Democrats Ahead on Campaign Donations

Cash. (CC0 Creative Commons).

The state Democratic Party raised nearly $4.7 million during the first three months of 2020, about nine times more than the $513,000 raised by the state Republican Party, thanks to a handful of tony contributors.

Much of the Democratic Party’s haul came from about 30 individuals and political action committees who gave between $10,000 and $1.8 million each.

Topping the list of state Democratic Party contributors was Dr. Karla Jurvetson, a Los Altos, Calif. physician, who contributed $1.8 million via two $900,000 contributions in February and March. Her only previous state political contribution was $1,000 to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in November 2018.

Jurvetson has backed or worked for numerous Democratic candidates, including former president Barack Obama in 2008 and presidential candidates Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Elizabeth Warren in 2020. Earlier this year, Jurvetson gave $14.6 million to Persist PAC, a super PAC that backed Warren’s presidential campaign.

Jurvetson contributed $6.9 million during the 2018 mid-terms, including $5.4 million to Women Vote!, a PAC run by Emily List, a Washington, D.C. organization that backs female candidates for state and federal offices nationwide. Jurvetson was one of the top woman political contributors in the U.S. in 2018.

Other top contributors to the Democratic Party were:

George Soros, a New York City businessman, investor and philanthropist, $490,000

Elise Lawson and Sage Weil, of Madison, $480,000. Lawson is a surgeon and Weil is a software engineer who founded Ceph, WebRing, DreamHost, and InkTank.

Reid Hoffman, of Mountain View, Calif., co-founder of LinkedIn, $250,000

Paul J. Brown and Lisa Mennet, of Seattle, Wash., $230,000. Brown is a retired photojournalist and Mennet is founder of a Seattle mental health services clinic for children.

Eric Schmidt, of Palo Alto, Calif., a technology advisor to Google’s parent company, Alphabet, and former Novell and Sun Microsystems executive, $180,000

Robert Price, of La Jolla, Calif., chairman of PriceSmart, $180,000

Robert Rubin, of New York City, former U.S. Treasury secretary and retired bank executive, $100,000

Ronald Conway, of San Francisco, Calif., technology investor and advisor and founder of Angel Investors LP, $65,000

The five top donors to the state Republican Party collectively accounted for 62 percent of the party’s $513,086 in fundraising during the first three months of 2020. They were:

Elizabeth Uihlein, of Lake Forest, Ill., co-owner of Uline Corp., $100,000

Diane Hendricks, of Beloit, owner of ABC Supply, $100,000

Louis Gentine, of Elkhart Lake, retired owner of Sargento Cheese, $50,000

Kathryn Burke, of Milwaukee, owner of Burke Properties, $41,820

Stephen Ziegler, of Oconomowoc, owner of Inpro Corp., $25,000