Courtesy of Pam Martens.
Eric Cantor’s campaign may have eaten its way through $168,000 of steak dinners but big players on Wall Street are eating crow.
Between 2000 and 2007, Goldman Sachs’ Chairman and CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, personally stuffed $73,500 into the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to help elect Democrats to Federal office. But by 2012, Blankfein had decided that “Every Republican is Crucial” and gave just defeated Virginia Republican and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s leadership PAC by the same name $5,000 in 2012 and another $5,000 in 2013. In addition, Blankfein gave the Cantor Victory Fund $10,200 on December 6, 2013 according to receipts at the Federal Election Commission.
In the 2013-2014 election cycle, Goldman Sachs’ employees and/or their family members gave a total of $88,500 to Cantor’s leadership PAC – which sluices money to Republican candidates around the country – and another $16,600 to Cantor’s campaign according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Cantor’s “Every Republican is Crucial” leadership PAC (which goes by the acronym ERIC PAC) says on its web site that it is “determined to take our country back, House district by House district.” With the House Majority leader now soundly defeated in Tuesday’s primary in Virginia by an upstart economics professor supported by the Tea Party, David Brat, who took 56 percent of the vote and sprinkled his speeches with the phrase “crony capitalism,” Wall Street money may not be able to travel from Gotham across state lines as effectively as it once did.
In addition to Goldman Sachs, among the top four corporations giving the most to Cantor’s leadership PAC and his campaign committee combined, three are Wall Street entities: Goldman Sachs, Blackstone Group, and serially in trouble Citigroup. Rounding out the top four is Big Tobacco representative, Altria, previously known as Philip Morris.
On June 14, 2013, Stephen Schwarzman, Chairman and CEO of Blackstone, gave the ERIC PAC $5,000. In total, Blackstone employees and their family members gave the Cantor campaign and his leadership PAC $96,000. Blackstone’s corporate PAC gave another $7,000 according to records from the FEC and the Center for Responsive Politics.
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