Apollo, Voyager, Endeavour. These familiar names no longer belong only to space shuttles: They’re also how Jeb Bush categorizes his top donors in the 2016 presidential race. We hope Bush will attach identities to those names and make them public, as he has promised. We also hope other candidates who have not yet disclosed their campaign bundlers will do the same.
Bush has pledged to release the names of high-achieving individual fundraisers in October at the third-quarter Federal Election Commission deadline. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has made the same promise.
That’s a big change from 2012, when no Republican candidate volunteered any more information than the law required, and a welcome one. On the Democratic side, Hillary Rodham Clinton already has released the names of bundlers dubbed “Hillblazers,” who have raised at least $100,000 for her campaign.
Candidates such as Bush and Walker are right to follow Clinton’s lead. The rest of the pack should, too. Bundlers get huge perks for their fundraising efforts — for many of President Barack Obama’s campaign supporters, even ambassadorships. The public deserves to know who these favored backers are and how much they give.
In fact, even Clinton has not gone far enough. Though she has provided a blanket list of bundlers who have raised more than $100,000, she has not broken down that list by the amounts raised, as Obama did for donations above $50,000 in his two campaigns. Who is hauling more than $500,000 for Clinton? How about $1 million? We do not know. When asked, a campaign spokesman declined to provide any answers.
It’s heartening that Bush and Walker — serious contenders for the Republican nomination — have made a move toward transparency, especially when so many fell short last cycle. Today, super PACs package billions of dollars for candidates. Almost every major candidate except Bernie Sanders has at least one as a backer. “Dark money” also streams into presidential and congressional races from nonprofit corporations that can donate unlimited amounts without disclosing individual contributors.
Recently, these issues might have overshadowed bundling on the national stage, but in many ways it is as important as ever. The FEC caps individual contributions at $2,700 for good reason: to limit any one person’s influence on a race and prevent corruption. Yet bundlers retain the ability to exert power and then reap the rewards.
When Bush and Walker release the names of their bundlers, they should do it right — with a low threshold for disclosure and a breakdown of bundlers into brackets according to gross amounts raised. Clinton also should go the extra distance. And those candidates who have done nothing so far should move quickly.
Editorial by The Washington Post
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