Tuesday, October 09, 2012

Big Bird Creator Cooney's
$312K Donations to Obama & Dems

(Big Bird, Elmo and Joan Cooney.)

The Sesame Workshop nonprofit, the group behind the "Sesame Street" show and Big Bird, today posted this note to their blog:

Sesame Workshop is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization and we do not endorse candidates or participate in political campaigns. We have approved no campaign ads, and as is our general practice, have requested that the ad be taken down.

My curiosity piqued about any donations from executives, performers and community organizers, I searched Federal Election Commission records and here's what I discovered.

First, the Sesame Workshop has made no donations to any candidate for any office.

However, Joan Ganz Cooney, the founder of the show that gave us Big Bird, has contributed $109,700 to Barack Obama's presidential campaigns and $203,200 to his Priorities USA Action committee and the Democratic National Committee since 2008.

Cooney's total giving to Obama and the Democrats since 2008 comes to $312,900.

For the same time period, other Sesame Workshop folks have donated $6,750 to Obama.

I don't have a problem with the donations and am not surprised that Cooney is a big donor to the president and the Democrats. Her donations pale in comparison to the millions of dollars from the likes of the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson and friends of Karl Rove.

This information about the Cooney and Sesame Workshop donations is shared in the interest of political and fiscal transparency.

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