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Retirees give big to McCain

Email|Link|Comments (0) Posted by Foon Rhee, deputy national political editor September 4, 2008 01:24 PM

John McCain, who turned 72 last week, would be the oldest person elected to a first term as president.

And fellow seniors are opening up their wallets, helping him close the fund-raising gap on Democratic rival Barack Obama.

During June and July, when McCain's fund-raising picked up markedly, he received nearly two-thirds of the $12.6 million donated by retirees, who were a bigger source of campaign cash those two months than any industry, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics reported this afternoon.

Employees of one Florida retirement community, The Villages, even rank among McCain's top donors since June, the center reported.

"After a long period of lackluster fund-raising, the McCain campaign seems to have taken advantage of the less cluttered Republican field in recent months and gone to some of the traditional wells of campaign finance," the center's executive director, Sheila Krumholz, said in a statement. "John McCain's strong financial support from seniors recently mirrors polls that show that he's popular with that demographic."

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