WASHINGTON (AP) – President Bush’s list of volunteer campaign fund-raisers is getting bigger: More than 300 people have raised $100,000 or more for the Republican since he began his re-electioncampaign in May.
At least 106 people have raised the $200,000 and up it takes to become a Bush “ranger,” a new fund-raising group the campaign started this year.
An additional 203 have solicited the $100,000 needed to be a Bush “pioneer.” That’s roughly the same number of pioneers Bush had in his 2000 primary campaign, when he raised a record $106 million.
Bush is already at or beyond his 2000 record for next year’s primaries.
New Bush pioneers include Christie Whitman, the first Environmental Protection Agency administrator in Bush’s administration.
Among the others are William McGuire, chief executive of United Health Care Group; Warren Staley, CEO of the Cargill agribusiness company; Republican lobbyists Charles and Judy Black; and Paul Singer, manager of Elliott Capital Advisers, a multibillion-dollar hedge fund group, a review released Friday by the government watchdog group Public Citizen found.
The new rangers include Thomas Nassif, president of the Western Growers Association and part of incoming California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s transition team; James Brulte, the Republican leader of the California state Senate; and Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.
