Wall Street Bets on Kennedy

Joseph Kennedy III, running to replace retiring Democratic Congressman Barney Frank, recently filed his quarterly campaign finance reports with the FEC.  Kennedy is off to a fast start, raising over $1.3 million in the first quarter.

Some of the haul comes from traditional Democratic activist groups (Hollywood, labor PACs, and so forth), but no small portion of it comes from Wall Street.  Kennedy received individual donations of $2500 each from executives affiliated with the following firms: Citigroup, Millennium Capital, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America (including a former chairman), BlackRock, the Marshall Group, QueensFort Capital, the Capital Group, and Boston Capital.  And those are only some of the marquee names in Kennedy's list of Wall Street-related contributors.  Frank, former chair of the House Financial Services Committee, also had numerous allies on Wall Street.  He has praised Kennedy highly.

Kennedy's leading Republican rival, Sean Bielat, has raised $175,000 in the first quarter.  High finance was not so generous with Bielat.