Sorry for the headline, but that Remember Ember in September slogan annoys me.
Noah has surfaced some interesting contributions to the campaign of Ember Reichgott (I'm the Leading Fundraiser) Junge for the 5th Congressional District House seat. He lists 25 contributors who gave nearly $20,000 to Ember as of July. They've also given a total of $233,400 to Republican candidates and committees.
It's a good catch, and he and others rightly ask what's going on. I hope, though, we'll see more digging before we label this a Republican plot to overthrow Keith Ellison and sneak in a Lieberchin. The full story is likely to be more complex, as reality tends to be.
Noah acknowledges that some party-crossing givers to Ember had more balance between parties.
In order to preserve the fairness of the data, I did not include donors who had a history of giving to both Democrats and Republicans in remotely equal amounts – such a contribution history would indicate the donor had a history of political independence (i.e. Kiscaden). I have included a list of these types of donors below for consultation.
Kiscaden, Sheila
Pohlad, Jim
McMonagle, Michael
Marshall, Siri
Ziegler, Richard F
Noah clearly did his homework, but what his spreadsheet doesn't show are all the other Democratic contributions made by the donors he did list. (You'll have to scroll right to see contributions made to Democrats, but the list is incomplete.) Or which givers are out-of-state and which live in Minnesota. I picked a few names to check out for myself.
Largest donor J.C. (John) Huizenga, Grand Rapids, MI, was a Bush Pioneer in 2000 (raising at least $100,000), but was MIA in 2004. His giving lately has focused exclusively on Michigan Republican candidates – except for Ember. In addition to his industrial and investment companies, he's noted for starting a for-profit public charter school management company, National Heritage Academies.
Second on Ember's List is The Gap founder Doris Fisher, San Franciso. She's also a supporter of charter schools. In contrast, she's given to candidates of both parties. Contributions on the Dem side include, Tom Daschle's PAC, Bob Kerry, Charles Rangel, Nancy Pelosi and Dianne Feinstein. Her Republican beneficiaries include John McCain, Bill Frist, Mike DeWine, Sam Brownback, John Cornyn and Lamar Alexander.
Jonathan D. Sackler of Greenwich, CT, gave Ember $1,000, compared to $26,000 for Republicans, ranking him third. The Sackler family owns Purdue Pharma L.P. Sackler chairs the board of a nonprofit, ConnCAN, dedicated to closing the achievement gap in Connecticut schools. He and his wife, Mary Corson, are Lieberman supporters (Together, they've given $15,400 to Liberman and Corson has given an additional $3,250 to Republicans). They have also given money to the Senate campaigns of Geraldine Ferraro (NY) and Brad Carson (OK) and to The Wish List, an organization that supports pro-choice women Republican candidates.
Seeing these as her top right-leaning donors made me look at Ember's position on education again, but she seems to be a strong supporter of public schools. The Sackler donation might be seen as a payback for her support of Lieberman. The Huizenga money is the real outlier here.
Let's look at some of the Minnesotans who gave most of the money on Noah's list.
Jonathan Eisele (No. 4), Barbara Burwell (No. 6) and Leland Frankman (No. 7) gave straightline to Republicans except for Ember. SuperValu exec David Boehnen (No. 5) is strongly Republican (including John Kline and Cheri Yecke!), but he also gave to Bill Luther.
Linda Ahlers, an executive with Dayton's et al., has given to Rebecca Yanisch as well as Ember. On the dark side, John Kline, Rod Grams and Norm Coleman.
Dorothy Dolphin is an entrepreneur who founded her own temporaries company after her husband died, rather than call on her brother, Carl Pohlad, for help. Dolphin is solidly in the GOP camp and appears in Mary Kiffmeyer's photo album, but she's also given to Mike Ciresi, Elwyn Tinklenberg, Bill Luther and Rebecca Yanisch.
Although this is good information to have, I don't see a Republican plot here. It's individual pragmatism rather than ideology at work. They want someone more moderate than Ellison and recognize that person will have to come from the DFL.
If Republicans want to cross over once in awhile, I'm not going to kick them in the teeth. But it is nice to know who they support, isn't it?
Kudos to Noah for his digging.
