Clergy, candidates and cash
Money talks in politics, and sometimes it gives a sermon.
Clergy and religious organizations contribute to political candidates, just like investment bankers or teachers or any other group. That clergy give doesn't surprise, but how they're giving does. Although religious leaders' total campaign 2008 contribution of $633,314 is a drop in the bucket ("clergy and religious organizations" is ranked 71st out of 80 "industries" tracked by The Center for Responsive Politics), the money distribution shows that the "God dollar" is as up for grabs as the "God vote."
Thus far in the '08 cycle, 56 percent of religious groups' and leaders' donations have gone to Democrats, and 43 percent to Republicans, compared with 52/47 in favor of Republicans in '06 and 51/49 in favor of Democrats (!) in 2004.
Among presidential candidates, Barack Obama leads with $107,350, followed by Hillary Clinton's $88,910 and Mitt Romney's $39,350. Would you have guessed that the leading Democrat has raked in nearly three times as much money as the top Republican? Me neither.
You can only read so much into these numbers. After all, in the aggregate religious groups have backed the losers of the last two elections. But the partisan gap in contributions is wider now than it's been since 1992, and I'm sure people have no shortage of explanations why. Got a theory? Share it in the comments!
Alex brought my attention to this topic. He'll be chiming in shortly with his take.
Comments
Looks like the Democrat's "God-friendly" messaging of the past few years is showing modest dividends.
Posted by: Leigh Ann Smith | December 13, 2007 4:36 PM
A couple of observations:
Peter Laarman, of Progressive Christians Uniting has noted before that mainline clergy tend to be more progressive on social issues than what they preach. I wonder: Does this money shift to Dems signal that more pastors are putting their money where they would put their mouth?
If you look at the breakdown by top contributor, it says that the top three orgs are all giving to the GOP, the second highest donar is the LDS church.
But overall, the past couple of election cycles, St. Mark's Episcopal has been the highest donor to the Dems.
Of course, I'd love to see a breakdown of the donations by region and affiliation, perhaps even by congregation size. . .
Posted by: Alexander | December 13, 2007 4:43 PM
One thing I learned in investigative reporting is that the quality of this data isn't terrific. While FEC disclosures are mandated by law and well-maintained, they're not updated as often as they should be, and opensecrets.org isn't as comprehensive as it seems. For example, occupation is self-reported, so if you want to put a thin layer of smoke up, you don't put "pastor of xx church" on the disclosure form.
Posted by: Dan | December 13, 2007 5:00 PM
really interesting. Earlier this year the God Vote on On Faith had a post on how, anecdotally at least, Obama was getting the attention of religious grass tops folks, http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/georgetown/2007/08/everybody_on_campus_digs_barac.html#more this seems to give some more concrete evidence of this.
Posted by: Beth | December 13, 2007 5:06 PM
