James Simons, a Long Island investor and philanthropist, has not given a cent to President Obama’s re-election campaign this year.
Brendan Smialowski/Bloomberg News
James Simons is the biggest donor to Democratic “super PACs” in the country.
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Peter G. Angelos is a major donor to Democratic “super PACs.”
But Mr. Simons has given at least $2 million to Priorities USA Action, the “super PAC”
aiding Mr. Obama, and $2 million more to two allied groups supporting
Democrats in Congress, making him the biggest Democratic super PAC donor
in the country.
With the election just weeks away — and millions of dollars in
advertising time booked but not yet paid for — Democratic super PACs are
finally drawing the kind of wealthy donors who have already made
Republican outside groups a pivotal force in the 2012 campaign.
More than 40 individuals and couples had given at least $250,000 to the
leading Democratic super PACs through the beginning of September,
according to a New York Times analysis of campaign finance records, and
dozens more have given $100,000 or more.
But the money is not coming from the expected places. Few of the
wealthiest men and women closest to Mr. Obama have donated, even as the
super PAC backing Mitt Romney raises millions of dollars from his
friends and former colleagues. Only a few gay donors are among the
biggest givers, despite Mr. Obama’s embrace of same-sex marriage
last spring. Most of the wealthy liberals who financed the party’s last
major outside spending effort, in 2004, remain on the super PAC
sidelines.
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