Meet the bundlers. They are usually wealthy campaign supporters with social or business connections to many similarly situated friends. Their job is to solicit political donations from these friends and colleagues, and then to deliver the funds to a chosen candidate. No person can donate more than $5,000 to a campaign (primary and general election combined), but bundlers can take credit for corralling maximum donations from dozens or even hundreds of donors. When bundlers dial their numbers, senators, representatives and presidential candidates in both parties take their calls. For that reason, federal campaign finance law requires full disclosure for registered lobbyists who bundle donations for campaigns. After all, lobbyists stand out as the clear beneficiaries of our current system of strictly limited contributions to candidates. Their clients make for ready-made and easily accessible donor lists, full of wealthy people who may have something to gain from government and ample interest in political giving. It makes sense that the disclosure of registered lobbyists’ names be mandatory.
But disclosure for all other bundlers is optional. And, as advocates of transparency in politics and government, we are disappointed that the Republican candidates for president have opted against it. For one thing, the concept of a “non-lobbyist lobbyist” is becoming familiar even to Americans outside the Beltway during this presidential campaign. Washington political operatives are well aware that Newt Gingrich is not the only one.
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Scores of former congressmen and influential congressional staffers, once-and-future executive-branch political appointees and opportunistic career bureaucrats traipse around within the Beltway, promoting legislative and regulatory changes that will benefit their clients, or make life difficult for their competitors. Many of them bundle contributions, but don’t meet the legal threshold that would require them to register as lobbyists.
Aside from those special cases, it serves the public to know about non-lobbyists in key industries who seek influence through bundling. If President Obama approves a new bank bailout, taxpayers and voters should know exactly who in the financial industry is a beneficiary and whether he or she was a bundler in 2008 or 2012. Most of the important ones are probably not registered lobbyists.
To his credit, Obama has gone beyond the legal minimum by releasing his campaign bundlers’ names. Out of all the candidates for president, this makes him the most transparent. Obama has released the names of 357 bundlers who have directed at least $56 million to his re-election efforts so far. Obama thus follows in the footsteps of John McCain in 2008 and George W. Bush in 2004, who disclosed bundlers before it was required.
The 2012 Republican candidates, on the other hand, are falling short. None of the remaining four GOP contenders — Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul — has disclosed the names of their major bundlers. (Romney has made public the names of eight bundlers who are registered federal lobbyists.) They should change their practices now. Romney, whose poor handling of the release of his tax returns might have cost him an easy path to the nomination, should especially understand the value of giving more and not less information to the public. So should his opponents.
