It’s a threat so dire, protesters seized city parks throughout the nation. In their view, corporate spending holds too much sway in U.S. politics.

Protesters chant Occupy slogans for myriad reasons, but the populist movement by its very name challenges the role of big money in politics. The movement’s remedies lean decidedly towards the left.

More than a few elected Democrats have joined in with Occupy chorus – including Pres. Obama in a Kansas speech that highlighted the core Occupy theme about disparity of wealth and political power. In practice, Democrat office holders have been more receptive toward big money in the political process.

This year’s class of Democrats in the Roundhouse finds broad financial support among business interests – more so, in fact, than their Republican peers. Among members of the 2012 New Mexico legislature, Democrats on average accepted 20 percent more campaign contributions from big-business spenders than did the average Republican. The finding resulted from a Watchdog review of more than 17,000 campaign contributions, based on election records gathered by followthemoney.org.

In New Mexico legislative campaigns, big money is the name of the game. Overall, campaign contributions to members of the 2012 legislature followed a pattern that in the past year provided new entries into the nation’s household lexicon.

“In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent,” Columbia University professor and Nobel Laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz wrote in the May, 2011 edition of Vanity Fair. Stiglitz’s analysis gave life to the such terms as “99 percenter” and “the 1 percent.”

By those same terms, some 7,850 people, companies and PACs who contributed any amount less than $12,500 to current New Mexico legislators’ campaigns can call themselves the 99 percent. To the winners in the 2010 house election and 2008 Senate elections, 1 percent of donors gave 40 percent of all campaign contributions.

Hey, Big Spender

Although pundits more often pillory Republican legislators for being in the pockets of big business. Democrats in the 2012 legislature took the most campaign cash from big business. Democrats, who combined hold 56 percent of 112 legislative seats, netted 66 percent of donations from business interests among the top 1 percent of donors.

The pattern holds among the donors on the next tier – those 206 individuals, companies, parties and PACs that gave $5,000 or more to various winners in legislative races. Among 61 Democrats who accepted money from companies that gave $5,000 or more, each on average netted $10,422. The average Republican haul: $8,103.

It’s only among the top 10 percent of donors where Republicans nearly held their own in business contributions. The 44 percent of legislators seated on the Republican side netted 41 percent of the money from business donors who gave more than $1,000.

The top 1 percent may be the cream, but the top 10 percent of donors were the winning legislators’ cash cow. They gave 77 cents of every dollar contributed to winners in the 2008 Senate and 2010 House races.

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Who gives, who gets:

• Top business contributors to 2008 Senate, 2010 House winners

• Top 2008 Senate, 2010 House recipients of business contributions

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Who then, are the other 90 percent – the 7,000 donors who paid 23 cents of every campaign dollar handed to members of the 2012 legislature? As in the top tier, some are business interests. Most are individuals. Far more contribute to Democrats than Republicans.

About half contributed $100 or less. None contributed more than $1,000 to legislators’ campaigns. About 2,500 civic-minded constituents who contributed less than $100 – nearly a third of all contributors – provided less than 2 percent of all winning legislators’ campaign funds.

And though Democrats took the larger share of big-business spending, they also took in more from smaller donations, as compared to Republicans. Democrats hold control of the legislature by the narrowest margin in decades (56:44), but Democrat legislators raised more than twice as much money as Republicans during the most recent campaigns – $3.88 million against the Republican’s $1.88 million.

For each seat won, Democrats raised 57 percent more – averaging about $61,500 compared to $32,000 per seat Republicans legislators raised. Whats’ more, democrat legislators’ donor base dwarfs Republicans’. Democrat legislators took contributions from 5,616 donors compared to 2,780 who supported Republican candidates.

The 1 Percent

Democrats recipients outpaced Republicans among donors large and small, though big donors dominated contributions among Democrats and Republicans alike. Who are those big donors?

Top tier donors include the Democratic and Republican parties, party oriented PACS, ideology or issue-oriented PACs, unions, pueblos, individuals and candidates, but business interests dominate the top 10 percent of donors. Of every dollar the top 10 percent of donors give, companies or business groups give 57 cents.

Individuals contributed another 23 cents. PACs and political parties chipped in about 12 cents of the dollar, unions about 4 cents and pueblos another 2 cents. Combined, the contributions of about 780 donors amounted to 77 percent of the money legislators raised.

Among the upper tiers of those donors, companies and business interests also dominate. Among those businesses that contributed more than $5,000, the largest business group was oil and gas, followed by lawyers and lobbyists, real estate companies, health professionals, insurance interests and hospitals.

New Mexico Trial Lawyers topped the list of business donors, giving Democrats the lion’s share — 98 percent — of their $126,900 in legislative campaign contributions. The New Mexico Realtors Association, the second largest businesses-interest donor, was more bipartisan. Democrats got only slightly more than half of the associations $97,000 in campaign contributions.

New Mexico Hospital Association and New Mexico Medical Society were more sympathetic to Democrats. The hospitals gave 71 percent of their $51,675 legislative campaign chest to Democrats. The doctors anted in 63 percent in favor of Democrats.

Oil and gas companies Conoco Phillips and Chevron were the largest individual companies that donated. Each slightly favored Republican candidates. Tobacco giant Altria slightly preferred Republican candidates, while 69 percent of Anhauser-Busch’s $40,450 went to Democrats.

Super-size it

Unlike federal election law, New Mexico law makes little distinction between campaign contributions of companies and individuals. A new 2010 campaign-finance law – which took effect after the 2010 Senate election – prohibits candidates from accepting campaign contributions in excess of $5,000 from an individual or organizational donor. The law promises to reshape at least in part the way top-tier contributors participate in campaigns.

Most of the big-money donors who gave in excess of $5,000 to the most recent House and Senate campaigns contributed $5,000 or less to several candidates, which the law still allows. At least 34 current legislators, however, accepted individual, business or PAC donations in excess of $5,000 in the most recent elections. At the top of that list, the Democratic Party contributed $33,865 to Sen. Stephen Fishmann (D, Dist. 37), and $26,688 to Rep. Mimi Stewart (D, Dist. 21). Republicans threw in big behind Rep. Keith Gardner (R, Dist. 36).

Fishmann also took campaign donations of $10,000 and $12,000 from a family member. The state trial lawyers assocation made four $6,000 contributions – all to Democrats.

In the aggregate, Democrats candidates were the leading beneficiaries of corporate and business campaign spending, but Republicans netted the largest donations from business to individual candidates. Rep. Lorenzo Larranaga (R, Dist. 27) netted a $15,000 contribution from Albuquerque businessman Ted Martinez. Sen. Ingle Stuart (R, Dist. 27) campaign banked a $10,000 contribution from Austin-based ConocoPhillips and Rep. William Gray’s campaign got $10,000 from Artesia-based Mack Energy.