Constitutional Law

Cooper Arms exec backs Obama, perhaps with illegal contribution

USA Today ran a story noting that Dan Cooper, owner and CEO of Cooper Arms, is backing and contributing to Obama. It said he's given $3,300, "on top of the $1,000 check he wrote to Obama's U.S. Senate campaign in 2004, after he was dazzled by Obama's speech at that year's Democratic National Convention."

Snowflakes in Hell notes that he's caught flak, and is now claiming that he donated nine months ago, with the purpose of defeating Hillary, and that's he's now given to McCain. Snowflakes eats up that alibi: there's no record of a McCain donation. It appears it was after the convention. But as it was the ILL senate race, he was hardly motivated by seeing Obama defeat Hillary.

[Comment on how he might have gone over limits deleted here, since I investigated and show hard date in the post above. Basically, OpenSecrets and other secondary sources were picking up on FEC errors, and then adding some more of their own.]

UPDATE: I followed Bitter's suggestion and looked up the FEC records. Very confusing, since they have under his name and address two different Daniel Coopers who donate to Obama, and other errors, so I checked the images:

1/17: a New Yorker, no job given, donated $2100.
2/6: An Ohioan, CEO of Cooper Arms, gives $1000.
2/6: Sane person and occupation gives $800
2/6: Same person and occupation gets a refund of $800.
2/6: Same person and occupation gives $1000.

No reason given for the refund (-800), and the listing of cumulative donations doesn't match anything (they show for most of these cumulative donations of $3100 or 3200). Egad. All are for the primary tho, and the Ohio Cooper seems to have given $2800, going over the limit, which was probably remedied by the refund).

Full post as published by Of Arms and the Law on October 29, 2008 (boomark / email).