Obama '08?

While shunning lobbyists money, the Obama campaign still has relied on political and policy advice from Washington lobbyists and does accept donations from lobbyists spouses.

Quote:

While shunning lobbyists money, the Obama campaign still has relied on political and policy advice from Washington lobbyists and does accept donations from lobbyists spouses.

Did anybody read that sentence?

It can be spinned this way and that, but bottom line, ALL politicians are beholden to special interest groups and lobbyists.

Just for a moment, there, I thought Obama was going to be different.

Obama's lucrative Internet campaign
His 100,000 donors are double number giving to Clinton

Carla Marinucci, Chronicle Political Writer

Thursday, April 5, 2007

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama has raised $25 million in the first quarter of 2007, bolstered by an innovative Internet campaign that has helped him expand his appeal to a wider base of donors than his Democratic presidential rivals.

The Illinois senator's fundraising between Jan. 1 and March 31 brought in nearly as much as the $26 million raised by Democratic front-runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. But his base of 100,000 supporters surpasses the combined donors of Clinton, with a reported 50,000, and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, whose campaign announced he had raised $14 million from 40,000 donors.

Leading Silicon Valley insiders noted that Obama raised nearly $7 million on the Internet thanks to an aggressive effort involving bloggers, social networking and other activities that far outpaced the endeavors of other leading Democratic candidates. It includes 4,000 My.BarackObama.com groups, 9,000 Obama bloggers and 50,000 online donors.

"But he's got an extraordinary thing going on in the cyberworld of politics,'' which has put the 45-year-old first-term U.S. senator before voters in an entirely new way, said Westly, who now is a venture capitalist.

Westly cited a mix of "a lot of sophisticated social networking tools, blogging teams and stuff that no one has been coming close to,'' he said. "They have taken campaigning and social networking on line to a whole different level ... because people don't have to wait for the top-down traditional approach. You've got the people fired up on Obama talking to each other.''

Obama also seems to be getting "people who don't regularly contribute to campaigns, who are willing to give $100 or $50."

cicerone imposter wrote:

Just for a moment, there, I thought Obama was going to be different.

If he's different, then he won't need $25 million+.

soz- Interesting.

I know that somewhere in cyberspace there is a site that lists the various contributors to a particular party. Does anyone know of a site that lists the contributors to a particular candidate?