This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Campaigns tend to treat the Federal Election Commission filing day like most Americans treat taxes, procrastinating to the end. And then they complain about it.



On Wednesday, Marc Elias, a campaign finance lawyer who works for Democrats, tweeted his complaint that federal regulators were not committing sufficient manpower to catching paperwork between the hours of 9pm and midnight.

The FEC commissioner, Ellen Weintraub, was having none of that.

“C’mon, Marc, reporters have deadlines,” she tweeted. “File by 8 and everyone can see their kids tonight.”

Donald Trump boasts about '$10bn net worth' after filing financial disclosure Read more

Later she was asked how the commission was dealing with a filing by Donald Trump, who had bragged that FEC reports were “not designed for a man of Mr Trump’s massive wealth”.

“We’ve got our best people working on it,” Weintraub tweeted:

Ellen L Weintraub (@EllenLWeintraub) .@asmith83 we've got our best people working on it. pic.twitter.com/5sjcOl3tkG

Jeb Bush drew big support from Goldman Sachs. Bernie Sanders cleaned up with donors named Goldman, not-Sachs



Reporters counted 56 donations to Bush from Goldman Sachs employees, not counting spouses not identified as employees. No candidate attracted comparable support from the investment bank (although the Hillary Clinton campaign had not filed, as of this writing). Bush donors included former Goldman Sachs managing director Robert Zoellick.

The Bernie Sanders campaign, meanwhile, cleaned up with donors named Goldman, not-Sachs, attracting donations from at least a half dozen of them, counting spouses. Laurie Goldman of Randolph, Vermont, for example, gave $500.00.

Bobby Jindal outraised – by congressional campaigns

Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal’s star has fallen in the Republican party since he was tapped to respond to Barack Obama’s first address to Congress in 2009. The former Rhodes scholar and 2016 presidential hopeful raised $578,758 in this period, less than a number of congressional campaigns including those of two non-incumbents, Democrats Salud Carbajal in California and Brad Schneider in Illinois. However, it wasn’t all bad news. A Super Pac supporting Jindal did announce that it had raised $8.6m.

Sanders’ grassroots support was deep and celebrity-infused

Sanders reported $15,247,353.43 in total receipts. More than three-quarters of that haul, just under $10.5m, came from donors who gave less than $200 in the two months since he announced his White House run. Jeb Bush, by comparison, raised just $368,023 from small donors. The Clinton campaign, whose filing was not available at this writing, said that 91% of her donations were for amounts greater than $100.

Not only does Sanders have a lot of small donors – he has famous ones. The novelist Jonathan Lethem gave $250. The actor Mark Ruffalo contributed on seven different occasions, for a total of $825. There were maxed-out famous donors, too, including the film producer David Geffen and Will Ferrell collaborator Adam McKay.

Marco Rubio wept Dolphin tears

Marco Rubio is an obsessive Miami Dolphins fan who has loved his hometown NFL team since he was a boy. However, he might be little crestfallen to discover that legendary Miami Dolphins coach Don Shula was a max donor to Jeb Bush.

Shula, an NFL Hall of Famer who oversaw all five Super Bowl appearances in Dolphins history including their back to back titles in 1972 and 1973, gave $2,700 to Bush, a fellow Floridian.

The whole Bush family passed the hat – except Neil



Most of Jeb Bush’s family gave the former Florida governor the maximum primary election donation of $2,700. Jeb’s father and mother, former president George HW and former first lady Barbara Bush, maxed out to their second son. Three of Jeb’s four siblings did so as well, George W Bush, Marvin Bush and Dorothy Bush Koch. However, Neil Bush did not donate at all to his brother.

Neil is perhaps more controversial than his brother. While the businessman has never launched an invasion of Iraq, he was the director of Silverado Savings & Loans in the 1980s. Its collapse cost taxpayers over $1bn. Further, in his divorce, he admitting to having sexual encounters with women who simply showed up to his hotel room door on trips to Thailand and Hong Kong. In a deposition, Bush said he didn’t know if the women were prostitutes, saying that they didn’t ask for money and he didn’t pay them.

The other fun detail is how the two former presidents in the Bush family describe themselves. While George W Bush lists his occupation as former President of the United States, his father simply describes himself as retired.

Donald Trump barely capable of squeezing wealth on to puny official form

On Wednesday afternoon, Donald Trump announced that he had filed a personal financial disclosure with the Federal Election Commission, the last step needed to secure his presence on stage in the first Republican presidential debate in Cleveland on 6 August. He announced that he had total worth of over $10bn and a 2014 income of $362m but raised one big issue with campaign finance laws. In Trump’s opinion, FEC disclosure forms were “not designed for a man of Mr Trump’s massive wealth”.

Bush gave himself more than small donors did



Small donors gave Jeb Bush $368,023.22 in the last fundraising period out of the $11.4m that the former Florida governor raised. This though is even less than the total that the candidate himself gave the campaign. Bush gave $388.720.15 in-kind donations for “research consulting and travel consulting”.

For Bush, it was planes, private planes and Uber-mobiles

The Bush campaign spent more than $1,400 on Uber rides – dozens of them – and $153,091.95 to The Johnson Co, apparently for the use of the private aircraft belonging to the New York Jets owner.

Bush said he would hail an Uber on a trip Thursday to San Francisco, where the company is based.

Rick Perry’s campaign manager helped him spend his money

Two-thirds of the $593,000 spent by the Perry campaign on the quarter were funneled to Russo Miller & Associates – the consulting firm in which Jeff Miller, Perry’s campaign manager, is a partner. The money appears to have gone mostly for media buys. In general, Perry posted an impressive burn rate among the candidates, blowing through more than half of his $1.14m in total receipts. Easy come, easy go.

Lincoln Chafee was the last tin can dragging behind the car

The former Rhode Island senator and governor raised less than $30,000 in his first quarter as a candidate. Then he loaned his campaign $364,000. That’s a factor-of-10 difference in grassroots support versus self-support. Bush also gave his campaign more than small donors did. Bush has given $388,720.15 to his campaign, while raising just $368,023 from small donors.