This is Where Bernie Sanders’ Money Comes From. Will It Help?

By The Stream Published on February 24, 2016

“The people aren’t dumb,” Bernie Sanders said in one of his debates with Hillary Clinton. “Let’s not insult the intelligence of the American people. Why in God’s name does Wall Street make huge campaign contributions? I guess just for the fun of it, they want to throw money around.” Unlike Clinton, he said, his campaign refused to have SuperPACs created to support it. “We don’t represent Wall Street. We don’t represent the billionaire class.”

Clinton protested, but the evidence runs against her. As of January 31st, she had received $58 million dollars from outside groups. Sanders had received just $45,000 from outside groups. (The figures for both campaigns are taken from the Center for Responsive Politics’ website OpenSecrets.org’s Clinton and Sanders pages, which as of this writing were updated to January 31, 2016.)

Sanders v. Clinton

The securities and investment industry had given Clinton’s campaign (the campaign itself and superpacs) $17 million and lawyers and law firms had given another $10 million. In contrast, the securities and investment industry had given Sanders’ campaign just $55,000 and lawyers and law firms just $300,000. Clinton’s support from those two industries, in other words, was almost 77 times greater than Sanders’. The securities industry has given 312 times as much to Clinton as to Sanders.

Sanders has been good to his word. “There’s going to be full-court press to outspend the Sanders camp — the Hillary billionaire drown out,” the billionaire founder of an unauthorized Super-PAC called “Billionaires for Bernie” said, explaining why he was founding something the candidate didn’t want. Sanders said no and as of January 31st, the group had raised no money.

A “a very small number of people” working on Wall Street have contributed to Sanders, CNBC reported, but their reasons weren’t all ideological. Two remember Sanders from Vermont. The only one who let herself be named had left Wall Street. “His issue is if you look at the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009, no one at the top has been brought to court or indicted,” said Meredith Burak. “Compare that to this whole generation of African-American and Latino kids who are put in the jail system for having a little bit of pot. There’s something wrong there. People need to be held accountable.”

But Sanders is more comfortable asking the very wealthy for money than his words suggest, CNN reported.  Sanders hosts retreats for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. The retreats bring the “Majority Trust” — the party’s biggest supporters — to meet selected senators.

A Democratic lobbyist and donor who has attended the retreats told CNN that about 25% of the attendees there represent the financial sector — and that Sanders and his wife, Jane, are always present. “At each of the events all the senators speak. And I don’t recall him ever giving a speech attacking us,” the donor said. “While progressive, his remarks were always in the mainstream of what you hear from senators.”

A Presidential Change

Giving to Sanders’ presidential campaign shows a sharp change in who’s giving most to him. Since his first election to Congress in 1989 through his last run for the Senate in 2012, he raised almost $21 million. Seventeen out of the top 20 contributors to his congressional and senatorial campaigns have been labor union PACs. The other three are the two teachers’ lobbies, the National Educational Association (the third biggest contributor) and the American Federation of Teachers, and the trial lawyers’ lobby Unite Here. Over those 23 years, all the union groups together gave Sanders only 8% of his total contributions.

In this presidential campaign, OpenSecret.org’s figures show, Sanders’ campaign has raised over $95 million, a little over half of the $184 million Clinton has raised.

Almost three-quarters of Sanders’ giving comes from small individual contributions. The three largest individual contributors are Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc. ($98,810), the University of California ($33,598) and Microsoft ($31,148). (This total includes giving from the organizations’ PACs, owners and employees and their families.) Others on the list include Apple, Amazon, Kaiser Permaente, IBM, Intel, and 6 other large universities. The list also included both the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force, who between them gave $25,964.

Among industries, the retired are the largest single group, giving $1,086,825. Education is second ($580,328) and lawyers and law firms third ($300,057). Unions don’t appear on the top 20 list at all.

Sanders’ Challenge

Sanders’ fund-raising style appeals to many people, conservatives as well as liberals. In a new radio ad endorsing Sanders, film director Spike Lee says, “Bernie takes no money from corporations. Nada. Which means he’s not on the take! And when Bernie gets into the White House, he will do the right thing!”

“Essentially, the Sanders campaign can mint money now,” writes Vox political reporter Andrew Prokop. “… There’s so much excitement about him that all he has to do is ask for cash and it pours in, with far less overhead costs compared with traditional fundraising events. … It guarantees that as long as Sanders’s small-donor army stays hyped up, he’ll be able to fund a national organization, pay for ads in every contested state, and remain in the race as long as he wants.”

But it doesn’t matter as much as Prokop thinks. No matter how successful Sanders is in raising money without taking any from the rich, it may still not be enough to unseat frontrunner Clinton, if she’s not affected by a scandal. She’s raised $89 million more than he has, and a candidate can buy a huge number of television ads and a huge staff with that much money. Her campaign has $33 million cash on hand, while the outside funders have $44 million, Sanders just $14 million.

Conservatives oppose nearly everything the self-described Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders stands for. But at least he’s a consistent leftist. Hillary Clinton claims to be “progressive” yet takes tens of millions of dollars from the wealthy. She may be on the take, as Spike Lee implies, but if so that’s the way to win the nomination.

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