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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (533056)	1/31/2004 12:36:34 AM
From: Hope Praytochange	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

In his victory speech on Tuesday night in New Hampshire, Mr. Kerry sounded a familiar theme when he declared, "I have a message for the influence peddlers, for the polluters, the H.M.O.'s, the big drug companies that get in the way, the big oil and the special interests who now call the White House their home. `We're coming, you're going, and don't let the door hit you on the way out!' " Mr. Kerry is an experienced fund-raiser, having worked to raise money while on the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and for his own campaigns. In his campaign for the nomination, he has collected more than $1 million from employees of securities and investment businesses. He took in $70,000 from employees of Citigroup and $62,500 from workers at Goldman Sachs, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks campaign finance trends. Mr. Kerry's top career donor is the law firm Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky & Popeo, according to a study by Chuck Lewis, executive director of another campaign-finance group, the Center for Public Integrity. Mr. Kerry received $231,000 over the course of his career from lawyers in the firm, where his brother, Cameron F. Kerry, is a telecommunications lawyer. The firm has represented clients like the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association and AT&T Wireless Services, whose industry falls under the jurisdiction of a Senate subcommittee that includes Mr. Kerry, the report said. "You can't raise millions of dollars for politics without being entangled with lobbyists and special interests," Mr. Lewis said. Mr. Kerry has criticized the current "creed of greed" and faulted Mr. Bush letting "the privileged ride high and reap the rewards." But his typical donors share at least one similarity with the president's, an ability to give $2,000, the legal maximum. Fifty-five percent of Mr. Kerry's money has come from donors giving $2,000. nytimes.com