From the Washington Post.

"Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who has made a fight against corporate special interests a centerpiece of his front-running campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, has raised more money from paid lobbyists than any other senator over the past 15 years, federal records show."

What is the source for this
article? It sounds like an op-ed page to me. Fifteen years is
a long time. Gotta' pay for those elections. Dean will have
to come to terms with that and that's why Tom Neel is on board.

"But in some ways, he has played the Washington money game as aggressively as the Republicans he scolds."

As much as Bush? Anyone who believes that I gotta' bridge in Brooklyn for sale.

"Why did Kerry abandon his own rules about contribution limits? "This was just before the election, and it was clear the Democrats needed all their resources to fight the Bush money machine," Cutter says. Kerry spread the windfall strategically. More than a third of the fund's contributions went to just three states critical to a senator plotting a run for the White House: Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Today that certainly seems like money well spent."

Nothing wrong with this in my estimation. Both Dean and Kerry
didn't take PACs. Yes, in the real world of politics, you do
need money to take on the "Bush money machine". Dean will find that out. But this doesn't mean that Kerry won't take on some of
the huge conglomerates that fund, such as Enron, Halliburton,
the NRA, Wall Street and other huge sources of lobby money.

As I see it, there's no candidate that can get by on public funding today. I don't like it but that's the reality. But again,
the black and white issue that the Radical Right always like
to raise has nuance and other contexts. It's a matter of degree.
I've heard John Kerry speak and he's no George Bush.

Frank