| The quarterly Federal Election Commission filings are out, and it's not good news for Chris Lee. His fundraising for the July-September period dropped massively to just $142,000. That's compared to $235,000 for the previous quarter, and $224,000 for the quarter before that. Minus his $95,000 in "operating expenses" (which seems ridiculously high to me for a campaign that's not currently campaigning), that means Lee put just $47,000 towards his cash on hand this quarter.
That's bad for him, since his cash on hand is now the princely sum of $390,000, minus the $250,000 worth of debt his campaign still owes from the election last year. Generally speaking, fundraising for incumbents is supposed to get better as you get closer to the election.
The list of disclosed donors is nearly as fun to look at. $1000 from Wal PAC, which is the lobbying arm of Walmart. $1000 from the American Council of Life Insurance PAC. $1000 from the American Bankers Association. $4800 from the president of Rettner Management, a "brokerage services" company in Yonkers, the president of which also donated $48,000 last year to committees supporting John McCain. $2000 from "Securities Industry & Financial Markets," a lobbying group based out of DC.
He also got $500 from the campaign of Lynn Westmoreland, a Republican congressman in Georgia. You may remember Mr. Westmoreland for his remarks calling President Obama and the First Lady "uppity," then denying he'd ever heard that term used in a racist way.
Unfortunately, OpenSecrets.org hasn't updated their numbers yet to reflect the new filings, so I can't give you an exact percentage of Lee's contributions from PACs versus individuals. I can tell you though that from looking at the donor list, it's not likely to get any better than it was last quarter, when 46% of all Lee's money to date had been gotten from PACs. Mostly PACs representing the financial industry--a whopping $90,323, about 20% of ALL his fundraising. Not surprising since he sits on the Financial Services Committee, which regulates those industries. Must be nice to have Wall Street as a piggy bank. |
