Comcast Corporation is bragging of widespread support for its proposed $45 billion takeover of Time Warner Cable, but the victory chant is drowning out an important detail: Some of that support from public officials has followed big campaign contributions from Comcast executives. In a blog post on the company’s corporate website last week, David L. Cohen, Comcast’s executive vice president and chief merger lobbyist, boasted that nearly 70 mayors and more than 60 additional state and local officials have gone on record as proponents of the proposed merger, which would combine the country’s No. 1 and No. 2 cable companies into one massive pay-TV and broadband colossus.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who is supporting Comcast’s purchase of Time Warner Cable, has received more than $100,000 in donations from Comcast’s political committee and its employees. As detailed by the International Business Times yesterday, public records show that Comcast’s political arm and employees have been supporting Emanuel for a decade. Emanuel was a member of Congress from 2003 to 2009 and then served as President Obama’s chief of staff for nearly two years. He has been Chicago mayor since May 2011. “[D]uring his time running for and serving as mayor of Chicago, Emanuel has received large campaign contributions from Comcast and its employees, including from [Comcast Executive Vice President David] Cohen himself, who contributed $5,000 to Emanuel’s mayoral campaign in February 2011,” the International Business Times wrote. “Cohen also contributed $10,000 to the Chicago Committee, which the Chicago Tribune has described as Emanuel’s ‘other political fund (which) he uses for political activities that support his policy initiatives at City Hall.’ In all, records from the Illinois State Board of Elections show that Emanuel’s mayoral campaign and his other municipal political organizations have received $50,000 from Comcast employees since he began running for mayor in 2010.”
