Financial executives spent big on Brown May be precursor to midterm elections; Obama’s proposed regulations key issue By Casey Ross
In a six-day span just before the US Senate election, Republican Scott Brown collected nearly $450,000 from donors who work at financial companies, a sign the industry is prepared to spend heavily in the upcoming midterm elections to beat back new controls and taxes President Obama wants to impose.
The donations, from hundreds of financial executives, far exceeded what Brown received from doctors and others in the health care industry in the final days of the campaign. While Brown saw donations from all quarters explode in mid-January, as polls showed him closing fast on opponent Martha Coakley, the donations from financial workers coincided with several key developments that would affect their companies.
On Jan. 14, five days before the Senate election, President Obama proposed a fee on large financial firms to recoup the cost of the government’s bailout of the industry, and he angrily demanded that those firms cut executive bonuses.
The president was also pushing the Senate to follow the House of Representatives and adopt sweeping changes that would impose controls on the trading of exotic securities, limit risk-taking by the largest institutions, and create an agency to protect consumers from abusive lending practices.
Martin Gruss, owner of a West Palm Beach, Fla., investment firm, said he gave $2,400 to Brown because he vehemently disagrees with the policies being pursued by Obama and his economic aides.
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2010/02/01/late_in_senate_race_financial_sector_donations_swelled_browns_coffers/?s_campaign=8315
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