2008 OK Senate Debate: on Government Reform

Andrew Rice: Most donations from individuals; most of Inhofe’s from PACs

A: The overwhelming majority is from individuals. The only type of group that could give us money is a Political Action Committee, and I think it’s accounted for less than 4%. Part of that is the nature of how these campaigns are. When you run against an incumbent, there’s a lot of political action committees that represent different industries, different interest groups that aren’t going to go against the incumbent because they don’t want to upset the incumbent. Therefore, they may have a bill that’s coming that affects, say, the manufactures, and they want to go see them, and you know. It’s too bad that works, but that’s the way that Washington works. And so, if you look at his [Inhofe’s] reports, he’s got a tremendous amount of money in PAC money. Probably about half of his money comes from PAC money, compared to a real small minority of mine.