Money & Politics | Daily Report

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When Republican U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina didn’t show up at a Sarah Palin rally in Anaheim, she wasn’t just avoiding the darling of the Tea Party Movement. Fiorina also was ducking a political donor.

On Aug. 5, nearly two months before Fiorina failed to appear at Palin’s get-out-the-GOP-vote event in Orange County, the former Alaska governor donated $2,500 to Fiorina’s campaign, federal records show. The check was cut by Sarah PAC, Palin’s political action committee.

Palin is one of more than three dozen past and present Republican Party officials, almost all of them from outside California, who have donated to Fiorina since she won the GOP Senate nomination in the June primary, according to recent Federal Election Commission filings. Most of the approximately $170,000 in donations came, like Palin’s, from PACs the officials control.

Fiorina’s no-show at the Anaheim event Oct. 16 was pragmatic politics: Although celebrated by many conservatives, Palin is disliked by two-thirds of California’s independent voters, according to a recent Field Poll [PDF]. Those are voters Fiorina needs to attract if she is to unseat Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer in next week’s election.

For her part, Fiorina said she was unable to appear with Palin because she had a prior engagement – campaigning in San Diego with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

He’s also a campaign donor: His 2008 presidential fund gave Fiorina $2,000 in September. Also that month, Fiorina’s campaign rented a mailing list from McCain’s Virginia-based Country First PAC, paying about $2,400, records show.

Fiorina’s post-primary donor list is studded with other familiar Republican names, a handful of them Californians.

In addition to McCain, ten Republican senators donated to Fiorina. From Maine, Susan Collins (via her Dirigo PAC) gave $5,000 while Olympia Snowe gave $1,000.

Other GOP senators writing $5,000 checks to Fiorina included:

• Lindsey Graham of South Carolina (Fund for America’s Future)
• Mississippi’s Thad Cochran (Senate Victory Fund)
• Bob Corker of Tennessee (Rock City PAC)
• Oklahoman Tom Coburn (Truth, Accountability And Courage PAC)
• Kay Hutchison of Texas (KPAC)
• Saxby Chambliss of Georgia (Republican Majority Fund)

Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso's Common Values PAC gave $2,500. Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch gave $2,000, and former Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott’s New Republican Majority Fund gave $1,000. Colorado Brewing executive and GOP activist Peter Coors, who lost a bid for a Colorado Senate seat in 2004, gave $4,800.

Two Republican governors – neither of them Arnold Schwarzenegger – donated to Fiorina: Haley’s PAC, controlled by Haley Barbour, Mississippi governor and former national Republican chair, gave $5,000, while the Freedom First PAC of Minnesota’s Tim Pawlenty gave $3,000. Former Virginia Gov. George Allen’s Good Government for America PAC gave $1,000.

Meanwhile, Fiorina’s campaign paid about $1,900 to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s Free and Strong America PAC to rent a mailing list, the records show. Her campaign also bought $6,000 worth of office furniture from Steve Poizner's failed campaign for governor of California.

Of the 18 Republicans in the California delegation to the House of Representatives, Fiorina got donations from three:

• Darrell Issa of Vista (Invest in a Strong and Secure America PAC), $5,000
• David Dreier of San Dimas (American Success PAC), $5,000
• Ken Calvert of Riverside (Eureka PAC), $1,000

House Minority Leader John Boehner gave her $5,000 via his Freedom Project PAC. Other GOP House members contributing to Fiorina were:

• Mike Enzi of Wyoming (Making Business Excel PAC), $5,000
• Rep. Mike Johanns of Nebraska (Prairieland PAC), $2,500
• George LeMieux of Florida (Protect America’s Future PAC), $2,500
• Deborah Pryce of Ohio, $1,000

Fiorina got a few donations from figures from GOP administrations of the past. Retired Gen. Colin Powell, secretary of state under President George W. Bush, gave $2,000. Marilyn Quayle, wife of Dan Quayle, vice president under President George H.W. Bush, gave $1,000.

Nashville recording executive and race car owner Mike Curb gave Fiorina $2,400 as did Curb’s wife. Curb was California’s lieutenant governor from 1978 to 1982, Democrat Jerry Brown’s second term as governor.

As California Watch has reported, Fiorina during her primary campaign obtained $63,000 in donations from Midwestern coal mining interests, some of the money from executives who oppose Boxer because of her support for laws to check global warming.

Since the primary, Fiorina has received an additional $4,800 from an executive of Oklahoma’s Alliance Coal. She got $47,500 from energy companies, including donations from two Texas conpanies that are pushing Prop. 23, which would suspend California’s global warming legislation. Tesoro Petroleum gave $5,000, and Valero PAC gave $2,500.