Among financial-sector donors, Romney is trouncing the president. Wall St. vote: Romney by landslide

For three years, Wall Street’s been telling the world how much it can’t stand President Barack Obama.

Now, thanks to campaign finance filings, it’s possible to put a price tag on just how much: Mitt Romney's presidential campaign and the super PAC supporting it are outraising Obama among financial-sector donors $37.1 million to $4.8 million.


Near the front of the pack are 19 Obama donors from 2008 who are giving big to Romney.

The 19 have already given $4.8 million to Romney’s presidential campaign and the super PAC supporting it through the end of April, according to a POLITICO analysis of Federal Election Commission filings. Four years ago, they gave Obama $213,700.

None of them has given a penny to the president’s reelection campaign or the super PAC supporting it.

( Also on POLITICO: Mitt Romney continues to court CEOs)

Ken Griffin, founder of the Chicago-based hedge fund Citadel, has accused Obama of engaging in “class warfare” and gave $2,500 to Romney’s campaign, plus nearly $1.1 million to the pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future. But in 2008, Griffin donated the maximum $4,600 to Obama’s campaign and helped raise another $50,000 to $100,000.

“It is critical that the next president appreciates that America’s prosperity is driven by the innovation and hard work of the American worker, whose valiant efforts have, in recent years, been undermined by the oppressive weight of government intervention,” Griffin told POLITICO in a statement.

Romney is helped by Obama’s support for Dodd-Frank, emphasis on higher taxes for the wealthy and aggressive anti-Wall Street rhetoric. But timing plays a role, too: The rise of super PACs and unlimited outside money means donors spurned by the president can take out their revenge tenfold.

Anthony Scaramucci, a Manhattan hedge fund manager who made the Obama-to-Romney switch, said finance donors are migrating from Obama to Romney because “they feel that our country is in trouble — that our economy is in trouble.”

“There is so much dissatisfaction with the current president and his failed policies that we have found more and more people who are willing and wanting to get involved and who are eager to line up behind Gov. Romney,” Scaramucci said.

Obama has tried to rally his base with stinging populist attacks on the finance industry and Romney’s ties to it.

“He seems to believe that if CEOs and wealthy investors like him are doing well, then the rest us automatically do well,” Obama said of Romney on Tuesday at a campaign event in Baltimore. “What a lot of current Republicans don’t seem to get is that a healthy economy doesn’t just mean you’re maximizing your own profits through massive layoffs and busting unions. You don’t make America stronger by shipping jobs and profits overseas.”

Yet the president’s supporters have also reached out to the finance sector. Obama held a big-donor event at the home of billionaire hedge fund manager Marc Lasry during a $3.6 million fundraising swing through Manhattan earlier this month.

That likely won’t do much to close the gap in Wall Street cash. Analyses of FEC data by the Center for Responsive Politics show that, in addition to the $37.1-million-to-$4.8-million overall edge, Romney and his super PAC are taking in more cash than Obama and his super PAC from donors linked to every finance subsector: hedge funds and private equity, securities and commercial banks.

POLITICO’s separate analysis, which includes 19 former Obama donors who each have given more than $100,000 to Restore Our Future, showed that most of the 19 had also given to Romney’s failed 2008 campaign for the GOP nomination. The analysis found that Obama collected at least five times more from them than Romney in 2008, but that was before the age of super PACs, which have empowered wealthy donors to give much more money to boost campaigns.

Among the group is top Bain Capital executive Stephen Zide, who donated $2,300 to Obama’s campaign just before Election Day in 2008 after having contributed to Romney’s campaign during the Republican primary. Four years later, Zide has come back to Romney in a major way, donating $500,000 to Restore Our Future and $2,500 to the Romney campaign.

Investors Paul Fireman of Boston and Robert Beyer of Los Angeles, each of whom gave more than $30,000 to Obama-linked campaign committees in 2008, ponied up $250,000 and $100,000, respectively, to Restore Our Future. And hedge funders John A. Griffin, Chris Shumway and Lee S. Ainslie combined to give nearly $1.2 million to Restore Our Future and Romney’s campaign, after each donating $2,300 to Obama in 2008.

Other big Romney donors have long histories of supporting Democrats, such as Rod Aycox, a wealthy Georgia businessman who pioneered the car lien loan business. He gave $200,000 to Restore Our Future and maxed out to Romney’s 2008 campaign. But he also donated in that race to Obama and his rival for the Democratic nomination Hillary Clinton, which he followed with $35,000 to Democratic Party committees during the 2010 midterms.

In all, POLITICO’s analysis found that 49 donors who had given $100,000 or more to Restore Our Future had previously given to Democratic candidates for various federal offices. Those donors have accounted for nearly $18 million of Restore Our Future’s $56.5 million haul.

Obama’s spokesman Ben LaBolt pushed back, suggesting that Romney is in Wall Street’s pocket.

“While the president fought for Wall Street reform to ensure that we end taxpayer-funded bailouts of the financial sector and protect the middle class from risky financial deals that crash our entire economy, Mitt Romney is actively campaigning on a promise to let Wall Street write its own rules again,” LaBolt said in a statement.