Cory Booker's Private Equity Gaffe Is Going Great for Cory Booker
The other day The New York Times suggested Romney had raised more than Obama, today the Washington Post's clearing things up. On Saturday The New York Times's Nick Confessore and Griff Palmer wrote a story under the headline "Romney Beating Obama in a Fight for Wall St. Cash." It started out:
It is no secret that the relationship between President Obama and Wall Street has chilled. A striking measure of that is the latest campaign finance reports.
Mitt Romney has raised far more money than Mr. Obama this year from the firms that have been among Wall Street’s top sources of donations for the two candidates.
Today, The Washington Post's Dan Eggen and T.W. Franam posted a contradictory story. Their lead seems to be intentionally to refute The Times.
Despite frosty relations with the titans of Wall Street, President Obama has still managed to raise far more money this year from the financial and banking sector than Mitt Romney or any other Republican presidential candidate, according to new fundraising data.
So how did the two papers reach such diametrically opposed conclusions? It all comes down to the fact that Obama, as a sitting president enters the campaign with the full control of the Democratic National Committee and has been aggressively fundraising for it alongside his official re-election campaign. While The Times looked only at campaign contributions, The Post tallied DNC donors as well and found that in aggregate dollar terms, there is still plenty of money coming in from Wall Street to Obama. Including those, they conclude that Obama has brought in $12 million from employees of the finance sector compared to $7.5 million who have contributed to Romney. And there's this ironic example:
Consider the case of Bain Capital, the Boston-based private equity firm that was co-founded by Romney and where he made his fortune. Not surprisingly, Romney has strong support at the firm, raking in $34,000 from 18 Bain employees, according to the analysis of data from the Center for Responsive Politics.
But Obama has outdone Romney on his own turf, collecting $76,600 from Bain Capital employees through September — and he only needed three donors to do it.
No word yet from The Times on whether they accept The Post's methodology.
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