Wall Street Bankers, Reelection Backers
New York's Financial Titans Support Bush in a Big Way
By Ben White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 22, 2004; Page E01

NEW YORK -- One unseasonably cool evening in late October, a group of Wall Street bankers waited aboard a ferry in New York Harbor for the short trip to Ellis Island and a thank-you event for major backers of President Bush's reelection campaign.

Ordinarily, the bankers -- unaccustomed to waiting for anything -- might be annoyed. But on this night they were placid, despite the fact that Charlie Black, a top adviser to the campaign, was running late.

The Bush administration had given the bankers almost everything they ever dreamed of: a reduction in dividend and capital-gains taxes, a phase-out of the estate tax, an overall reduction in income taxes. So they waited patiently, eager do whatever they could to ensure the president's reelection.

"Wall Street runs on a good economy and the president has given us that," said Mallory Factor, a merchant banker who was among those on the boat. "Then you look at the alternatives on the other side. Either one of those things is enough to make you support the president."

And that's just what Wall Street has done, to an unprecedented extent. Unlike in 2000, when the industry hedged its bets between Bush and Vice President Al Gore, Wall Street thus far has put the bulk of its muscle behind the Republican incumbent.

Through late November, employees of securities industry firms had given at least $4 million to the Bush campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That number will rise significantly -- probably to well over $7 million -- when figures for the full year are reported at the end of this month. As of late November, no Democrat had raised more than $1 million from the industry.

The Bush campaign is not eager to discuss the enthusiastic support it is receiving from Wall Street. Spokesman Scott Stanzel declined to discuss the matter, saying only that the president had raised money from "nearly half a million supporters representing every county in every state."

That reluctance may reflect the fact that the 2004 campaign is unfolding in a very different environment from 2000, a year in which stocks hit their bull-market highs and Enron was still a corporate powerhouse.

Since then, the stock market bubble burst and a series of corporate scandals -- many either directly or indirectly involving Wall Street firms -- rocked investor confidence. Some of those scandals have been pursued by New York Attorney General Eliot L. Spitzer, a politically ambitious Democrat who has become a thorn in the side of the industry, and corporate wrongdoing has become a frequent theme in the message of Democrats vying to run against Bush.

Meanwhile, the figures for Bush actually understate the power of his Wall Street support.