OpenSecrets has awarded its “Money-in-Politics Oscars” to Hollywood movie stars.
Lead Actor
Jeff Bridges won the “lead actor” Oscar. He and his wife have given $64,800 in contributions to President Barack Obama, and 18 Democratic candidates, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and to Moveon.org.
Bridges’ main competitor was George Clooney who has donated $57,000 to Obama, seven other Democratic candidates and the DNC.
Morgan Freeman came in third with $7,400 to Obama and four other Democrats.
Lead Actress
The nominees are: Sandra Bullock, Helen Mirren, Carey Mulligan, Gabourey Sidibe and Meryl Streep, but, OpenSecrets says, “none of them have made political donations in the past two decades.
Supporting Actor
Nominated were: Matt Damon, Woody Harrelson, Christopher Plummer, Stanley Tucci and Christoph Waltz. (Who is Tucci and Waltz—never heard of them.) Matt Damon won the Oscar. Over the past 20 years Damon and his spouse has made $106,000 in federal political contributions. $9,200 to Obama and three other Democrats. $83,000 of it went to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
Supporting Actress
Maggie Gyllenhaal won this category by default as the only political contributor. She gave $3,300 to Obama and $1,000 to John Kerry.
Director
Nominated were: James Cameron, Kathryn Bigelow, Quentin Tarantino, Lee Daniels and Jason Reitman.
The winner was James Cameron. Cameron and spouse gave $14,000. $9,000 of which went to Democratic candidates. The rest went to the Republican Party of California.
Best Picture
The nominees in this category are James Cameron and John Landau for “Avatar”; Gil Netter, Andrew A. Kosove and Broderick Johnson for “The Blind Side”; Peter Jackson and Carolynne Cunningham for District 9; Finola Dwyer and Amanda Posey for “An Education”; Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Nicolas Chartier and Greg Shapiro for “The Hurt Locker”; Lawrence Bender for “Inglourious Basterds”; Lee Daniels, Sarah Siegel-Magness and Gary Magness for “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”; Joel Coen and Ethan Coen for “A Serious Man”; Jonas Rivera for “Up” and Daniel Dubiecki, Ivan Reitman and Jason Reitman for “Up in the Air”.
Lawrence Bender was the winner. He gave $65,100 to 19 politicians. $5,000 of it went to John Edwards.
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