Who are the Out-of-State Donors to Steve Daines?

There’s a helluva lot of out-of-staters donating to Steve Daines for U.S. Senate, and I wonder why.

I mean, you live in another state…how is a senator from Montana going to help you?

Perhaps by looking at the people giving money to Daines, how much they’re giving, and where they work, we can figure this out.

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All of this information is from the campaign finance report Steve Daines submitted at the end of June. You can find it on the FEC campaign finance page for Steve Daines.

Ready? Here we go!

Individual Campaign Contributors to Steve Daines

• George W. Acker: I don’t know who this guy is, but he lives in Pennsylvania and works for the Reschini Group, an organization that specializes in insurance for mining and oil and gas companies. Acker thinks Daines is important for him because he’s given $5,000 to Daines over two donations last December. 

• Ak-Chin Indian Tribe: The Ak-Chins are located in the Santa Cruz Valley of Arizona, so why they thought giving $2,600 to Daines last September is beyond me. They are into casinos and do have large industrial farming going on, so that might have something to do with it.

• Allen Trucking, LLC: This is a big company in Illinois and both owners, Roger and Russell Allen, gave $2,000 to Daines just a few days before Christmas last year. Again, why?
  

• James H. Amos: Steve Daines must really have a sizable sweet tooth, for he’s received $6,000 from James Amos, chairman of Tasti D-Lite, a New York frozen dessert company. Perhaps Daines knows him or really made an impression last September when the donations were made.
  

• Daniel Asher: At the end of June this year, Daines got $2,600 from Daniel Asher, who works for Equitec Investments in Chicago. I wasn’t able to find much on this one, but again, I think we’re seeing a trend of big city investors and bankers being put ahead of common Montanans.
  

• Cheryl Bachelder: Last September this CEO of AFC Enterprises, Inc., gave Daines $5,200. You might remember this company as one that ran afoul of the IRS back in 2003 when their Seattle’s Best Coffee got sucked into the Arthur Anderson accounting scandals. Looks like Daines will ensure CEOs like Bachelder can continue to benefit from shady accounting practices under their new name, Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits. We know this because Bechelder’s husband – Christopher Bechelder, who works as a vice president of marketing for Hillsdale College in Atlanta – also gave $5,200 to Daines on the same day.
  

• Dab Constructors, Inc.: William Bachschmidt gave $2,600 to Steve Daines two days after Christmas last year, and I just don’t understand why – he builds homes in Florida.
  

• Bachman Group: Nathan Dulaney Bachman, an investor with the Bachman Group, gave Daines $2,500 just this past March, again, probably so Daines can help him and his firm continue to rape the American people when it comes to their financial future and retirement.
  

• James Baker: The firm of Neuberger Berman has James Baker as one of its investment managers, and he just thought it’d be great to give Daines $2,600 this March as well. Why? I have no idea, why do you think? He lives in New York, after all. Oh, they deal in hedge funds – that might explain it!
  

• Phillip Bakke: Why would a company that builds Starbucks’ in Texas give $2,600 to Daines? I don’t know, maybe you want to look on their website and see if you can find anything. Personally, I’m getting a little tired of trying to make sense of who gives to Daines and why.
  

• Barbara Banke: I tried to figure out what Jackson Family Investments in Geyserville, California, was, but there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot that would explain the $2,600 donation Daines received from them in late January.
  

There are 178 pages of records for individual campaign donations to Steve Daines and I’ve only gone through 10 of them. There are 20 records on each page so…you do the math. I will say that many, many people are giving to Daines more than once. Judging from those 10 pages, it’s close to 50% and what’s more, spouses are giving equal contributions in many cases.

It’s tough to beat that, but as you saw, many of these donations are coming from out of state. Now I’ll be honest – there are lots of pages just like this one with most donations coming from within Montana:

By far, however, you’ll see images like this, with most coming from out of state:

Like I said, it’s going to be tough to beat, but I know Amanda Curtis can do it if she’s so inclined, and if Democratic donors are as well.

You can donate to Amanda Curtis here, and I hope you do so. I also hope you share this post with your Montana friends. If there’s enough action on it I’ll go through another 10 pages of Daines’s records and see what we can dig up.

If it can sway a few Montana voters to do the right thing, it’s worth it.