“Cash rules everything around me,” growled the Wu-Tang Clan back in 1993. And what was true then in Staten Island is still true 15 years later in Central Virginia.
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Just ask Tom Perriello, who has a six-term incumbent congressman on the verge of becoming an out-of-work lawyer with scanty courtroom experience. How did Perriello turn a 34-point deficit into an apparent victory in a matter of months? He had a positive message of youthful vigor, intelligence and cooperation. He railed against the culture of fear, personal politics, corporate sponsorship, partisan bickering, and any number of other Things Wrong with Washington. He had a multifaceted advertising campaign that managed to hit all the right notes.
But let’s be honest: That message doesn’t stand a chance of getting out there without a lot of dollars to line the pockets of TV stations, radio networks and newspapers. Last time we checked, NBC29 wasn’t subsisting on Linda Perriello’s fresh-baked cookies.
Perriello closed a race that almost no one thought he’d win (that includes you, Mr. Sabato!) by raising and spending more than $1.5 million. In two previous attempts combined to unseat Virgil Goode, Al Weed was only able to drum up $1.1 million.
For all Virgil’s talk of Tom’s “New York friends,” it was Perriello’s pals (and his pals’ pals) in Charlottesville and Albemarle County who brought him within a recount of Washington—he raised $432,000 in our area, while all those damn Yankees could only pony up $202,000 by
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October 15. Messieurs Barack Obama and Mark Warner have the proper letters of introduction to many of those same households, respectively raising $850,000 and $200,000 from our area. Even John McCain was able to come away with $190,000, while Virgil Goode got $112,000.
Some of that cash came in the $20 and $50 increments, but a great deal of it came in much larger bundles. Which got us over at C-VILLE wondering: Just who are these people living among us who can write out $2,300 checks with such astounding regularity? (Particularly baffling are those exuberant souls who forget how much they’ve forked out and contributed above the legal limit, causing campaigns to cut $2,300 checks.)
So after combing the Federal Elections Commission website, performing a slew of data sorts, and collating all this info, we were able to come up with this list of those Charlottesville or Albemarle donors who gave $2,300 or more to candidates in this election cycle. In the process, we also discovered a few distinct breeds of this fascinating species.
View the graph: It Takes All Types – How we break them down
See the list: Charlottesville’s biggest donors
Check out the Heavy Hitters
