Who’s funding Chris Coleman’s re-election bid?
St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman can thank the Twin Cities legal community for a good chunk of the six-figure fundraising haul he announced this week.
More than 120 lawyers and law firm-affiliated political action committees have shelled out about $22,000 to Coleman's campaign since the end of January. They accounted for close to 20 percent of the campaign's revenue during that period -- the largest share of any industry, according to an MPR News analysis.
Here's how Coleman's fundraising broke down:
People working in government and education came in second place, followed closely by real estate, entertainment and organized labor. Each of those industries contributed around half of what the lawyers did, give or take.
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We should note that there's a large group of Coleman's donors whose economic interests are difficult to divine based on this week's reports. The law requires donors to disclose their employers, but more than 70 of Coleman's supporters count themselves as retired.
Collectively, retirees contributed $9,600. There are another 25 donors who failed to tell the campaign where they work, plus some homemakers and even a couple who say they're unemployed. That's why "no job/unknown" is the second largest slice of the pie chart.
There's also a good-size slice of donations categorized as "other." It's made up of people who work in energy, communication, technology and various other industries, including a Porsche dealer who lives in Wyoming, Minn.
They are lumped together only because the above pie chart was already growing cluttered, and additional colors wouldn't have added much clarity.
On a side note: Only half of Coleman's contributions came from inside city limits, based on the addresses donors supplied to his campaign. But that appears to be typical for a big-city race in Minnesota. The Twin Cities' political class, it seems, knows no boundaries.
Cody Nelson contributed to this report.