More executives seem sold on Obama

WASHINGTON -- Dan Cooper, a proud member of the National Rifle Association, has backed Republicans for most of his life. He's the chief executive of Cooper Arms, a small Montana company that makes hunting rifles.

Cooper said he voted for George W. Bush in 2000, having voted in past elections for every Republican presidential nominee back to Richard Nixon. In October 1992, he presented a specially made rifle to the first President. Bush during a Billings campaign event.

This year, Cooper has given $3,300 to the campaign of Democrat Barack Obama. That's on top of the $1,000 check he wrote to Obama's U.S. Senate campaign in 2004, after he was dazzled by Obama's speech at that year's Democratic National Convention.

Cooper is a player in one of the little-told dramas of the 2008 presidential campaign: how Obama has been able to out-raise Republican John McCain among swaths of the business community, outperforming previous Democratic presidential nominees in drawing business support.

Cooper changed sides, he said, "probably because of the war. And also because the Republican Party has moved so far right in recent years."

He also likes Obama's message about "the retooling of America, which involves the building of middle-class jobs and helping American small business be competitive with those overseas."

In 2000 and again in 2004, George W. Bush out-raised his Democratic rival among employees and executives of nearly every business sector, according to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, which codes contributors by occupation.

In this election, however, Obama has bested McCain among employees and executives in finance, insurance and real estate; health; communications; law; and "miscellaneous business," according to the center's tally of contributions through August.

McCain has maintained the traditional Republican lead in transportation, construction, defense, energy and agribusiness.

In the miscellaneous business sector — which includes retail, service industries and many small enterprises — Bush out-raised Democrat John Kerry, $20.6 million to $14.8 million in 2004. Obama has taken in $20.5 million from that sector to McCain's $13.4 million, records show. Those numbers don't include September and October, when Obama was raising tens of millions but McCain's campaign was not taking private donations. McCain accepted $84 million in public financing while Obama opted out of the federal system.