Exclusive: Financial Sector Helps Barack Obama Score Big Money

Related article: The other face of Barack Obama - 2 - The economic policy of the Obama Administration.
-President Barack Obama has relied more on well-connected Wall Street figures to fund his re-election than he did four years ago when he campaigned as an outsider and an underdog.

One-third of the money Obama's elite fund-raising corps has raised on behalf of his re-election has come from the financial sector, according to a new Center for Responsive Politics analysis.

Individuals who work in the finance, insurance and real estate sector are responsible for raising at least $11.8 million for Obama's campaign and the Democratic National Committee, according to the Center's research. All of Obama's bundlers have raised a minimum of $35 million so far this year.

During his entire 2008 presidential bid, bundlers who worked in the finance, insurance and real estate sector were responsible for a minimum of $16.1 million, according to the Center's research. That's about 21 percent of the $76.5 million estimated minimum amount that these top fund-raisers brought in for Obama's presidential campaign.

The Center also found:

• Bundlers within the securities and investment industry have been particularly active this year, as have the traditional staple of lawyers.
• None of Obama's bundlers are active lobbyists, but seven are former lobbyists, who collectively raised at least $1.35 million.
• Obama has also raised a minimum of $2.2 million from openly gay and lesbian individuals who were not bundlers for his presidential campaign four years ago.
• About 60 percent of Obama's 244 re-election bundlers did not bundle for his 2008 presidential campaign. New bundlers brought in about half of the money raised by bundlers so far.

Exact dollar amounts for how much cash these top fund-raisers have collected during the past few months is not known because the Obama campaign provided only broad ranges of how much money each bundler collected. » Read More

•  New OpenSecrets.org profile of Obama's 2012 bundlers

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