The Daily Change: McConnell Attacks PCCC’s Small Donors While Tending To His Big Ones

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is feeling the heat after the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) released a new ad featuring a Kentucky gun owner calling him out for taking money from gun manufacturers and opposing reforms. Watch it:

In response to the ad, McConnell released a document ignoring the actual issues at hand and instead attacking the PCCC. McConnell’s response leads with the false statement that we only have one donor from Kentucky. The money in politics watchdog Public Campaign debunks this claim in an email roundup, pointing out we actually have 2,000 times as many donors from Kentucky, but that they are small donors — the sort McConnell is unfamiliar with:

The McConnell camp fired back crowing that only one Kentuckian gave PCCC over $200, apparently forgetting that unitemized, small donors count. PCCC says 2,000 Kentuckians contributed under $200. Kentucky’s LEO Weekly reports that McConnell might have forgotten that donors at this size exist after spending the past three months criss-crossing the country for big money fundraisers from Beverly Hills and Chicago to the December 17 D.C. fundraiser for Amgen just days before McConnell negotiated the fiscal cliff deal that included a $500 million giveaway to the company. Only one percent of McConnell’s contributions were under $200 in the past three months.

The LEO Weekly, a local outlet that Public Campaign cites above, took McConnell to task, pointing out that he has very few small donors himself and that more than twice as many of his itemized contributions come from out of state:

McConnell’s campaign cited a federal database that only compiles donations over $200, but PCCC would subsequently point out that they actually have raised over 2,000 contributions from their 7,000 members in Kentucky, averaging less than $15 per donation.

But perhaps McConnell — the PAC-gorged, money-is-speech, king of the corporate-stuffed campaign war chest — has trouble seeing such small donors as “people” that he can identify with? McConnell’s recent Senate campaign filing with the FEC illustrates that fact as well as just about anything.

McConnell stuffed $715,000 more into his now $7.4 million campaign war chest, full of contributions from out-of-state big donors and corporate PAC money. Of the amount he raised, only just over 1 percent of the donations he brought in were unitemized — those lowly under $200 contributions from so-called “persons”. Of the itemized contributions, twice as many came from donors outside of Kentucky, with $184,000 coming in from PACs all stationed outside of the Bluegrass.

“On pretty much every major issue Mitch McConnell sides with his big campaign contributors over everyday people in Kentucky,” PCCC co-founder Adam Green said in a statement. “Right now the gun debate is front and center, and therefore we’re elevating the fact that after the gun industry has spent (hundreds of thousands of dollars) to elect Mitch McConnell. He is opposing the will of the people in Kentucky and basic things like background checks to buy a gun.”

Click here to sign onto our petition supporting the White House’s bold gun plan and to donate to help run the ad in Kentucky.

 

 

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