Armed Liberal

Yesterday, I talked about ‘investors’ in the political process.

Today, in the L.A. Times (registration required, or use ‘laexaminer’/’laexaminer’), there’s a good analytical article: ‘Drug Industry Poised to Real Political Dividends’.

WASHINGTON -- Few industries campaigned harder than pharmaceutical manufacturers to elect Republicans to the new Congress, and few industries are better positioned to reap the rewards of the election returns, analysts said Thursday.

"The pharmaceutical industry may be at the front of the line of groups looking at the next two years as an opportunity to make a lot of progress on their issues," said Larry Makinson, senior fellow at the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics in Washington.

They have a neat table of individual and PAC contributions to congressional campaigns broken out by industry and party. Check this out:

Lawyers and Law Firms
$59.3 million 72% D 28% R

Retired Persons
$50.2 million 36% D 64% R

Securities
$39.4 million 46% D 54% R

Real Estate
$38.5 million 47% D 53% R

TV/Movies/Music
$29.4 million 77% D 23% R

Insurance
$26.2 million 31% D 68% R

Health Professionals
$24.7 million 37% D 62% R

Computer Equipment & Services
$18.2 million 49% D 51% R

Pharma
$18.1 million 27% D 73% R

Oil and Gas
$17.6 million 20% D 80% R

It’s interesting to note how the party’s policies (pro-pharma in the case of the Republicans, anti-tort reform in the case of the Dems) neatly line up with 73%/27% and 72%28% splits in funding.

There’s a chicken-and-egg issue here; do the interest groups support the parties because they naturally align with them? Or do the parties shape their positions to accommodate the interest groups? But the result hatches all the same…