Bigfork contributes $145,000 to 2012 campaigns

Bigfork may not be the biggest town in the valley, but its residents made some big donations to candidates, parties, PACs, SuperPACs and outside groups according to opensecrets.org.

According to the website, Bert Arnlund of Bigfork made the biggest single donation in the valley when he donated $20,000 to the Republican National Committee on July 12 and made two $2,500 donations to Mitt Romney on July 10. However, Arnlund said he actually made a single donation of $25,000 while attending a Romney campaign fundraiser dinner in Hamilton in July.

“As a small businessman, this last four years hasn’t been a lot of fun and I think it’s time for a change,” Arnlund said. “I wanted an opportunity to meet Mr. Romney and I wanted to hopefully make a change and be a contributor to making a change.”

The Center for Responsive Politics, founded in 1983, began publishing the “Open Secrets” book in 1990 as a way to track the influence of money on U.S. politics and how that money affects policy and citizens’ lives. Then after the 1996 elections the book was taken online where it has since won several awards including Time Magazine’s 50 Best Websites in 2007, and the Online News Association’s 2011 small site award for online topical reporting and blogging.

Opensecrets.org has a blog that goes along with their data catalogue, and is cited by news organizations such as the New York Times, Fox News, Wall Street Journal, CNN, MSNBC, and National Public Radio.

Under the website’s “Donor Lookup” section it is possible to search by zip code and sort individual donor results by name and total donated. In Arnlund’s case it lists his occupation as King Resources Inc., but he said he also owns the Gold Coin Casino and the Silver Coin Casino. Some of Bigfork’s donors are listed only as “Self” or “Retired” or have no occupation listed at all.

But it does break down where their donations went and gives the option to search by year as well. For Arnlund it also showed a donation of $330 to Max Baucus in 2008, whom Arnlund said he has been friends with for 40 years.

“It doesn’t mean the liberals don’t have great ideas and work hard for what they believe in, a lot of ideas come together,” Arnlund said.

Taken on a city-by-city basis, opensecrets.org says that Whitefish leads the valley in 2012 so far with $240,503, followed by Bigfork with $145,108, then Kalispell with $140,328, then and Lakeside with $24,673, and then Columbia Falls with $22,735.

But in 2008 Kalispell was the leading donor in the valley with $183,042, followed by Whitefish with $181,538, then Bigfork with $72,640, then Columbia Falls with $22,010 and Lakeside with $8,826.

As for Jon Tester and Denny Rehberg’s campaigns, the website offers the option to see where their funding comes from in different ways such as geographically and by industry. The site says this is based on information from reports filed by the candidates with the Federal Election Commission. Because of this, their information is a few months old, and, only donations over $200 are itemized.

According to the site, as of June 30, Tester raised $9,383,728 and spent $5,766,566. Of the total raised, $5,439,377 came from large contributions, $916,487 from small contributions, $2,361,842 from PACs and $537,029 was labeled as other.

According to the site, as of June 30, Rehberg raised $5,676,947 and spent $2,966,215. Of the total raised, $3,215,086 came from large contributions, $686,863 from small contributions, $1,009,237 from PACs and $855,759 was labeled as other.

When viewing Tester and Rehberg’s top contributors, the site notes that the organizations themselves did not donate and the funds come from the organizations’ PACS, individual members or employees or owners, their immediate relatives and their subsidiaries and affiliates.

According to the site, Tester’s top three contributors are the League of Conservation Voters with $82,332, Visa Inc. with $47,400, and JPMorgan Chase & Co. for $47,000.

The site also says Rehberg’s top three contributors are Alliance Resource Partners for $36,500, Exxon Mobil for $29,500, and Elliot Management for $26,199.

To view their entire list of contributors or find out more about where campaign finances come from, go to www.opensecrets.org.