Despite running his presidential campaign on banning former lobbyists — and their special interests influence — from the marble halls of his administration, President Barack Obama has hired about 80 percent of his mega-donors (those who bundled $500,000 or more for him during the campaign) to “key administration posts.”
The Center for Public Integrity’s iWatch News combed through campaign finance records and pulled several other surprising statistics about just who is landing in the White House.
Public Citizen, a group that advocates for transparency in government, worked with iWatch to provide data for their reporting. A comparison of Obama’s administration to its predecessor — that of President George W. Bush — showed that while Obama has hired nearly 200 bundlers in the two years he’s been in office, Bush hired approximately that same number in the entire eight years of his presidency.
