Trump Donations to Republicans and Democrats Differ by Less than $10,000

ABC News' Nick Gass reports:

Republican presidential hopeful and Tea Party darling Donald Trump may be flirting with a run for President as a Republican, but he has not discriminated with his political donations in the past 15 years.

An ABC News analysis of Trump’s various federal campaign contributions to political action committees, soft money and joint fundraising yielded very close results between Democratic and Republican donations. Between 1997 and 2011, Trump donated $280,100 to Republican candidates and related PACs and $270,200 to Democrats and Dem-backed PACs.  Still, Trump donated more to Republicans than Democrats in soft money and joint fundraising.

In soft money, Trump’s donations totaled $45,000 for Democrats and $86,000 for Republicans, while in joint fundraising, Democrats received $30,100 and Republicans got $43,850.

The most notable Democrats to receive Trump’s money include Hillary Clinton, Charles Rangel, Harry Reid, Max Baucus, Charles Schumer, Joe Lieberman, John Kerry, Chris Dodd, and the late Edward M. Kennedy.

However, Trump supported the McCain-Palin campaign fundraising effort to the tune of $32,450 alone in 2008. He has also backed Rudolph Giuliani’s campaigns and his Solutions America PAC at various times in the last decade. Between 1997 and 2010, Trump has donated a combined $57,400 to the National Republican Congressional and Senatorial committees. By comparison, in that same time frame, Trump donated $91,500 to the Democratic congressional and senatorial committees.

And a few of Trump’s recipients have either had to resign for improper personal conduct former Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., former Democratic Senator Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., and former Rep. Chris Lee, R-N.Y., or face a barrage of ethical questions, like Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.

Trump addressed his numerous Democratic contributions in an April 14 interview with Sean Hannity. “Everyone is Democratic [in New York],” he said. “So, what am I going to do, contribute to Republicans? Am I going to contribute to, I mean, one thing I'm not stupid. Am I going to contribute to a Republican for my whole life when they get, they run against some Democrat? And the most they can get is one percent of the vote?”

Trump has given money at the state level, too. These figures are culled from federal disclosure forms. For instance, Trump gave former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s successful Chicago mayoral bid $50,000. But now that Trump may challenge Emanuel’s old boss, it’s unlikely he’ll be invited to Emanuel’s inauguration later this month. Emanuel is using some of the $2.2 million he had left over in campaign coffers to pay for the extravaganza, which will include a performance by the Rolling Stones.

ABC’s Gerard Middleton, Z. Byron Wolf and Kristina Bergess contributed to this report.