ken vogel follows money and politics for politico. he's the author of big money. here to talk about that big money, and the influence. thank you for being with me. let's look at the top five donors. tell us about the billionaire on the list and the big take away from them. >> yeah tom story was the leading donor. he's a liberal, a retired san francisco hedge fund. he gave about $75 million in 2014. what is interesting, like a lot of major donors he gave not through the parties primarily or the candidates but to his own super pac. this is a group he set up to pursue his main cause, climate change and reducing climate change. he, like a lot of these other donors because of this sort of became a party unto himself. he didn't have great success in the seven races he played in a big way, he won only three of them. but his people say he's just getting started. look out in 2016. >> that's what happens when you have the zeros in the bank account. as you point out in the article democrats have gotten over their uneasiness with big money? >> yeah, that's right. democrats af

who better to talk some 2016 politics than politico reporter ken vogel and lauren fox who covered politicsdy doesn't need the money. so how's the bush event later today fitting into his overall campaign strategy? >> well you always need the money. and the consultants will tell you they'll always find a way to spend it. this race is sort of the last chance for these potential 2016 contenders to really show that they have some pull both nationally and in key states and ability to raise money, really what folks are looking at at this early stage of the 2016 race, with both jeb bush raising money for cassidy and hillary clinton raising money for landrieu. you don't need to look too far to see we are already in 2016 mode. a lot of attention is going to be on these fund-raisers to see how much money they can bring in, how popular these two folks are as surrogates. >> i'm wondering if bush is getting any closer to making a decision one way or the other. what's your feeling on that? >> he says by the end of the year. that's really i think when he need to make the decision. obviously, he has the ap

. >> ken vogel writes for politico in his day job, chief investigative reporter. on the site he has published a book written a book i should say, big money. that's quite a sum total. let's start with the subtitle. >> my goal here was to get behind the scenes of these multi-multimillionaires and billionaires are playing an outside wall in american politics, a little of some of these court decision that allowed them to spend a ton of money in politics shape the elections and sometimes secretly. they stem from a efforts to get behind the scene into these private rooms or they're making decisions about which candidates to back the suspicious vehicle was my own rental car which was reported as suspicious when i got into the coke brother seminar in april 2013, their security kick me out, reported my car as suspicious to the riverside county sheriff out in california who ended up tracking down and telling me i was not wanted on this property. around the cup was hired to do security for the democratic governors association around the democratic national convention in char