Corporate Contributors Jump On Democratic Bandwagon For Home Stretch

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October 28, 2006

Democrats Get Late Donations From Business

WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 — Corporate America is already thinking beyond Election Day, increasing its share of last-minute donations to Democratic candidates and quietly devising strategies for how to work with Democrats if they win control of Congress.

The shift in political giving, for the first 18 days of October, has not been this pronounced in the final stages of a campaign since 1994, when Republicans swept control of the House for the first time in four decades.

Though Democratic control of either chamber of Congress is far from certain, the prospect of a power shift is leading interest groups to begin rethinking well-established relationships, with business lobbyists going as far as finding potential Democratic allies in the freshman class — even if they are still trying to defeat them on the campaign trail — and preparing to extend an olive branch the morning after the election.

Lobbyists, some of whom had fallen out of the habit of attending Democratic events, are even talking about making their way to the Sonnenalp Resort in Vail, Colo., where Representative Nancy Pelosi of California is holding a Speaker’s Club ski getaway on Jan. 3. It is an annual affair, but the gathering’s title could be especially apt for Ms. Pelosi, the House minority leader, who will be on hand to accept $15,000 checks, and could, if everything breaks her way, become the first woman to be House speaker.

Over all, the nation’s top corporations still placed larger bets on Republican candidates. But at the very time Republicans began to fret publicly about holding control of Congress, a subtle shift began occurring in contributions to candidates, particularly in open seats.

report: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/28/us/politics/28hedge.html?bl=&_r=1&ei=5087%0A&en=ce373aa6462524ce&ex=1162270800&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

[rpannier]

1. She needs to lock the door on those lobbyists and let them f**king freeze in the snow

IMHO

[bigtree]

3. heh. I like that

suicide though, to lose all of those campaign funds.

It would be pitiful to lose because the other side got out it's sleazy commercials and benefited from a well-funded get-out-the-vote effort, and we were limited to pamphlets and phone banks.

[Stevepol]

2. This is good news but not like it used to be. Now it's not the big corps

that are determining elections by their money, but the voting machine companies, a very far right sub-set of the corporations, that are determining elections.

I hope and pray I'm wrong and that the Dems win Congress back, but I just don't see how they can do it w/ the machines counting the votes.

My guess is that the results will differ from the pre-eleciton polls and the exit polls (if there are any anymore) in the usual way, all of them in a Repub direction, the same tilt that has become standard in American elections.

The actual vote (tho there will be no way to find out the numbers) will be a great landslide in the Dems favor, maybe the biggest in American history.