Internal campaign donations

This is an interesting little article that initially focuses on Edwards, but then goes on to examine all the campaigns, in seeing how much money they raised was from donations by campaign staff (and the candidates themselves). The Dean campaign is no exception, though most of its donations to itself were nowehere near the deadlines and thus clearly not intended to beef up the Q3 reporting:

Five senior Dean for America staffers gave to the campaign on June 30, though three of them gave less than $300 each, and one of them, longtime Dean adviser Tom McMahon, gave $500. Most internal donations to the Dean campaign seemed to have been geared toward keeping the campaign afloat during Dean's stint in the cash-poor wilderness last winter. Fund-raiser Steve Grossman donated $1,000 last December and another $1,000 in January, while campaign manager Joe Trippi gave $250 in January and $1,999 on March 20, putting him $249 over the legal limit, according to FEC records. Trippi says the first donation was from his wife on a shared credit card, and attempts to have it labeled as such in the FEC database are ongoing.

(emphasis mine). Intriguingly, the Kerry campaign had almost no internal donations. Mainly because he leads the pack with cash on hand and has the Heinz fortune in reserve, so that certainly seems wise :)