www.roanoke.com

Baristas, dishwashers, mobile pet groomers.

A healer, an activist for common sense, a happy warrior.

You think political contributors, and you might be tempted to think of fat cats, but a lot of other folks give to presidential campaigns. Regular folks, not-so-rich folks, funny folks.

In all, presidential candidates have rounded up more than 89,000 individual contributions in Virginia this election cycle. Democrat Barack Obama, who refused public money for this campaign and has to raise dough on his own, garnered 44,200 contributions, compared to 14,000 for McCain, who accepted public financing.

Who are these people? I wondered. So I looked through the latest batch of campaign finance data from the Federal Elections Commission.

There are plenty of the people you'd expect, and plenty which, if you didn't necessarily expect, have job titles that don't leap off the list: attorneys, homemakers, vice presidents, CEOs, physicians, professors, teachers, soldiers, sailors.

But I looked for the outliers, the oddballs, the freaks. And I found them.

Among Obama's contributors:

An adventurer ($750)
3 baristas ($380)
A dishwasher ($108.11)
A fast food worker ($100)
A "Happy Warrior" ($500)
A healer (1,000)
A medium ($72.91)
A United Nations peacekeeper ($850)
A "Realtor-didn't make a penny so far" ($100)
A rock counter ($1,300)
A Reiki empath ($207.60)
A Teddy Bear Maker ($186.68)

And then there were the non-responsive types.
Occupation?

Lotsoffun ($140)
I try to write ($40)
Why do you need to know this? ($66.70)
Yes ($250)

On McCain's side:

A delivery guy ($55)
A farmer/herder ($250)
A farmer/psychologist ($2,250)
A gemologist ($2,000)
A guru ($150)
A lingerie store owner ($400)
31 lobbyists ($33,470)
2 plastic surgeons ($1,050)
A yacht charterer ($1,000)

And don't forget the "Activist for common sense" ($100), and the person whose occupation is "Susan" ($1,000).

If it left me with kind of disposable cash, I could stand being a psychologist for livestock.