Just the headline was unsettling enough to see even though the K Street Lobby Shops like to invest in a presumptive winner.



K Street betting on Hillary By Megan R. Wilson K Street is banking on Hillary Clinton, with more than twice as many Washington lobbyists donating to the former secretary of State’s presidential campaign than any other candidate. While many lobbyists are holding their pocketbooks in the early stages of the 2016 election cycle, Clinton — the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination — received at least $625,703 from 316 registered lobbyists and corporate PACs during the first half of the year, according to disclosure forms. “She’s going at it for the second time, and there is a list of people who are very committed to her from eight years ago,” said Al Mottur, senior Democratic lobbyist at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck and longtime Clinton supporter. Mottur has not only given to the campaign, but is also bundling cash from other donors. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush ranks as a distant second in the influence industry, collecting $444,500 from 140 lobbyists.

The more than $1 million shelled out to Clinton and Bush in the first half on 2015 represents the lion’s share of contributions from K Streeters to presidential campaigns, as lobbyists, at least for now, appear most comfortable giving to establishment candidates. The donations are a shift from the last couple election cycles, especially on the Democratic side. President Obama made campaign promises in 2008 and 2012 not to take money from registered lobbyists — in addition to vowing to ban them from the administration — so the early donations signal that K Street hopes to be back in good graces when the next administration takes over the White House.

Wealthy Donors and Lobbyist Bundlers Are Largely Bankrolling Hillary Clinton's Campaign By Russ Choma The bulk of Clinton's campaign funds came from an elite, wealthy class of donors—those who can afford to give the maximum donation. In 2014, roughly 0.04 percent of Americans made the maximum donation for a primary campaign of $2,600 (adjusted to $2,700 in this election cycle). Bush's campaign raised more than 80 percent of its cash from this upper-crust of donors, and Clinton raised 64 percent. Clinton may well have had 250,000 donors—but just 11,400 of them accounted for almost two-thirds of her total fundraising. Clinton also got a big boost from her bundlers—supporters who tap their personal and professional networks to amass donations for the campaign. Candidates are only required to list the names of registered lobbyists who have bundled for them, and Clinton did go above and beyond that by releasing on her website the names of 122 people who had raised $100,000 or more for her campaign. With much less fanfare, she also disclosed to the Federal Election Commission the names of 40 registered lobbyists who bundled just over $2 million for her campaign.

Here's the links to the candidate pages at Open Secrets.org:

Hillary Clinton summary

Bernie Sandersn summary

You'll notice that Bernie doesn't have any super PACs backing him