Saturday, April 23, 2011

Follow the Money: Online Poker and Political Contributions


So much money...where did it get us?

Back when I worked in the film industry, a favorite pastime among junior D-people was to play around on OpenSecrets.org, running names of producers, directors, executives, and A-list actors to see where they were spending their political dollars. In the wake of Black Friday, I pulled up the site over my morning coffee and decided to check out how much lining-of-the-pockets the American members of Team Full Tilt did over the last four years (2006-2010). Although this is nothing close to breaking news (it's all publicly available information), the results are pretty interesting.

Howard and Susie Lederer (NV): $355,635
Andrew Bloch (NV and MD): $176,992
Chris Ferguson (NV): $109,100
Phil Ivey (NV): $92,470
Erik and Ruah Seidel (NV): $91,800
Phil Gordon (NV and WA): $49,900
Jennifer and Marco Traniello (NV): $40,800
John Juanda (CA): $17,200
Erick Lindgren (NV): $12,000
Allen Cunningham: $0
Mike Matusow: $0
Tom Dwan: $0

Couldn't find anything on those last three, at least on Open Secrets. But for the nine individuals listed above them, that's a grand total of $945,897 of dirty dirty Full Tilt money over three election cycles.

I expected as much from the FTP pros with percentages. But what about the other industry big-guns/sponsored pros/guys with deep pockets? Here's a few more names I looked up:

Leon Black, Founder, Apollo Management (NY): $296,250
Barry Greenstein (CA): $76,100
Joe Sebok (CA): $51,700
Rafe Furst (CA): $50,050
Daniel Negreanu (NV): $41,200*
Doyle Brunson (NV): $40,800
Dennis Phillips (IL): $30,700
John Pappas, Executive Director, Poker Players Alliance (DC): $25,250
Tom McEvoy (NV): $18,700
Ray Bitar (CA): $17,500**
Vanessa Rousso (FL): $17,450
Annie Duke (CA): $15,000
Joe Cada (MI): $13,500
Mori Eskandani, Producer, PokerPROductions (NV): $10,400
Phil Hellmuth and Katherine Sanborn Hellmuth (CA): $10,000***
Perry Friedman (NV): $10,000
Greg Raymer (NC): $7,300
Barry Shulman (NV): $4,000
Steve Wynn (NV): $3,000

*= although he's a Canadian citizen, he has permanent U.S. residency (aka a green card)
***= two checks @ $5,000/ea. to the PPA in July/August 2009

And here's a few Hollywood names for good measure from the same three election cycles:

Alan Horn, COO, Warner Bros. Pictures (CA): $312,296
Steven Spielberg (CA): $243,650
Tom Hanks (CA): $74,700
Jerry Bruckheimer (CA): $53,400
Jeff Bewkes, CEO, Time Warner (NY): $48,900
Sumner Redstone, CEO, Viacom (CA): $33,400
Les Moonves, CEO, CBS Corp. (CA): $17,400
Oprah Winfrey (IL): $2,300
Dr. Pauly, Internet Physician (NY): $420

2 comments:

ExMember said...

Love the last entry. I take it you are still having problems with people cutting and pasting your content?

Unknown said...
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