I managed a first pass through some of the special election contribution data yesterday. First stop, Colleen Hanabusa. A quick query led to this list of top contributors to Hanabusa’s campaign during 2009-2010. The data were downloaded from the Federal Election Commission. They include those giving $4000 or more during the period.
This list appears to reflect the impact of Inouye’s strong backing.
![[text]](http://ilind.netmisc /2010/h-over4000.jpg)
There are other companies that join the list if you combine the contributions of those identifying themselves as officers and employees. Some I’ve identified so far are listed here, but there are likely others where some contributors didn’t provide employer information.
Akimeka $9,035
Alexander & Baldwin $5,150
Architects Hawaii $6,700
Cronin Fried Kekina Sekiya Fairbanks $19,750
Galiher DeRobertis Ono $9,600
Hawaii Land Development Corp. $9,550
Kobayashi Group $6,400
Oceanit
NAN Inc $7,200
NAVATEK Ltd $5,000
Oceanit $5,000
Pacific Northwest Ltd $7,000
POP Fishing $8,170
RM Towill $6,050
Sandwich Isles/Waimana Ent. $6,000
The MacNaughton Group $6,800
The Resort Group $14,000
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All this tells us is what we already know: you need big money to run basically in any race. The bigger the seat, the more you need. It’s gotta come from somewhere.
To be fair, Ian, are you going to post the major contributors to Djou and Case too?
Sure am.
But this all takes time.
What would be interesting is to see those contributors that hedged their bets by contributing to two if not all three candidates.
It’s troubling that in order to run a credible campaign, there is this immense pressure to raise obscene amounts of money.
Just track the amount of money spent on presidential races. In the 2004 presidential election almost $700 million was spent by Bush and Kerry. Bush got 62,040,606 votes or $5.88 a vote. Kerry got 59,028,109 votes or $5.53 a vote.
The 2008 election made this amount seem paltry since McCain and Obama spent over $1.1 billion. (Since Obama did not abide by campaign spending limits he outspent McCain 2-1). Obama got 65,431,955 votes or $11.46 a vote. McCain 57,434,084 votes or $6.44 a vote.
Keep in mind that ALL candidates for president in 2004 spent $529 million so in two presidential election cycles, it has more than doubled just for the two frontrunners. .
What was spent in the special election this year is just a symptom of the dollar race in politics.
It is simply not healthy if we want to have a participatory democracy to have money be the driving factor in elections.
Making a comment like, “Obama did not abide by campaign spending limits he outspent McCain 2-1” really does your own advocacy a dis-service. You provided absolutely no context.
Obama was not bound to those spending limits because he did not accept public funding.
If your intentions is not to split the Democrat Party, why then did you run against Senator Daniel Akaka. This is a lot worse than you considering not running in this year’s Primary and General electionsfor Congress. In your loss to Senator Akaka, both of you spent unnessary and huge amounts of dollars in a losing campaing for the Party, if Party is a real concern of yours. Just wondering what your excuse is going to be, should you decide to run for Mayor of Honolulu