DNC reject lobbyist money

This is week-old news by now, but I just saw this New York Times article.

The Democratic National Committee, now operating under Barack Obama’s fundraising rules, on Friday returned about $100,000 in money from lobbyists and political action committees.

The donations were already ”in the pipeline” when Obama, the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, instituted the standards for the committee, a party official said.

Generally speaking, I am deeply suspicious of party politics in the US. As the upcoming Newell/Silver election in AD-64 shows, party allegiance indicates almost nothing about whether a politician stands for real reforms. One of the appealing things about Obama, to me, was his apparent rejection of the party machine.

Perhaps this is a sign that Obama’s reform principles are politically infectious.

Thanks to Kailin Clarke for the tip.

About Sebastian Benthall

Sebastian Benthall is a PhD student at UC Berkeley School of Information. Before that, he worked as a software developer and project manager at OpenGeo. @sbenthall on Twitter

2 responses to “DNC reject lobbyist money

  1. And now this: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/us/politics/20obamacnd.html

    It’ll be interesting to see how McCain (the self proclaimed campaign finance reformer himself) will respond to this.

  2. Pingback: Obamanet « Digifesto

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