Georgia donors boost McCain, Obama

Atlanta philanthropist Tom Glenn had never even attended a big-money political fund-raiser when he decided to support Barack Obama. But when Glenn started to view the 2008 presidential campaign as a turning point for the nation, he decided to pull out all the stops.

“My question was, ‘What is the maximum I can give?’ ” Glenn said.

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BOB ANDRES / bandres@ajc.com

Cumming businessman Tommy Bagwell and his wife, Chantal Bagwell, with his American Proteins Inc. processing plant behind them, are generous contributors to the McCain campaign.

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BRANT SANDERLIN / bsanderlin@ajc.com

Atlanta businessman Thomas Glenn II, shown in his office Oct. 2, is one of the largest Georgia contributors to the Obama campaign.

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Cumming businessman Tommy Bagwell has been a generous Republican contributor for years. He views the Bush administration as a disappointment, but when it comes to John McCain, he sees the ideal presidential candidate.

“He’s willing to work the compromises that get him in trouble with his party,” Bagwell said. “He puts country first and tries to get something done.”

Glenn and his wife, Lou, and Bagwell and his wife, Chantal, rank among Georgia’s most generous contributors to this year’s presidential campaign. Each has given between $28,500 and $33,100 to help get their candidate elected.

Both McCain and Obama have stressed that they are reformers without ties to big-money special interests.

McCain is the co-author of a campaign finance reform law and touts his decision to accept public campaign financing, which requires that he cease accepting private contributions. Obama’s organization is refusing contributions from lobbyists and political action committees and points to its reliance on $200 contributions that come in via the Internet. On top of the candidate’s pledges, federal law limits individual donations to a presidential candidate to $2,300 for the primary and another $2,300 for the general election.

But as the campaigns head into the home stretch, the McCain Victory 2008 committee and the Obama Victory Fund are taking checks for tens of thousands of dollars from donors such as the Glenns and Bagwells.

The large contributions are permissible because they are made not to the candidate’s campaign committees, but to joint fund-raising committees. These committees split the money between the presidential campaigns and state and national political parties. The total amount a joint fund-raising committee can collect depends on how many committees participate. But it can get as high as $70,100 per donor.

“It’s a major problem,” said Craig Holman, a campaign finance lobbyist for Public Citizen, a Washington consumer organization. “It runs afoul of the very spirit of the federal elections campaign act and the more recent McCain-Feingold Act.”

The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 — better known as McCain-Feingold — focuses on eliminating large contributions. The act bans unlimited “soft money” contributions to the national parties from businesses and labor unions. And it limits how much individuals can donate to the parties.

While businesses and unions still can’t contribute, the critics see joint fund-raising as a means to continue to reel in large contributions from wealthy individuals.

“These are the exact same very large campaign contributions that we all recognize are potentially corrupting,” Holman said.

McCain Victory 2008, the joint fund-raising committee, can continue to take contributions, even though McCain’s decision to accept $84.1 million in public financing requires him to stop taking money for his campaign organization. Because Obama rejected public financing, he can continue to take private contributions.

“It’s a much bigger boost for the McCain campaign than it is for Obama,” Holman said.

While many contributors have business interests that could be affected by the next president’s policies, some fund-raisers say that rarely motivates the most generous contributors.

“You will find most people of means who are contributing significant amounts to political parties are doing it out of a genuine desire to promote a candidate who shares their ideology, and they expect nothing in return,” said Shawn Davis, who is on McCain’s Georgia advisory committee.

Bagwell, the Cumming businessman, agrees. Contributions have given him a chance to meet candidates and party leaders, access he has used to try to push his party toward the political middle. But, he said, the money allowed in campaigns today isn’t significant.

“You are talking about chump change compared to the way it used to be,” he said.

Bagwell is chairman of American Proteins, a Cumming company that produces feed supplements for livestock and pet food producers around the world. He said he is disillusioned with Republicans on issues of spending and integrity, and a focus on “telling everybody how to live their life.” Bagwell said he’s backing McCain because the candidate is so in line with his own beliefs. “I’m a fiscal conservative and a social moderate,” he said.

Glenn, the Obama supporter, said this election “matters more than any in my lifetime.” A native Atlantan whose grandfather was the president of Atlantic Steel, Glenn grew up in an affluent Republican family. But he doesn’t believe in much the party offers these days.

“The total Republican platform has moved in a direction in the past eight to 10 years that is just totally distasteful to me,” said Glenn, president of the Wilbur and Hilda Glenn Family Foundation.

He strongly favors Obama’s plans to cut taxes for lower income workers. “If we want to get the economy going, the best way to do it is to craft the tax structure so that money goes where it’s going to be spent,” he said.

Glenn said he was enthusiastic about Obama from the outset.

“I am not a political person,” Glenn said. “I have never done anything like this before. I don’t know that I will again. But I saw this as critical.”