In the four weeks since CFI’s analysis of private donations to the upcoming national party conventions, the Minneapolis-St. Paul and Denver “host committees” have acknowledged 39 new organizational donors. The full 146 organizational donors to the conventions — nearly all of them business corporations (AARP and the SEIU labor union are significant exceptions) — have spent $1.1 billion to lobby the federal government on legislation and regulations, an average of $7.7 million per company.

As of today, 70 companies or other organizations have given only to the host committee for the Democratic convention, 39 only to the one for the Republican conclave, and 37 others to both. The latter group of “double-givers” includes 9 companies that decided to donate to a second host committee following our earlier report: American Wind Energy Association, Chesapeake Energy, Coca-Cola, Ecolab, Kraft, Pfizer, Pitney Bowes, Wells Fargo, and Xerox.

In the previous report, CFI noted the inadequacy of current legal requirements for post-convention disclosure of the amounts of contributions to host committees and the decline of voluntary host committee pre-convention disclosure. CFI therefore wrote directly to all 146 companies requesting that they provide the amounts of their contributions and indicate what proportions were cash and in-kind. While some companies provided new information, the response was generally disappointing.

Thus far 31 organizational donors have provided some disclosure of their contributions to the conventions. The remaining 115 donor companies have refused to provide any such information. Only weeks before the conventions, we are only able to identify and attribute an estimated $26.1 million of the projected $112 million slated to be collected by the convention host committees.

- Associate Director for Policy Steve Weissman and Research Associate Jenn Sykes

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 at 3:49 pm and is filed under Politics, Presidential Campaign .