Who paid for (some of the) convention partying?

There's snow on the ground here in Denver. Last summer's Democratic convention here and the GOP convention in Minneapolis/St. Paul seem like distant, balmy memories. Unfortunately, disclosure of donors to the convention committees comes only long after the fact.

So it's not until today that the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) and the Campaign Finance Institute (CFI) are able to come out with joint, detailed analyses of who exactly these donors were and how much they gave: some $118 million for both conventions, $61 million for the Democratic National Conventionand $57 million to the GOP convention. Of that amount, "heavy hitters"--those giving $250,000 to $3 million--supplied 80 percent of the private financing. And those heavy hitters included some corporate faces that look awfully familiar these days--from their appearances lately in Washington with figurative hands out to receive bailout funds. From CRP:

Embattled insurance giant American International Group (AIG), which received an $85 billion loan from the government just weeks after the GOP convention, gave $750,000 to each gathering. And AIG isn't the only high-profile company that sought a handout from taxpayers after writing a big check toward the summer's political gatherings. Others included Citigroup (which spent a total of $600,000 on the conventions), Goldman Sachs (which spent $505,000), Ford Motor Co. ($100,000 to each convention) and Bank of America (which spent $100,000, entirely on the Democratic convention). The federal government took over Freddie Mac just weeks after the mortgage buyer split half a million dollars between the two conventions.

The Democratic convention benefited from labor contributions.The drug industry was the top spender, splitting its contributions nearly evenly between the two conventions. However, compuater and Internet companies, along with individuals working int he industry gave $4.1 million to the GOP convention compared to $3.1 million to the Democrats.

All in all, it's a lot of cash from a lot of folks who now find themselves pleading their financial cases in Washington. And these totals don't even include the unreported amounts that special interests poured into private parties to entertain members of Congress and staffers while they were conventioneering. If there had been disclosure of this information at the time of the parties, how would that have affected the path of bailout legislation in Congress?

[crossposted at the Sunlight Foundation's Party Time]

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