Employees of Credit Card Firm are Bush’s Largest Funding Source

August 4, 2000

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MBNA Corp., the Wilmington, Pa.-based credit card company, has become Republican presidential hopeful George W. Bush’s single largest source of campaign money, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. MBNA employees and their families have given more than $250,000 to the Republican’s presidential bid, which could potentially give MBNA favor with Republicans on bankruptcy reform. The practice is known as “bundling,” which targets contributions by employees to a particular candidate or cause. Since corporations are barred from giving directly to candidates, they can give through political action committees with a limit of $5,000 per candidate. MBNA, a publicly traded company with 23,000 employees and earnings of more than $1 billion last year, has some of the highest-paid employees in the Philadelphia region who have given millions of dollars in recent years to a variety of political candidates and committees, usually Republicans.