As a follow-up to my post about the list of donors who've given more than $250 to each of the four NDP leadership candidates, I'd like to point out that The Accidental Jurist has done some investigative journalism (at least someone is – thanks for nothing MSM!) into the background of each candidates' major donors which is pretty revealing.
Here's what he found…
– Deb Higgins is getting more than half of her support from former and current MLA's. What does this mean? Perhaps it's not just activists and the far left wing of the party who are in the “anybody but Link” camp? The other major revelation is that her largest donor appears to have also maxed out his donations to the Conservative candidate in the 2008 Federal election who narrowly beat the NDP's candidate in the Moose Jaw riding.
– Yens Pedersen appears to have two sources of funding – his family and members of the legal community – and his total donations ($3100) are less than the biggest single donation received by each of the other three candidates.
– Ryan Meili's biggest donation ($5000) comes from a guy who's a member of a band in Saskatoon and also a big advocate for increased use of bicycles. (I admit, I did the same Google searches that the Jurist appears to have done on this one and I remember my conclusion “Wow, I bet you can afford to do a lot of $5000 donations if you don't own a car!”)
– the biggest surprises are in regards to Dwain Lingenfelter's donors' connections and past donation histories. I'm just going to quote the Jurist here because it's such a good summary:
Not surprisingly, Higgins isn't alone in receiving a substantial amount
of money from sources which might not be expected to donating to an NDP
race. Instead, the clear leader in that department is Dwain
Lingenfelter, whose fund-raising lead includes:
– $2,000 from Chancery Properties Ltd., whose only apparent previous political contribution was to the provincial Libs in 2005;
– $1,000 from Earnscliffe Strategy Group, best known for its federal Lib connections;
– $2,000 from Glencoe Developments, a condominium developer based on the AB side of Lloydminster;
– $2,000 from Prairie Pipeline Contractors, which has participated in a Lingenfelter-led trade delegation to Mexico; and
– $8,000 in donations from businesses which don't seem to have any public Saskatchewan presence based on a quick look at MySask
as well as Google search results, including Reliable Property
Management ($5,000, tied for Lingenfelter's largest donation), G5
Management ($1,000), Merma Developments ($1,000) and Sadig Holdings
($1,000).
I know Ryan's running a positive campaign (and doing an amazing job of it) but man, I wish he'd do a mail drop to every single person on the NDP membership list to point these facts out.
I mean, to me, there's a huge difference between going negative (that would be something like attacking Lingenfelter because he's remarried to someone much younger than him – which is totally irrelevant as far as I'm concerned) and pointing out facts like these which are *very* pertinent to the race and to the future direction (and obligations?) of the party's potential new leader.
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