Which specific donations to Bernie Sanders’ campaigns were from corporate lobbyists or corporate PACs and what do FEC records show?

1. Specific named donations found in reporting and filings

Campaign finance reporting and investigative outlets list individual cases: PolitiFact documents Martin Paone — a longtime Senate staffer and registered lobbyist profile — giving $500 to Sanders’ Senate campaign in 2009 and $1,000 in 2011, and notes Amanda Aspatore, a lobbyist for the National Mining Association, giving $250 in earlier cycles ^[1]. OpenSecrets and reporting on the 2020 cycle identify health‑industry donors itemized in FEC filings, including a $2,800 contribution from a Beacon Health Options lobbyist and $1,000 contributions from Pfizer executives, which were captured in FEC/OPENSECRETS data reviews ^{[3] [4]}.

2. How many lobbyists and what kinds of corporate ties we’re talking about

Investigations by the Center for Public Integrity and contemporaneous coverage found “nearly two dozen” federally registered lobbyists had contributed to Sanders’ presidential campaign across cycles, with donors tied to groups ranging from the National Cannabis Industry Association to mining and labor organizations, underscoring that the phenomenon is real but numerically limited ^{[2] [6]}.

3. What FEC records show and how to read them

The Federal Election Commission provides candidate pages and exportable transaction data where individual contributions above disclosure thresholds appear; the Sanders candidate page and the FEC data portal are the authoritative locations for those itemized contributions ^{[7] [8]}. OpenSecrets cautions that its profiles derive from FEC reports and that detailed processing can lag summary totals, meaning discrete line‑item searches in FEC raw filings are the definitive way to verify a named donation ^[5].

4. Corporate PACs, executives and the legal picture

Federal law prevents corporations from contributing directly to federal candidates, but PACs, corporate executives and registered lobbyists can and do contribute as individuals or through separate PACs; OpenSecrets’ top‑donor tables and reporting explain that corporate PACs, employee/owner contributions and individual executives show up in donor lists even when the corporation itself cannot give directly ^[9]. Sanders’ campaign, which publicly pledged to reject corporate PAC money in certain cycles, has nevertheless had itemized receipts from individual lobbyists and industry executives recorded on FEC filings ^{[10] [1]}.

5. Limits of disclosure and caveats that shape the picture

Analysis of Sanders’ donor universe is constrained by FEC disclosure rules and reporting structures: only transactions that exceed a cycle‑to‑date $200 threshold are individually disclosed, conduit structures and intermediaries used in past Sanders campaigns can obscure the identity of many small donors, and nonprofit affiliates (e.g., Our Revolution) have different disclosure regimes that complicate a single‑source accounting ^{[11] [12]}. Those technical realities mean publicly visible lobbyist and corporate‑industry donations are verifiable but do not capture every pathway money may travel.

6. Bottom line — specific donations exist, but they’re limited and visible in filings

There is no contradiction between Sanders’ public stance against corporate influence and the factual record that a modest number of registered lobbyists, corporate executives and industry‑tied individuals made itemized contributions to his campaigns; those contributions — for example the Paone entries, Aspatore’s gift, and the Beacon Health Options and Pfizer‑linked donations — are documented in FEC reports and compiled by watchdogs such as OpenSecrets and the Center for Public Integrity, and they represent a small share of Sanders’ overall fundraising totals as reflected in federal filings ^{[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [7]}.