Jewish Home Chairman Naftali Bennett has surpassed Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in both the amount of donations and the number of individual donors in the campaign for elections for the 20th Knesset.
The data was revealed Wednesday night on Channel 10’s economic program Laila Calcali (Economic Night).
Netanyahu, the previous leader in campaign donations, has collected NIS 800,000 ($200,000) from 21 donors, mainly Americans. Bennett’s has collected over one million shekels ($250,000) from 35 contributors, most of them American as well.
But the most prominent contributor to the current election campaign so far, according to published on the State Comptroller’s website, is Russian-born media tycoon Vladimir Gusinsky.
The oligarch Gusinsky, who holds dual Spanish and Israeli citizenship after being stripped of his Russian citizenship in 2001, has donated tends of thousands of shekels to three Knesset members from the Likud party – Ze’ev Elkin, Yuli Edelstein, and Silvan Shalom.
Likud’s long-time political rival, the Labor party, has also seen its fair share of fundraising from members.
Knesset member Omer Ber-Lev, who serves as Labor’s point-person on issues of peace and defense, is note-worthy for raising tens of thousands of shekels from both top lawyer Giora Erdinast and popular businessman Ilan Shiloah, the former CEO of Israel’s largest advertising firm.
In response to a query from Channel 10 News, Ber-Lev explained, “Erdinast is the little brother of my first company and Shiloah served in the same unit with me [in the army.]”
Among the other MK’s doing well in collecting donations from the public are Likud MK Moshe Feiglin, who has mustered NIS 309,000 ($75,000) to date.
Behind him stands MK Shelly Yechimovich (Labor), who has raised NIS 131,000 ($33,000), followed by Ze’ev Elkin from Likud, who has raised over NIS 50,000 ($12,500).
While these are the current figures, analysts on Laila Calcali stressed that this could change in the months before the elections, which is scheduled for March 17, 2015.
The same can be said of the latest election polls which find Labor on top with 25 and Likud trailing with 22. Jewish Home sits in third place with a predicted 17 mandates.
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