The influence industry is playing a larger role than meets the eye in raising money for Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush.
Campaigns are required to file reports detailing registered lobbyists who round up donations, but that number is only a small slice of the fundraisers who work in someA quarter of the “Hillblazers” who bundled $100,000 or more for Clinton work at lobbying firms or public affairs agencies lobby at the state level or otherwise make their living from influencing the government on behalf of special interests, even though they aren’t themselves registered to lobby Congress. For Bush, 58 of the 342 people who raised at least $17,600 are advocates and operatives linked to the influence industry, although they aren’t reported as federal lobbyists.
The reliance on these power brokers — to an extent not fully revealed in Federal Election Commission filings alone — shows how much both candidates are drawing on family and party networks forged over decades in politics to bankroll their presidential bids. It also illustrates the weaknesses in the rules meant to subject lobbyists to more public scrutiny.