Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden finally disclosed the roster of his biggest fundraisers on Saturday, unveiling the names of the 820 people who have helped him build a big-money juggernaut.
The list includes Biden surrogates like former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA); Hollywood filmmakers like Lee Daniels and Jeffrey Katzenberg; and Silicon Valley billionaires like Reid Hoffman and Ron Conway. The campaign did not specify how much these individuals raised for Biden beyond that it was more than $100,000.
The release on Saturday evening came at the last possible moment: Election Day is on Tuesday, and more than 90 million Americans have already voted, having done so without clarity on who Biden’s largest fundraisers are or what influence they may have had on his candidacy. Biden’s last-minute disclosure was a sharp departure from precedent in the Democratic Party, whose presidential candidates have regularly disclosed their so-called “bundlers” in a nod to transparency.
That’s why campaign-finance reformers were concerned that Biden had not yet followed his predecessors Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s lead in releasing his bundlers for the general election.
Biden’s campaign declined to answer inquiries about their bundlers until last week, when it told the New York Times that it would release their names by the end of October. Both Obama and Clinton released updates on the list of people helping them raise big money at consistent intervals; Biden’s only prior update came on a Friday evening just after Christmas in 2019 during the Democratic primary with about 230 names.
www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/10/31/21542871/joe-biden-bundler-release-transparency