Duck Season

Several days ago I linked to a story in the New York Times (or what was left of it after they start charging you for the full article) on how Republicans raised more from small contributions of $200 or less while Democrats did so from large contributions of $1 million or more. Then, yesterday, I saw a link over at Viking Pundit to these comments by Polipundit:

Bush has bested all the Democrats combined in the total amount raised last quarter - $34.4 million. Over 105,000 individual contributors donated less than $2,000 each, thus possibly giving the Bush campaign more individual contributors than all the Democratic candidates combined. Out of the 105,000 individual contributors, 85,591 are individuals who gave less than $200.

Isn't this precisely the sort of hard-money, small-contribution, fundraising that campaign finance "reformers" claim to look favorably upon? And isn't the extraordinary amount of disclosure - much more than the FEC requires - noteworthy? Let's see if campaign finance "reformers" will praise the president for his clean campaign. I wouldn't hold my breath.

Polipundit also includes a link to the page on President Bush's site where one can search for donors and their contribution amounts. I was going to write something similar to what Polipundit wrote, but before I did that I followed the link and searched for all the donors from Massachusetts, where I live. I immediately found sonething that, while definitely not rare, was very interesting on the very first page:

4. Mrs. Kristin Achtmeyer
Type: Individuals
Employer: Information Requested Per "Best Efforts"
Occupation: Information Requested Per "Best Efforts"
$2,000.00

5. Mr. Bill Achtmeyer
Type: Individuals
Employer: Parthenon Group
Occupation: President
$2,000.00

6. Ms. Olivia C. M. Achtmeyer
Type: Individuals
Occupation: Student
$2,000.00

7. Mr. Robert Achtmeyer
Type: Individuals
Employer: The Fenn School
Occupation: Teacher
$2,000.00

8. Mrs. Nell Achtmeyer
Type: Individuals
Employer: Information Requested Per "Best Efforts"
Occupation: Information Requested Per "Best Efforts"
$2,000.00

Somehow I doubt that Ms. Olivia suddenly decided one day, "hey, our president has been doing a really good job, so I'm going to help him out a little in his re-election bid." And if she did, it'd be an awfully big coincidence, since the other four members of her family gave their $2000 on the exact same day (6/27/2003, you can get this information when you click on the link to the donor).

(Digression: how lazy are these people? Couldn't they at least space out their contributions over the next year or so so that smartasses like me can't find this so easily? This isn't illegal, but it's laziness like this that got the lawyers who contributed to John Edward's campaign earlier caught. (Hey, get to the point--ed.))

Anyway, while I favor repealing most, if not all, of the campaign finance laws, and I would vote for Bush if the election is right now (though that can change any moment), spare me the rhetoric on how exemplary Bush's fundraising has been.

And this is also why I favor removing limits to hard money contributions: if someone want to give more than their limit, they'll find some way to do it, and at least you'll see who these people are, instead of a rich guy and 328 relatives, friends, and employees (most of who won't share the last name as the rich guy and so won't be easily detected unless they're really stupid like the Edwards contributors) each giving $2000.