By December 31, 2009, former Lieutenant Governor of Colorado Jane Norton had raised $1 million for her campaign to unseat the current junior U.S. senator from her state, Michael Bennet. Of that total, her campaign had nearly $560,000 on hand at the end of 2009.
Norton donated no personal funds to her campaign last year. The $1 million raised reportedly was donated by the following groups of contributors:
--$5,000 from Party Committees
--$960,000 from Individual donors
--$96,000 from Political Action Committees (PACs)
According to the OpenSecrets.org site from the Center for Progressive Politics, most of Norton’s 2009 donors listed themselves as retired individuals. While the second biggest group of donors was from the Securities and Investment industry, the next group was affiliated with the Real Estate industry.
The top five 2009 contributors to the Norton campaign are listed on OpenSecrets.org as:
--CreditSuisse Group ($26,200), an international financial services group headquartered in Switzerland with main offices in New York, London, Brazil, and Asia
--Seakr Engineering ($14,400), an Englewood CO company that specializes in “aerospace data storage and processing solutions”
--WPP Group ($12,800), a “world leader in advertising and marketing services” based in Ireland with offices in New York, London, and Asia
--The Anschutz Corporation ($10,600), owned by billionaire Philip Anschutz. Originally an oil and gas company, the Anschutz Corporation has since expanded to cover various forms of entertainment from movie theaters to broadcast stations to hockey and soccer teams as well as railroad, telecommunications, and investment companies.
--The Pauls Corporation ($10,100), an Aurora CO-based property development company. The 708 Individual donors who’d given between $200 and $4800 total to the Norton campaign by the end of 2009 include senior executives, retirees, doctors, educators, lawyers, venture capitalists, real estate professionals, and consultants.
Additional Denver-area organizations with which some Norton donors are affiliated include:
--Corporations such as Laramie Energy, Ansbro Petroleum Company, Qwest, Robinson Dairy, and Molson Coors Brewing Co
--Property development firms such as Western Development Group LLC, which owns multiple properties and is developing a residential and retail project in the city’s upscale Cherry Creek North district
--School districts such as Littleton School District
--Universities such as Colorado Christian University and the University of Colorado
--Medical establishments such as Physician’s Ally, Inc and University of Colorado Hospital
--Financial institutions such as the Colorado Bankers Association, Wells Fargo, FirstBank, and CityWide Bank
--Restaurants such as The Fort Restaurant
Individual donors from outside the state include:
-- investment bankers in the Washington DC area, Los Angeles, and New York City
--executives at law firms, including the Alexandria VA office of Denver-based Brownstein, Hyatt, Farber, Schreck, LLP
--the executive director of the Texas Freedom Fund
Out-of-state Individual donors were responsible for a total of approximately $276,000 in donations to the Norton campaign as of December 31, 2009, or approximately 27% of the total raised.
Political Action Committee (PAC) Donors contributed $96,000 to Norton's campaign by the end of 2009. PACs that donated the highest amounts of money ($10,000 each) to Norton's campaign were the Bluegrass Committee and the Senate Majority Fund. Significant donors to these two groups include senior executives at telecom, legal, property management and development, banking and investment firms across the country, especially in New York, the Washington DC area, California, and Kentucky, as well as senior executives from companies such as General Electric and Microsoft.