Bush leads in corporate donor totals

The gotcha games over donations began a few weeks ago when President Bush's re-election campaign put out an ad saying that Bush's likely Democratic opponent, Sen. John F. Kerry, Mass., had taken in about $640,000 from lobbyists over the years even as he railed against the influence of special interests. The ad omitted that Bush had raised $842,262 from lobbyists in the current election cycle alone, almost four times Kerry's take.

After the special-interest search came the search for donors from corporations that avoid U.S. taxes. Last week, the Washington Post reported that Kerry received more than $140,000 from U.S. companies that have offshore tax-haven subsidiaries - what Kerry calls "Benedict Arnold" corporations. Bush has taken $795,101 from such companies, but hasn't accused them of treason.

Now Democrats have come across a 2002 list assembled by India's National Association of Software and Service Companies called "Leading Captive Remote Services Companies" - 21 firms that have outsourced operations to India. Checking that list against the Center for Responsive Politics database of federal election records, it turns out that such outsourcers - Fidelity, Ford and General Electric, among them - have given Bush $429,233 back to 1999, and $51,400 to Kerry.

With John Kerry and John Edwards still fighting for the Democratic presidential nomination, a new poll puts a Kerry-Edwards ticket ahead of the incumbents, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Both Kerry and Edwards are basically tied with Bush in head-to-head matchups in a CBS News poll released this weekend. But when a Kerry-Edwards ticket is matched against Republican Bush-Cheney, the Democrats lead 50 percent to 42 percent. None of the hypothetical matchups included independent candidate Ralph Nader.

National Journal, in its annual tally of voting records on Friday, said John Kerry was the most liberal member of the Senate in 2003, with a score of 96.5 of 100. John Edwards was the fourth most liberal, with a 94.5 percent score.

The rating was the subject of an immediate news release by the Republican National Committee.

A possible excuse for Kerry and Edwards: poor attendance. Kerry missed 37 of the 62 votes used in the tally, and Edwards missed 22.

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Election 2004

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