$100-or-less Donors A New Experience For Ryan?

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Last week, Rep. Paul Ryan's campaign news release boasted that 82 percent of his donors since the beginning of this year gave $100 or less. This latest revelation he felt, proves how average Wisconsinites are supporting his "efforts to stop across-the-board tax increases, runaway government spending and unsustainable borrowing."

Obviously, a claim stating 82% of your donors gave $100-or-less is a highly desirable self-edict for any politician to offer during this time of rampant special interest influence and dubious fund raising tactics. Of course Ryan was only counting heads while conveniently leaving out the dollar amount and it's relationship to the total amount of contributions.

After reading this blog posting at One Wisconsin doubting Ryan's claims that he got all but 10 percent of his campaign cash from inside the Badger State, I decided to take a second look at those $100 donors and to see how many were from Ryan's district.

Ryan reported a total of $374,884 in contributions for this period. $146,905 or 39% came from PAC's. The rest, $227,911 came from individuals and entities other than PAC's. Approximately $167,975 of the non-PAC money was categorized as itemized contributions. That is where a good cross section of those $100 contributions were reported.

Since Ryan is a representative of a district with borders, it's only fair to count only those $100 donations coming from inside his district to get a clear perspective of constituent support. After flipping through the report and checking a map, it turns out approximately $4,625 or 2.7% of the $167,975 were $100 donations from within his district - and that figure included $100 donors from the city of Milwaukee. 97.3% were donations of either more than $100 or from outside his district. Why target $100-or-less donors? You'd have to ask Rep. Paul Ryan, he's the one who brought them up.

Sure, an argument could be made for the locations of the hundred dollar donors of the nearly $60,000 in non-itemized non-PAC contributions, but more than likely, the itemized category offers a reasonably accurate profile for all non-PAC contributors.

The final point is these recent figures are apparently different enough from past contributions for Ryan now to boast how they represent Wisconsinites support for his efforts. If these percentages are an improvement, exactly who and from where have been supporting his campaign for the past ten years?