CT Blue

Looks like the financial industry has found a way to funnel piles of money to Scott Brown without the mess and bother of donating directly to his campaign fund, to which, in any event, they are limited to a mere pittance. The Boston Globe reports that they’ve been funneling money through a special RNC committee, to which they can donate far more:

US Senator Scott Brown, who played a critical role in the battle over the 2010 financial regulatory overhaul, has used a joint fund-raising committee to collect $2.9 million in political donations over the last year, nearly half of which came from the nation’s financial sector.

A Globe analysis of the money raised by this joint committee, which was launched without fanfare or publicity in March 2011, indicates that this sector’s deep reservoir of support for the Republican senator extends far beyond the contributions made to his campaign committee.

The Scott Brown Victory Committee, a joint venture between the senator and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, can receive donations of up to $30,800 per donor each election cycle, compared with the $5,000 limit for regular campaign committees. According to the reports, Brown receives about 15 percent of the funds, while the Republican senatorial committee receives the rest.

The joint committee’s reports are replete with generous donations from deep-pocketed venture capitalists, bankers, and leaders of some of the country’s largest investment firms who are eager to see Brown defeat his likely Democratic challenger, Elizabeth Warren, a consumer advocate. Their donations totaled $1.275 million or 44 percent of the total raised by the committee through the end of March.

Surprisingly, the article throughout tells it like it is. Brown is a Wall Street tool, and the Globe makes that clear, even exposing his claim that he voted for Dodd Franks as disingenuous, since the price for his vote was some critical pro-Wall Street changes.

Last time I looked, Wall Street was in New York, but of course Brown makes no attempt to square his willingness to take this money with his criticisms of Warren’s out of state contributions. But apparently, that’s because there’s a crucial distinction. Let Brown’s campaign speak for itself:

“Professor Warren’s fundraising continues to be mostly out-of-state money from extremely liberal donors and special interests that are trying to influence the Massachusetts election,” said spokesman Colin Reed.

Brown’s contributors, on the other hand, while also “mostly out of state”, are, apparently, totally above the fray, and totally uninterested in “trying to influence the Massachusetts election”. Really, it’s just loose change that happened to fall out of their pockets and land in Scott Brown’s war-chest.

The Globe did good work today. It also has a good article about Romney’s non-plans when it comes to regulation of the financial services industry. Actually, as the paper implicitly reports, he does have a plan: repeal the somewhat effectual Dodd-Frank and replace it with nothing. But then, the article only confirms what any thinking person would assume.