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Thursday, July 22, 2010
Medical Marijuana Donations to pro-marijuana group down 24 percent
Posted by Bryce Crawford on Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 6:20 AM
Update, 9:49 a.m.: Mike Meno, director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project, writes that "it's misleading to compare the 2008 and 2010 election cycles, since one was a presidential election and the other was not. To make a fair comparison, you'd need to compare the 2010 donations against another midterm election, like 2006."
Fair enough. 2006 brought total donations of $120,778, for an average per month of $5,032. Using a 2006 to 2010 comparison, donations are on pace to be down 27 percent, as opposed to 24 percent.
In 2006, $49,700 went to House Democrats — $1,000 each to Reps. Diana DeGette, and Mark Udall — $11,000 to House Republicans, and $2,000 to Senate Democrats.
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Donations to the medical marijuana PAC of the Marijuana Policy Project, a Washington, D.C.-based marijuana advocacy group, are down this election cycle from years past. Consequently, the group's contributions are down as well.
Numbers from the 2008 election cycle — Dec. 31, 2006 to Dec. 31, 2008 — reflect a total fund of $114,680, with an average of $4,778 per month, according to OpenSecrets.org. During that time, the group gave $68,030 to House Democrats, $2,000 to House Republicans, $10,350 to Senate Democrats — with $5,500 going to Sen. Mark Udall alone — and nothing to Senate Republicans.
A still-going 2010 election cycle brings a total war chest of $69,296, a rough average of $3,657 per month, with $11,610, and $2,000 being donated to House and Senate Democrats respectively, thus far.
Donors to the MPP for 2010 include John Gilmore, the founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation; Peter B. Lewis, the chairman, and former CEO, of Progressive Insurance; as well as employees of the Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. Department of Labor.
Comments (2)
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I apologize if I'm missing something obvious, but it appears that comparisons are being made between previous years' donations (consisting of 12 month donation cycles) to donations received thus far this year (the first 7 months of 2010.) Is that the case?
I'm just trying to understand if the calculation includes donations likely to be received in the remaining 5 months of this year and if so, how those projections are derived (average of monthly donations or based on yearly trends.)
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Posted by
norma rae
on 07/25/2010 at 2:00 PM
Hi Norma Rae,
What's being compared is the average monthly donation. Should donations continue during this year's election cycle as they have during the previous months, the PAC would be looking at a shortfall as compared to previous years.
Thanks for writing,
Bryce
Posted by
Bryce E. Crawford
on 07/26/2010 at 9:08 AM
