Roseville and Granite Bay have ponied up big bucks for national candidates in this year’s presidential election cycle, records show.

Political donations by residents in the four Zip codes comprising the greater-Roseville region were on track to break local records this election cycle, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based nonprofit that tracks political donations.

Total area donations topped $677,722 by the end of August, putting the region on track to break the $685,775 raised during the last presidential race in the intervening weeks, records show.

This year’s figure includes donations to the presidential and congressional candidates and PACs made during the current election cycle up until Aug. 31, including during the primaries.

And despite the region’s large Republican registration, Democratic candidates and organizations walked away with a surprisingly large share of the largesse, according to a Press-Tribune analysis.

Affluent Granite Bay led the pack. Donations from the 95746 Zip code stood at $351,888 – about eight times as much as the average Zip code – according to the most recent tally.

The time covered includes the period in which both presidential candidates accepted individual contributions; Sen. McCain stopped accepting direct campaign contributions on Sept. 1 because he opted for public financing, a move Sen. Obama resisted.

Who’s on the receiving end? Records show Democrat Barack Obama led his Republican rival John McCain, $40,400 to $35,950 among Granite Bay residents.

But enthusiasm in the primaries for Republican presidential also-ran Mitt Romney dwarfed those. He had collected $68,550 from Granite Bay before the end of his run, records show.

The individual candidate totals should be considered a rough glimpse into an area’s donation preferences because they do not include non-itemized contributions totaling less than $200.

Placer County is the state’s second-most Republican county, with the GOP claiming 49.7 percent of registered voters to 29.6 percent for Democrats.

But that advantage doesn’t always translate into a clear fundraising trend.

The east Roseville neighborhood of 95661, which also includes a portion of Citrus Heights, had contributed $183,626, about $5,000 less than the previous presidential cycle.

Nearly 16 percent of that came from area developer Kyriakos Tsakopoulos, who donated $28,500 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in March, records show.

Obama walked away with $21,128 from the Zip code, more than double his rival’s $10,027.

In the west Roseville Zip code of 95747, which includes Woodcreek and Sun City Roseville neighborhoods, residents had donated $78,327, more than $10,000 above what the Zip gave in the previous presidential election cycle.

Again, Romney towered over the other candidates, with $12,050 collected. But Obama led McCain $8,800 to $7,551.

In the less affluent 95678 Zip code, residents had contributed $63,871 by Aug. 31. That’s about $6,000 less than the total given during the entire 2004 cycle.

by Nathan Donato-Weinstein
Roseville Press-Tribune

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