Your daily dose of news and tidbits from the world of money in politics:
OY VEY! ORRIN HATCH SINGS JEWS PRAISES, BUT JEWS DON'T ALWAYS DIG HIS POLITICS: Sen. Orrin Hatch so loves Jews that the very Mormon politico from decidedly un-Jewish Utah has written a song -- yes, a song -- to help celebrate Hanukkah, reports the New York Times' Mark Leibovich. Entitled "Eight Days of Hanukkah," the tune begins, "Hanukkah, oh Hanukkah / The festival of light / In Jerusalem / The oil burned bright." Not necessarily stuff that'll threaten Adam Sandler's Hanukkah ditty superiority, but hey, the guy's a 75-year-old Christian. And by gosh, he's trying. "I feel sorry I'm not Jewish sometimes," Hatch told Leibovich. Plenty of Jews are feeling the love, including Alana Newhouse, editor-in-chief of online Jewish culture magazine The Tablet, who gushed, "Watching Orrin Hatch in the studio, I said to myself that nothing this great will ever happen to me again." Thing is, the most politically active Jewish bloc -- the pro-Israel lobby -- isn't exactly Hatch crazy. Or, at least, it doesn't dig his often conservative politics. To wit: Individuals and political action committees associated with the pro-Israel lobby have effectively donated zilch to Hatch during his long Senate career, the Center for Responsive Politics finds. Consider that during Hatch's last re-election campaign in 2006, industries and business categories such as oft-derided lobbyists ($177,972), accountants ($44,200), tobacco interests ($26,000) and casinos/gambling outfits ($21,000) all made his top 50 list, while the pro-Israel lobby did not. So whom does the pro-Israel lobby support most? For the 2006 election, when Hatch last ran, the pro-Israel lobby's top campaign cash recipients were Sen Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Rep. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and then-Sen. Hillary Clinton. But enough prattle about money, right? You want to see Orrin rock out in his own Hanukkah music video. And we, of course, want to give the people what the people want.
IN THE AFTERMATH OF BLAGO, NEW ILLINOIS CAMPAIGN FINANCE LAWS: Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn on Wednesday signed into law the state's first limits on campaign contributions. This follows a string of legal woes for Illinois' top officials, capped a year ago last year when federal officials arrested then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich on corruption charges. "I think that last year at this very day was an alarm bell, and I said at the time, to the people of Illinois that there were serious, serious problems in our state government," the Chicago Tribune quotes Quinn as saying. The new law limits individuals to donating $5,000 to a candidate per election. Corporations and unions are limited to $10,000 contributions per candidate per election while political action committees are capped at $50,000. The law will not take effect until after the state's 2010 elections.
CRP, IN THE NEWS: Gawker, playing off a New York Times story, cites our campaign donation data in this post about David Gelbaum, who had quietly bankrolled the American Civil Liberties Union each year to the tune of $20 million -- and now says he won't because of his own financial concerns ... The News & Review of Reno, Nev., credits the Center for Responsive Politics for producing the No. 6 story of the year -- the proliferation of federal lobbying despite a lousy economy -- not widely reported by the mainstream media ... Ben Sellers, a college student, extensively uses our research and quotes us in this paper he posted on his blog about the Obama administration's efforts at creating more government transparency.
Source:opensecrets.org/
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