Mitt Romney has an overwhelming advantage in raising money among his former colleagues in the realm of private equity. Employees of the top 10 private equity groups have given Romney’s campaign $548,050 during the current election cycle, compared to only $170,056 for president Obama.
Among these elite private equity groups, Bain Capital is the largest source of cash for both candidates. The Blackstone Group has also showered money on both campaigns.
However, many private equity groups where Romney has found eager support are bereft of employees who also support Obama. For example, two of the top ten PE groups, CVC Capital and First Reserve Corporation, have no employees who have donated to Obama.
Employees of the Goldman Sachs Capital Partners private equity subsidiary of the investment bank have donated to neither Romney, nor Obama. (Goldman Sachs employees and the bank have, however, been major donors to both campaigns and parties.)
Private equity groups favor Romney by leaps and bounds. For every dollar Obama was given by employees of Bain, Romney was given four. Romney bested Obama by $4.5 to $1 among employees of KKR, and a very large margin of $7.8 to $1 among Apollo Management’s employees.
Keep in mind these dollars are donated directly to the Romney and Obama campaigns, and thus are limited to $2,500 per donor, and strict reporting requirements apply.
Romney has benefitted much more from private equity donations to the Super PACs that are technically unaffiliated with his campaign. I covered this ground in some detail back in June with a story about California Super PAC funders, an elite group that included more than a few private equity executives – http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/money-wins/content?oid=6480953.
Certainly the Super PACs supporting Romney and preparing to attack Obama have received many millions more from PE executives since then.