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RankNameTotal
Contributions		Partisan Index*Measures giving to candidates, parties and PACS that are Democrat/ liberal, Republican/ conservative or other parties. The index does not necessarily represent a donor's total giving.
1Alida Messinger Philanthropist; Rockefeller heir $9,165,357
2Brian Sullivan Sterilmed CEO $2,274,326
3Steven Kirsch InfoSeek founder $2,012,276
4Robert Cummins Primera Technology president $1,656,204
5Vance Opperman Key Investments CEO $1,342,759
6Michael Ciresi Former U.S. Senate candidate $1,316,253
7Stanley Hubbard Hubbard Broadcasting CEO $1,128,400
8Mark Dayton Former U.S. senator $1,104,250
9Matthew Entenza Former MN House member $813,292
10Glen Taylor Timberwolves owner $754,440
11John Cowles Former Star Tribune publisher $732,350
12Robert Ulrich Retired Target CEO $730,621
13Fred Eychaner Newsweb Corp. owner $699,372
14Bren Simon MBS Associates president $595,238
15Donald Sussman Paloma Partners Management CEO $525,000
16Bernard Schwartz BLS Investments $524,569
17Bob Perry Perry Homes owner $501,000
18Timothy Owens Voyager Financial Services president $490,021
19Thomas Lowe Former Lyman Lumber CEO $442,324
20David Koch Former Graco CEO $438,360
21Thomas Petters Petters Group Worldwide CEO $435,092
22Bruce Dayton Former Dayton Hudson CEO $431,200
23John Goodman Goodman Group $380,727
24Daniel Abraham Slim-Fast founder $357,500
25Julia Dayton   $355,645
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The rankings represent donations made since Jan. 1, 2001 to federal and state campaigns and political action committees. The information was obtained from the Federal Election Commission (FEC), the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Only donations made by Minnesota residents or donations made to Minnesota candidates and political action committees were included in the analysis. Because some campaign finance records did not contain sufficient information to accurately identify all of the donors, some records were not used in the analysis. The data includes filings to the FEC through Aug. 2008, to the IRS through July 2008 and to Minnesota Campaign Finance through Dec. 2007.

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