Bankrolling Reid

With Sen. Harry Reid in the midst of a tough re-election fight, the Center for Public Integrity in a report out today calculates the Senate majority leader has raised more than $42 million in political donations since he arrived in Congress in 1982.

The report is here, first in what the center, a Washington-based watchdog group, says will be a series of studies on the career fundraising of Senate and House leaders.

That 1982 race for the U.S. House cost Reid just over $500,000, according to the center.

"How times have changed," the center said. "With a hotly contested re-election battle on the horizon this November, Reid's campaign committee spent more than eight times that amount in 2009 alone."

ATT Inc. tops the list of political action committees that have supported the Nevada Democrat over the years, with a total $133,000 in donations.

PACs run by organized labor groups (laborers, public employees, machinists, railroad workers), trial lawyers, the American Bankers Association, the tobacco company Altria Group Inc., and Nevada gaming firms MGM Mirage and Harrah's made up the top 10.

Among individuals, the most generous contributor was David B. Krone, a former telecommunications lobbyist and executive who gave $35,000. Krone liked Reid so much he went to work for him in December 2008 as a senior adviser.

"Krone’s biggest contribution to Reid, however, may be the steep pay cut he took to work in the leader’s office," the center said. "According to LegiStorm.com, his personal financial disclosure noted more than $5 million in salary, severance, and living reimbursements for 2008, before he joined Reid’s office. His salary as an aide to Reid: about $165,000 per year."

In the top five individual donors were Rita Lewis, who is senior vice president of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association; Las Vegas taxi and limousine operator Phyllis Frias; Southern Nevada developer Billy Walters; and Fatih Ozmen, chief executive of Sierra Nevada Corp., the Sparks defense contractor.