WASHINGTON
Health care professionals are giving Democrats a second look
after more than a decade of opening their wallets in favor of Republican
candidates.
The shift in giving is apparent in the presidential contest,
where leading Democrats are raising more cash from doctors, nurses and other
caregivers than are Republicans.
Two main factors are at play: Democrats now control Congress
and Democratic presidential candidates are raising more money than are
Republicans.
“The health care industry wants to influence the
majority in Congress and … they are reading the same tea leaves as everyone
else that suggest the Democrats could have good results in the 2008
elections,” Jonathan Oberlander, a health politics expert at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said in an e-mail.
No one better represents this realignment than Hillary
Rodham Clinton. She leads all presidential candidates with $700,000 in
donations from doctors and nurses, according to an Associated Press analysis of
Federal Election Commission data for the first six months of 2007.
The three leading fundraisers in the Democratic field
Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards have combined to amass nearly $2 million
from health professionals, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive
Politics.
