John Dunn wants to make sure the candidate he supported — President-elect Barack Obama — has an easy transition to power come Jan. 20.

So he sent Obama's transition team $250 to help defray costs.

"They are running such a smooth machine, and I wanted to contribute to help them," said Dunn, 46, of Mansfield. "It costs a lot of money for the transition. There's offices, a staff of over 400 people, leasing of the building and more costs like that.

"They have a monumental task to deal with," he said. "The fewer obstacles they have, like money, the less his team has to deal with."

Dunn is one of 88 Texans who together donated more than $42,000 to help defray transition costs for Obama in the first 11 days after the election. Overall, 1,776 donors gave nearly $1.2 million, according to a list released Monday by the Obama-Biden transition team.

That's about one-third of the amount the transition team hopes to raise, which is in addition to $8.5 million in taxpayer money.

Obama is not accepting donations from lobbyists, unions, corporations and political action committees. By law, donors cannot give more than $5,000 to the transition effort.

"He's not accepting money from the big fat cats, or the corporations," Dunn said.

Obama's transition office isn't required to disclose the transition donors until Feb. 20, a month after he takes office, but the team has indicated that it will release contributions at the end of each month, according to the Opensecrets.org watchdog Web site.

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