toledoblade.com --

They were executives, lobbyists, evangelical Christians, political veterans and rookies, and a rare-coin dealer from Maumee. They bankrolled a president.

Thirty Ohioans collected at least $4.1 million for George W. Bush's re-election campaign last year - exceeding Sen. John Kerry's entire take from the state. They raised $2.4 million more for the Republcan National Committee.

They are Ohio's "Pioneers" and "Rangers," President Bush's most prolific fund-raisers. Most Ohio voters have never heard of them, but the White House knows them well.

They have sat on crucial policy committees and won choice appointments. In the last five years, their firms have conducted more than a billion dollars of business with the state and the federal government.

One was Tom Noe.

Prepare to meet the rest.

The Blade assembled a team of six reporters to investigate how the Bush-Cheney campaign raised millions to win the Buckeye State.

Using raw data, the reporters assembled portraits of each of the top fund-raisers' poltical donations. They also built a database of checks cut by the state over the last five years and mined federal databases to track the state and federal dollars paid to the firms of Ohio's Pioneers and Rangers.

Over the next four days, The Blade will introduce you to the 29 men and women who engineered a fund-raising landslide for Mr. Bush in Ohio and helped deliver him a narrow victory in the state. The series will show:

How several of those fund-raisers tied their fortunes to government spending, sometimes through unbid contracts.

How Republican leaders, including future Pioneers and Rangers, built what was a ragged state party into a rich, well-tuned machine. The GOP has dominated Ohio politics for a decade and a half and laid the groundwork for Mr. Bush's 2004 victory.

How a half-dozen Democratic fund-raisers in Ohio corralled at least $750,000 for Sen. John Kerry's losing presidential bid, and what they stood to gain if he had won.

How the increased mingling of money and politics raises questions about the electoral process, and what experts call Americans' best hopes for influencing public policy without writing or collecting large checks.

A year after Ohio's 20 electoral votes clinched Mr. Bush's re-election - and only days after a federal grand jury indicted Mr. Noe on felony charges of laundering cash to the President's campaign - a Blade investigation shows the power of money along the Ohio Trail.

To read the stories, click on the links below.

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