Everybody knows that political participation has declined over the decades, with slightly optimistic increases over the past few years. Of types of political participation, donating money to political campaigns is one of the least frequent types of political participation.
Even though it is a small group of people who give to political campaigns, it is an even smaller group of people who donate more than $1,000, or max out $2,300 for Presidential Campaigns.
It does exist though, and I decided to take a look at who were those people in Long Beach who can break out between $1,000-$2,300 (or more depending on multiple candidates and multiple years), for a Presidential Candidate.
Logging onto Opensecrets.org, I took a look at four zip codes throughout the city—90802 (Downtown), 90803 (
Of reportable donations from $200 to $2300, Long Beach Citizens gave $244,150 to Presidential candidates last year.
Although the Democrats who garnered the most donations with $132,230, it was Republican Mitt Romney who came out on top of all individual candidates with $36,250.
Giuliani came in behind him with $30,650, and Hillary Clinton behind those and topping the Democrats with $29,650…although she did have the most individual supporters.
I was not surprised that Hillary Clinton garnered the most individual donors in this city, but I was surprised that many of them came from the traditionally conservative 90803 zip code, and that she had only one well known LB backer—Skip Keesal (90802) who also gave to John Edwards and Barack Obama.
I was also surprised when Romney edged out Rudy Giuliani in number of high donations, even with Rudy’s top Long Beach GOP endorsements from Frank Colonna and Don Knabe. The Molina family seemed to be a big supporter of Mitt Romney, but John and Michelle Molina also contributed to the campaigns of Bill Richardson and John Edwards.
The eastside, 90815, shows an independent streak by racking up $1,000+ donors for Senator John McCain. Long Beach City Attorney Bob Shannon donated $1,000 to McCain, which may parallel with
90815 was also the only zip code to produce $1,000 donors for Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul.
Of all the areas to surprise me, it was the Downtown area. 90802 gave most of its $1000+ donors to Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton. The only Republican who garnered them from this area was Mitt Romney, whose nephew George and his wife live in Downtown Long Beach.
Overall, the city of Long Beach foreshadows the kind of race we see right now, with Clinton and Obama battling it out over high priced donors, and Romney getting the moneyed crowd, while Giuliani and McCain battle it out behind him.