Running names identified by the media as being part of Norman Hsu’s network of donors through federal, state and even municipal campaign finance records, Suitably Flip offers the most comprehensive road map to following the money.

Sadly, there’s no way to be certain which of these contributions were truly bundled by Hsu, and which might have been independently. While the recently enacted Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 requires campaigns to identify bundled contributions totaling more than $15,000 from registered lobbyists, there’s no provision requiring the same sort of disclosure about bundles from convicted felons, or anyone else for that matter.

Among non-presidential candidate members of Congress, the top recipients of contributions of those identified as members of Hsu’s network are Sen. Tom Harkin ($59,800) and Sen. Ted Kennedy ($47,000), according to Suitably Flip. (Sen. Hillary Clinton is first overall with $850,000 in contributions that her campaign disclosed–Suitably Flip can find only $237,00 worth of them, because there are many donors in Hsu’s network that remain undisclosed. Sen. Barack Obama places fourth, just ahead of Harkin with $66,600. The Clinton and Obama figures include contributions to both their Senate and presidential campaigns.)

Via InstaPundit, who observes, “I’m surprised to see this kind of data-crunching on a blog rather than a big-media outlet.” Hey, maybe they can’t crunch the numbers because they’re too busy doing old-fashioned Hsu-leather reporting…

0 Comments

Bundling, that is the practice of one donor gathering donations from many different individuals in an organization or community and presenting the sum to a campaign, is as popular as ever by the major presidential campaigns. The poster child for questionable bundling to 2008 campaign so far goes to the still highly suspect actions of Norman Hsu. Bundling has in past cycles raised concerns too. President Bush’s more infamous bundlers were Enron CEO Ken Lay and disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Taylor Lincoln at Public Citizen’s Watchdog blog shows how this practice is fraught with potential scandal.

Thanks to Public Citizen and their new 2008 version of its White House for Sale databasee, it’s now easier than ever to track the big bundlers for each of the presidential candidates. It also allows you to determine which bundlers are lobbyists. "With bundlers playing a bigger role than ever before in this race, anticipated to cost at least $1 billion," writes Katie Schlieper for Public Campaign. As she said, this is a great tool to use to connect the dots between donors, candidates, and policy priorities.

Last month, when Congress passed ethics legislation (still waiting to be signed as I write) they included a provision that requires members of Congress to disclose the names of lobbyists who bundle contributions of more than $15,000 for them. It’s a start. But Congress should further regulate the practice. As Public Citizen proposes:

Once campaigns make an oral or written agreement designating a person as a fundraiser and provide the fundraiser with some form of tracking mechanism, the campaign should be required to disclose the details of that person’s fundraising success as part of the campaign’s filings with the Federal Election Commission. Disclosure reports on bundlers should contain the following:

• The name, address, occupation and employer of each bundler;
• Each contribution of more than $200 raised by the bundler;
• The original source and date of each contribution of more than $200 raised by the bundler; and
• Total contributions raised by the bundler for each reporting period.

This would open the books for all to see who raised large sums of campaign money for the candidate.

0 Comments

Mike McIntire’s front page story in the Times this morning put a little more meat on the bones of the Wall Street Journal story that outing Norman Hsu as a problematic political fundraiser (forget, for the moment, the fugitive on the lam piece of this tale.)

Here are some of the telling details:

The records show that Components Ltd., a company controlled by Mr. Hsu that has no obvious business purpose and appears to exist only on paper, has paid a total of more than $100,000 to at least nine people who made campaign contributions to Mrs. Clinton and others through Mr. Hsu….

The records make clear that the group was more than just a loose collection of friends, family and co-workers that bundlers typically rely on when raising money for a candidate. Rather, each person had a direct financial relationship with Mr. Hsu, either receiving money from his company or paying into it, even though many of them appear to have other jobs or businesses independent of him….

The records show that during that one-month period, Components Ltd. took in close to $600,000, about a third of it wired to the company’s account by two people in California and New York who also were part of Mr. Hsu’s circle of campaign contributors. At the same time, the company issued checks and wire transfers totaling $660,000, much of it to the same group of people, including two checks for more than $100,000 apiece that bounced because of insufficient funds….

And here’s what, in major part, has made figuring all this out so difficult. Its a great summary of a political money tracker’s nightmare.

On campaign finance disclosure forms, he listed his employer as one of a half-dozen companies, some of them with names that seemed to change with each retelling. On some forms, the company was Components Limited or Next Components or Next Consultants. Other times it was Next Limited or Consultants Limited. And his title was different from one form to the next, sometimes appearing as president or managing director, other times as consultant, supplier or partner.

 

0 Comments

Brody Mullins had a terrific story yesterday in the Wall Street Journal that raises questions about whether six members of the Paw family, who live in a modest neighborhood in San Francisco and who list their occupation as "gift shop owner," could possibly make $45,000 in political contributions to Sen. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Obviously digging into numerous databases, Mullins discovered that the Paws live in a modest 1,280 square foot house that they recently refinanced for $270,000. The head of the household is a mail carrier earning $49,000 a year. His wife is a homemaker. Mullins also figured out that the Paw family contributions are nearly identical to donations made by a wealthy New Yorker — Norman Hsu — who once listed the Paw family home as his own address. Hsu is a big fund raiser for Clinton.

How does this much money come from a family that doesn’t appear to have these kinds of financial resources? It raises questions in the minds of many campaign finance experts (including yours truly) as to whether they were illegal contributions.Were the Paws "reimbursed" for their generous contributions to Clinton by Hsu? Hsu and the Paws deny any wrong doing. But it sure makes you wonder.

Given the crush for cash by all the presidential candidates, there are lots of stories like this in these databases.

Update: The Washington Post reports that Hilliary Clinton sees no reason to return the contributions by either Hsu or the Paw Family. Further Update: After reports surfaced in the LA Times today that there is an outstanding warrant out of Hsu, the Clinton campaign returns his money. 

0 Comments