Washington » Citigroup is a struggling financial behemoth that lost money last quarter and appears to be months away from returning any of the $45 billion in taxpayer money it received in last year's Wall Street bailout.

But two dozen of the company's executives were able to contribute to Utah Sen. Bob Bennett's re-election effort, giving a combined $32,000 since July, according to his latest campaign finance disclosure.

Bennett, a Republican up for re-election next year, supported the creation of the Troubled Asset Relief Program in late 2008 and its first payout of $350 billion. His political challengers have used that vote as a bludgeon ever since, arguing that TARP ballooned the national debt, but did little to stem the economic crisis.

They see the Citigroup contributions as continued evidence of Bennett's ties to corporations that are over-reliant on government.

"Corporate welfare recipients are not going to support someone like me who wants to have a level playing field and who will not put their votes up to be sold or traded or gambled away in some backroom. I'm just not that kind of a candidate," charged Cherilyn Eagar, one of a handful of Republican challengers who are positioning themselves as more conservative alternatives to Bennett, a three-term incumbent.

"This is just payback," said Jason Powers, the campaign manager for Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, another Republican

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who is trying to unseat Bennett. "We can't change Washington, D.C., by sending the same people back there who have been part of the problem."

Bennett, a senior member of the Banking Committee, defended the contributions and his TARP vote, saying the effort helped stabilize an economy that could easily have gone into free fall.

"I still don't apologize for my vote for the first round of TARP," he said, noting that he opposed the second round of TARP funding, the automotive bailouts and the economic stimulus bill.

In reaction to the comments from Eagar and Shurtleff, Bennett said: "I don't necessarily respond to the attacks of my opponents, particularly when they are out hustling money from any place they can possibly get it."

Bennett raised more from Citigroup than Eagar collected from all sources in the past three months. She took in $21,700 last quarter and has about $10,000 left in her account.

Shurtleff's campaign has refused to release its campaign finance report -- the only major Utah candidate for federal office to do so. His report should be posted on the Federal Election Commission's Web site in the next week or two.

The Democratic challenger, Sam Granato, raised $19,600 in the past three months and has about $9,250 left.

Like most incumbents, Bennett has a massive financial advantage, fueled in part by long-time personal relationships and by the companies that have an interest in the committees he sits on.

Bennett raised $392,000 last quarter. That total includes about $28,000 from the executives of Marriott hotels, which is owned by a prominent Mormon family who has given to the senator in the past.

The sum also includes the 25 individual donations from Citi executives, 11 of who identified their employer as "Citi Holdings," which is the part of the company that contains all the troubled assets.

Some federal lawmakers have limited the donations they would accept from TARP recipients, shunning money from the companies that received the most assistance or from related political action committees.

Others such as Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., who heads the House Financial Services Committee, said he will take no contributions from TARP recipients.

Some of the banks that took TARP money also temporarily curtailed their political contributions. "There are sensitivities there," Scott Talbot, a lobbyist for the industry told The New York Times this week. Political contributions "can make a donor a target.'

Bennett hasn't limited his fundraising in such ways and has no plans to do so in the future.

"I am not going to screen through who everybody works for. If somebody comes to a fundraiser, I'm not going to say 'I'm not going to take from you,'" Bennett said. The only groups he said he wouldn't take money from are beer wholesalers.

He noted that if he declined contributions from TARP recipients, he couldn't take money from Zions Bank, which received $1.4 billion in bailout money. Zions is a respected Utah financial institution and a major donor to political campaigns. Eagar received $240 from a Zions banker in the last quarter. Bennett received a few thousand dollars from Zions as well.

mcanham@sltrib.com

Campaign help from bailed out companies

Sen. Bob Bennett received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from executives of Citigroup, which received billions in federal aid