• Home
  • Independent Voter News
  • Quizzes
  • Election Dissection
  • Sections
  • Events
  • Directory
  • About Us
  • Glossary
  • Opinion
  • Campaign Finance
  • Redistricting
  • Civic Ed
  • Voting
  • Fact Check
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Campaign Finance>
  3. bundlers>

Good-government groups ask Trump and Biden to unmask campaign bundlers

Sara Swann
https://twitter.com/saramswann?lang=en
July 14, 2020
campaign cash
erhui1979/Getty Images

Good-government groups are launching a new push for campaign finance transparency during the presidential campaign.

A coalition of 20 organizations, from across the ideological spectrum, sent letters to both the Trump and Biden campaigns on Tuesday requesting they disclose their most prolific "bundlers" — the rich and well-connected people whom politicians rely on to collect donations from their friends and business associates.

While federal law does not require presidential candidates to name their bundlers, unless they are registered lobbyists, it has long been a bipartisan practice.


George W. Bush, John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama all did so. Former Vice President Joe Biden released a list of 230 bundlers in December, months before he secured the Democratic nomination, but he has yet to update it. President Trump has never publicly disclosed any information about his bundlers.

The letters urge the two candidates to implement a system to regularly and meaningfully disclose their bundlers during the final 16 weeks of the campaign, ideally releasing the information in tandem with their monthly campaign finance reports to the Federal Election Commission.

The groups want the candidates to name anyone who raises more than $50,000 for their campaigns, along with home address and occupation — information candidates are already supposed to report about donors to the Federal Election Commission.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Bundlers raise millions for presidential campaigns every four years and are often rewarded for that work with special campaign access and influential jobs if their candidate wins — including ambassadorships, senior Cabinet department posts and memberships to presidential boards and commissions. Bundler disclosure now will help explain who gets these perks and promotions in the next four years.

"More and more money is flowing into presidential elections, yet, disturbingly, there is less and less transparency about the people helping both candidates raise mountains of campaign cash," said Meredith McGehee of Issue One, the bipartisan democracy reform group that organized the letters. (It operates but is journalistically independent of The Fulcrum.)

The other signatories include Common Cause and Public Citizen on the left, the Campaign Legal Center and the League of Women Voters from the center, and Take Back Our Republic and the National Legal and Policy Center on the right.

From Your Site Articles
  • Reformers continue to pressure candidates to reveal bundlers - The ... ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • US election: Trump and Biden are raking in millions in recent weeks ... ›
  • Advocacy groups press 2020 candidates to disclose bundlers ... ›
  • Presidential contenders still not disclosing bundlers ›
bundlers
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

Imperfection and perseverance

Jeff Clements

We’ve expanded the Supreme Court before. It’s time to do so again.

Anushka Sarkar

The ‘great replacement theory’ is nonsense

Debilyn Molineaux

Inflation will hit health of low-income Americans hardest

Robert Pearl

Caught in a draft

Lawrence Goldstone

Congress shows signs of bipartisanship with retirement benefits bill

Mario H. Lopez
latest News

Your Take: Inspiring sports memories

Our Staff
9h

GOP split: Far right gains ground in East, while losing out West

Steven Rosenfeld
10h

Podcast: Women in and out of politics

Our Staff
11h

Democratic senators seek $20 billion in election funding

Reya Kumar
19 May

Podcast: A conversation with former Rep. Carlos Curbelo

Our Staff
19 May

Elections require more consistent federal funding, per report

Reya Kumar
18 May
Videos

Video: Helping loved ones divided by politics

Our Staff

Video: What happened in Virginia?

Our Staff

Video: Infrastructure past, present, and future

Our Staff

Video: Beyond the headlines SCOTUS 2021 - 2022

Our Staff

Video: Should we even have a debt limit

Our Staff

Video: #ListenFirstFriday Yap Politics

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Did economists move the Democrats to the right?

Our Staff
02 May

Podcast: The future of depolarization

Our Staff
11 February

Podcast: Sore losers are bad for democracy

Our Staff
20 January

Deconstructed Podcast from IVN

Our Staff
08 November 2021
Recommended
Your Take: Inspiring sports memories

Your Take: Inspiring sports memories

Your Take
Doug Mastriano

GOP split: Far right gains ground in East, while losing out West

Leveraging big ideas
Podcast: Women in and out of politics

Podcast: Women in and out of politics

Leadership
Statue of William Henry Seward

Imperfection and perseverance

Civic Ed
​Sen. Amy Klobuchar

Democratic senators seek $20 billion in election funding

Government
Podcast: A conversation with former Rep. Carlos Curbelo

Podcast: A conversation with former Rep. Carlos Curbelo

Leadership