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demmiblue

(36,841 posts) Thu May 7, 2015, 09:35 AM May 2015

Hillary Clinton Isn't Ready to Disclose Who's Funding Her Campaign

Source: Mother Jones

On the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton has been pushing hard to overhaul of the country's broken campaign finance system. "We need to fix our dysfunctional political system and get unaccounted money out of it, once and for all, even if that takes a constitutional amendment," Clinton said during one of her first official speeches in Iowa last month.

Clinton's campaign finance rhetoric appears to be aimed at super-PACs, the quasi-independent organizations that bolster campaigns by buying ads. But when it comes to the major funders behind her own presidential campaign, the Democratic front-runner has yet to answer questions about how transparent she's willing to be. When Mother Jones questioned the Clinton camp about whether it will disclose the names and fundraising totals of the key supporters—known as "bundlers"—who raise vast sums of cash, a spokesperson declined to provide an answer, saying only that the campaign was still figuring out its plans.
The Clinton campaign plans to reward supporters who bundle at least $27,000 with an invitation to a special campaign confab.

What exactly are bundlers? Donations to campaigns from individuals are capped at $2,700 for the primary election and $2,700 for the general election (meaning donors can give up to $5,400 to a candidate over the entire cycle). In theory, these restrictions limit the amount of influence that individual donors can exert over a campaign. But bundlers get around these caps by raising tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars from their wealthy friends and colleagues and channeling these massive sums to candidates. Even in an era when a few superrich donors can give as much money as they please to independent super PACs, bundlers are essential to most presidential bids. Super-PACs might be able to fund expensive ad buys with million-dollar donations, but it's large bundled contributions that allow campaigns to hire staff, conduct polls, and carry out the rest of their day-to-day operations.

Because of the outsize role that bundlers play in paying the bills for would-be presidents, advocates for campaign finance reform have long called for a robust system of disclosure. But under current law, it's up to each candidate to decide whether the names of these fundraisers will ever become public.