemaker from Indianapolis according to Huffington Post) gave approximately $400,000 to the campaign. Can't you at least admit that this is a bit fishy?

artfuggins said...

What the GOP still has not realized is that thousands of regular Americans have been contributing to Obama for over a year.....we are people who cannot sit down and write a check for $2300 but we can send some each pay or each month......this article seems to be about nothing and is attempting to paint Hoosier donors as some kind of criminal.

Gary R. Welsh said...

Nobody is painting these contributors as criminal. Their contributions are a matter of public record. If they don't want their names publicized as contributors of Obama, then they shouldn't be making contributions to him.

Downtown Indy said...

If all those folk can contribute to political parties, they damn sure don't need any government rebate/tax refund/stimulus check

bobisimo said...

---The liberals and democrats cry about all the "poor" people in this country, yet those people have supposedly contributed hundreds of millions of $$ to Obama?---

Wow. Is no one capable of considering the notion that maybe there are wealthy democrats? Half the nation (the Obama half) is a lot of people.

Heaven forbid someone could actually be well off *and* willing to help his fellow man when apparently he should instead be freaking out about "spread the wealth" propaganda.

Those types (wealthy democrats) are out there and more than happy to support Obama - just like there are a lot of poor/lower class people out there who are very excited for McCain.

As for the article itself, I don't at all doubt that there's a lot of shenanigans going on - especially on Obama's side. He makes money like nothing. It's insane. And probably, in at least some situations, illegal.

I'm just as in favor of the media digging up info on Obama's donors to find out if there are, uh, weak links, as I was in favor of the media digging up some of the issues with Joe the Plumber. In fact, I don't know how it can be known that foreign nationals have donated when apparently that's illegal. (I'm less concerned with people named DooDad unless people are absolutely required to divulge their legal name, because many people want anonymity so that they don't show up on websites like these.)