How Many Lobbyists Does It Take To Fill Joe Knollenberg's Campaign Coffer?

Knollenberg collects over $428,000 per year from special interests!!


Ever wonder how Joe Knollenberg raises so much money for his campaigns? Wonder who gives him the money? How much time he spends raising money?

The old fashioned way of sending a letter requesting donations is so 1990's. Why bother with that when there are much faster ways to get cash from Lobbyists!

Don't forget, Joe Knollenberg's Chief of Staff is a registered Washington DC lobbyist.

That is how Joe Knollenberg raises most of his campaign money -- through lobbyists and wealthy business owners to whom he directs federal contracts.

And Knollenberg raises a lot of money. Joe Knollenberg raised $2.2 million for the last election.

Fundraisers
Joe Knollenberg's Chief Lobbyist of Staff, Trent Wisecup, probably gives Joe advice on how to put the fun in fundraisers. One of their favorite tricks is to turn Tiger baseball games into major campaign fundraisers. [See #34.]

Money Collected From Lobbyists
According to PublicCitizen, Knollenberg raked in $204,016 directly from lobbyists between 2000 and 2005. That is an average of nearly $52,000 per year.

But we know that the lobbyists don't always put money directly into Congressional Campaign Funds, they like to launder clean it a bit first. They often donate the money to PAC funds and then the PAC turns around and gives that money to the Candidate. That does 2 things: 1) makes the money trail harder to track; and 2) allows each lobbyist to give more money to candidates. (If they give directly to the Candidate committee, they are limited to $2100 per candidate per election cycle whereas they can give up to $5000 to a PAC over the same time frame.)

Knollenberg collected $1,882,339 from PACs between 2000 and 2005. That is an average of over $376,000 per year in PAC funds. So that $376,000 plus the $52,000 per year that comes directly from lobbyists means Joe Knollenberg collects over $428,000 per year from "special" special interests!

That is a lot of money.
Next, we will start reporting on what FAVORS Joe did for his biggest DONORS.