Bush's Bagmen

Meet the Pioneers and Rangers, the president's A-team for campaign cash

Carole Bionda darted through the halls of the Capital Hilton, armed with a red-white-and-blue tote bag bulging with checks made out to Bush-Cheney '04. Three hundred executives from the nation's most influential construction firms were meeting at the hotel last June, just two blocks from the White House, and Bionda was drumming up money for the president's re-election campaign. As the executives split up into regional caucuses, she ran from room to room, pitting South against East, West against Midwest. "The guys next door gave $20,000," Bionda told one group, putting on her best cheerleader voice. "You're not going to let them beat you?"

It was an easy sell. Bush has done plenty to help the construction industry: Only a few weeks after taking office, he got rid of Clinton-era regulations that would have improved working conditions on federal projects and denied government contracts to big polluters. "Our mantra is free enterprise," says Bionda, chair of a trade group called Associated Builders and Contractors. "Most of the policies of the Bush administration are in line with our mantra."

The executives knew their checks wouldn't go unnoticed by the White House. Bionda had been assigned a code that would allow the Bush campaign to calculate, down to the last dime, how much money she raised. "You're probably going to support President Bush later in the election," she told her fellow contractors. "What I want is for you to write a check now, with a tracking number." Out came the checkbooks. In three days, Bionda's tote bag filled with $147,000 for the president. In return, Bush named Bionda a "Pioneer" -- an honorary title he reserves for fund-raisers who personally collect at least $100,000 for his campaign.

Welcome to the most ambitious and best-organized shakedown in the history of American presidential politics. Bush is working to raise a record $200 million -- and so far, at least sixty percent of his campaign donations have come from just 416 elite fund-raisers like Bionda. Never before have so few raised so much so quickly. It's a fine-tuned operation that takes the principles of corporate America and applies them to political fund-raising: Bigger is better. Foster competition. Reward your best salesmen. Each Pioneer is assigned a tracking number, which donors write on their checks. Results are posted online, ranked by success level, and the campaign uses the list to encourage the fund-raisers to even greater heights. "We're trying to foster a healthy amount of competition among our supporters," says a Bush spokesman.

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