Jeb Bush at a Central Florida pastors event in Orlando on Monday. (AP Photo/John Raoux)
When former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) announced
his run for the presidency back in June, he tried to cast himself as a
Washington outsider — despite his family’s long-standing ties to the
nation’s capital. “We are not going to clean up the mess in Washington
by electing the people who either helped create it or have proven
incapable of fixing it,” he said.
Washingtonians seem to have thick skin, though — or at least
selective hearing. The city and its environs ranked as the Bush
campaign’s No. 1 metropolitan area
thus far in terms of individual contributions, at $927,935 – including
more than $78,000 from D.C.- area lobbyists. Bush’s biggest haul by
industry (after the catch-all “retired” category) came from securities
and investments, but lawyers and law firms weren’t far behind, and
lobbyists came in ninth.
And Bush is not the only one using a separate script on the subject
of Washington depending on his audience, a fact borne out by
OpenSecrets.org’s updated profiles
of the 2016 presidential candidates. Many of the White House hopefuls
portray the town as a certain kind of sin city even as they’re asking
the sinners to gamble on their campaigns.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), shortly after announcing his run, said in a speech in New Hampshire that “The New York Times
said Cruz cannot win because he is hated by the Washington elites…I
gotta admit, I wanted to Xerox that and mail it to all 300 million
people.” But the Washington elites don’t hate him too much,
since his campaign has so far received $221,082 from greater
Washingtonians, making it his sixth-ranking metro area and first among
non-Texas cities. Lawyers and law firms are his No. 2 contributors after those identified as “retired.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said
in his presidential announcement speech that “The Washington machine
that gobbles up our freedoms and invades every nook and cranny of our
lives must be stopped” — though he may not want to bite the hands of
those that feed his campaign. After all, at $115,468, Washington is his
second-largest metropolitan source of individual campaign donations.
Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) are the only other candidates to have received
six-figure amounts from the Washington metropolitan area ($396,963 and
$378,885, respectively), which was the source of their
second-and-fourth-biggest set of contributions by area, respectively.
(O’Malley, of course, is from a state adjacent to D.C. that is home to
many federal workers.) Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R), former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) and real estate tycoon Donald Trump
(R) are the only candidates for whom Washington is not among their top
10 metropolitan funding streams, in terms of individual contributions.
The candidate who has received the most Washington money by far, however, is former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
(D) at a little over $4.7 million. A list of her top individual
contributions by zip code also lists three zip codes in Washington
(including the top zip code), and one in Chevy Chase, MD — part of the
greater metropolitan area. But the former first lady and senator from
New York has never really tried to make being a Washington outsider part
of her shtick, probably wisely.
Original post found on
http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2015/07/trash-talking-washington-but-cleaning-up-with-d-c-donors/