San Diego — Padres owner and nominal Democrat John Moores is hedging his bets in the presidential race. On March 30 and 31, he is listed as giving a total of $4600 to Hillary Clinton's "exploratory committee." On February 28, he gave $2300 to the campaign of Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut. His onetime sidekick at the Padres, Larry Lucchino, who now oversees the Boston Red Sox, also gave Dodd $1000. For her part, Lucchino's wife Stacey, another onetime San Diegan, gave Clinton $4600. Another friend of Moores's, the U-T's David Copley -- a lifelong Republican like his late mother Helen, who was a big fan of Richard Nixon's -- didn't dabble in presidential politics. Instead, he contributed $2000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee in March and $2500 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee in April. ... GOP senator Trent Lott leads the political pack so far this year in money raised by so-called Leadership PACs, those funds maintained by politicians who dole out the money to their favored campaigns. Lott's is called the New Republican Majority Fund and had receipts of $997,992 through April. The biggest local donor was Rancho Santa Fe's Michael Hammes, chairman and CEO of Sunrise Medical, a maker of power wheelchairs, who gave $2700 in February. Coming in second was Democracy for America, a fund-raising operation set up by former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean, who accumulated $685,261. Downtown investment banker William D'Allaird gave $1000 to Dean's fund in April. Carol Cuatrecasas, wife of retired drug company executive Pedro Cuatrecasas of Rancho Santa Fe, also kicked in a total of $1000.