Senator Charles Schumer has been so busy lately worrying about baggage fees and Facebook privacy, not to mention criticizing Wall Street, it's easy to forget he's up for re-election. But it seems he doesn't have to worry about fundraising among his old crowd: Sen. Schumer has made nearly $2.2 million from interest on political donations that he collected more than six years ago.
In years past, Sen. Schumer received upwards of $7.7 million donations from the financial sector, but many in the financial sector have felt betrayed recently because of his outspoken criticisms of Wall Street. But after he had $10 million leftover from his last election in 2005, he invested shrewdly, and now has a "eight-figure cushion."
"That's like having a mini-campaign endowment to build on for future use, without having to go out and have a fund-raiser. You can hang out and watch it grow," Dave Levinthal, spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks fund raising, told the WSJ. And as the WSJ notes, it's just the tip of the iceberg: "For many House candidates, $2.2 million would fund an entire campaign. For Mr. Schumer, it is only a tenth of the cash he has in hand to run for a third term this year."
