Goldman Sachs employees have given steadily but modestly to Cruz and Clinton. The Texas senator got about $31,000 in the second half, up from about $21,000 in the first six months, while the former secretary of state got about $47,000, down from about $49,000.

Dark Money

Even if the firm’s presidential donations have declined, the Wall Street bank has other connections to power. European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney and Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William Dudley are all alumni. And Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn gave House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s Republican Congressional fundraising committee $43,800 in December, one of its biggest donations of the quarter.

The federal data aren’t perfect. Cohn was listed as a self- employed investment banker on a $2,700 donation to Rubio in May, and Donald Mullen, who retired from the firm years ago, was listed as an employee on a $100,000 contribution to Clinton’s super PAC in June.

There’s also so-called dark money from nonprofit organizations that claim to have broader social agendas and don’t have to reveal their donors. Of the more than $300 million spent on political advertising since the start of last year, about two-thirds came from those groups, an analysis of Kantar Media CMAG data shows.

Dark money aside, Goldman Sachs bankers sent Bush about eight times as much as they gave Clinton last year.

“The money he raised early was largely in order to give him the chance to blow the others away early, which we know he did not do,” said Roy Smith, a finance professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business who was a Goldman Sachs partner until 1987. “In hindsight, they may regret giving the money -- or not, I don’t know. Maybe this isn’t over.”

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