U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet’s been outed by the Beltway media for being dishonest with Colorado voters about accepting contributions from corporate PACs and federal lobbyists over the years.
The Washington Fee Beacon has done the math, and reports that Bennet’s pledges and promises don’t match his money-collecting actions during his 13 years in the Senate.
In the last fundraising quarter, Bennet accepted donations from at least 16 PACs including the Real Estate Roundtable PAC and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.
“I’m not taking a dime in corporate PAC money,” Bennet says in his first reelection campaign ad. “Washington could learn a lot from Colorado. That’s why I approve this message.” But the Colorado senator accepted more than $60,000 from PACs that accept corporate PAC contributions last quarter alone. Bennet also accepted $3,500 from the Blackstone Group’s corporate PAC in 2021. The same quarter he accepted that donation he claimed on Twitter that his campaign was “setting records without taking a cent from corporate PACs.”
On multiple occasions Bennet has also claimed that he has never taken any donations from lobbyists. Yet lobbyists have given him more than one million dollars since he entered the Senate in 2009, according to his campaign finance records.
We reported in October that Bennet’s 2022 campaign had accepted more than a quarter million dollars, according to Open Secrets.
PeakNation™ will recall that in Bennet’s previous election, we were already onto his deceptive statements that he was refusing corporate donations.
In one fundraising quarter, we found that only 35% of Bennet’s donations came from Coloradans, while 65% came from out-of-state interests.
The top individual donors came from California investment company Oaktree Capital Management who kicked in $53,000, followed by Goldman Sachs who donated more than $52,000, Blackstone Group with more than $47,000, Citigroup with more than $41,000, and rounding out the top five was Brownstein Hyatt with nearly $40,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
In fact, finance, insurance, and the real estate sector were the top PAC donors kicking in $66,500. More than $40,000 came from the health care sector, which we are guessing were thrilled with Bennet’s support of Obamacare. Lawyers and lobbyists donated more than $22,000.
Bennet’s corporate purity pledges may fool progressives and many in the Colorado media, but Bennet’s campaigns are most certainly are not free of corporate funding.