Last week I posted information on how to track corporate election contributions under federal election law. This week I will show you where to find campaign contributions for Ohio elections.
States regulate campaign finance three ways: disclosure, contribution limits and public financing. All states require some level of disclosure on the amount and source of contributions and expenditures. Until recently, states could limit the amount and source of campaign contributions which included corporate giving. Several states offer public financing to candidates or political parties. There are limits and regulations associated with public financing and the grants only cover a small portion of the campaign costs. Source.
State Election Contribution Limits
Contribution limits can take the form of: who can receive contributions (candidates, political parties and political action committees), who can contribute (i.e., no unions or corporations), when contributions are permitted (i.e., not permitted during legislative session), and the amount of contribution. As of January 25, 2010, there are 24 states that prohibit or restrict corporate or union contributions for candidates. Ohio is one of those 24 states. See chart. Ohio corporate campaign laws are listed at the bottom of this post.
“It is important to note that the Citizens United v. FEC decision does not strike down bans on corporate and union contributions to candidates, which currently exist in 23 states. Only the ban on direct corporate and union spending on campaign advertising is addressed by this decision.” Source.
How to Find Political Contributions in Ohio
The Ohio Secretary of State supervises the administration of election laws and compiles campaign finance reports and statistics.
For campaign disclosure information for past elections, begin here. There are two ways to search Ohio’s campaign finance data.
- Use the Search Candidates and Committees link to access the Campaign Finance Query System. This is the easiest method. The tabs along the top allow users to search by candidate, political parties, Political Action Committees (PACs), and county political parties. Choose your tab and then at the next screen pick contributions or expenditures. You can search by name of candidate, contributor, city, zip code, amount of money, etc. The results of the search can be viewed in the browser, printed or downloaded.
For a sample search I looked for contributors to the gubernatorial election 0f 2006, enter:
City =AKRON (enter any city using all capital letters) or use the zip code search box.
Report Type = pre-general (for before the general election. Can also search for primaries, special elections, annual, or monthly data).
Office = governor (state elected officials, elected judges and retirement board elections are available).
Order by= I chose YEAR and DESCENDING so that the chart will display the latest election first. Other options to sort by are contributor’s name, address, amount of money, committee name, etc.
Output Format = HTML, EXCEL or ASCII. I chose HTML so that it displays in the browser. The Excel option allows you to save the spreadsheet to your computer.
Run Report = click the Run Report button to generate the table.
The web site is slow so be patient. The resulting chart lists individual and PACs contributions to the various candidates that ran for governor. 2006 data is displayed first. Click NEXT at the bottom of the chart to go to the next page.
There are other parameters to use for your search. You may wish to narrow your search by year, or by amount of money, or by a candidate’s name. To catch the last Presidential election, you can narrow the years using a BEGIN date of 01/01/2006 and the END date of 12/31/2008.
Conducting a similar search under the Political Action Committee (PAC) tab produces a list of contributors to each PAC. The PACs listed include insurance companies, unions, banks, law firms, corporations, professional associations and public interest groups. In summary, searching by PAC tells you who contributed to the PAC, and searching by candidate tells you which PACs supported what candidate.
2. The second way to obtain campaign finance data is to use the Download Common Reports Via FTP. For this method “the most commonly requested campaign finance data have already been queried and placed in a downloadable file.” The file can be opened in many spreadsheet or database programs. The choices are organized by contributions or expenditures for candidates, political parties or PACs. Some of the data goes back to 1994! I downloaded a few of the files and opened them in Excel. It wasn’t that difficult.
Also under this option is a list of active candidates and an Active PAC List, both dated Jan. 28, 2010. I searched for someone who is rumored to be a candidate but they were not listed, which may indicate a slight time lag between filing as a candidate to making it to the list on the web site. The OHIO PAC list has over 1000 entities listed!
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NOTE: Ohio’s election law R.C. 3517.103 was already declared unconstitutional by a state court case in August 2009!
See the Personal Funds Statute Warning more here.
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Ohio Corporate Contribution Laws
Below are the existing Ohio laws. Look for changes in these laws in the future due to the recent U.S. Supreme Court Case.
No corporation, no nonprofit corporation, and no labor organization, directly or indirectly, shall pay or use, or offer, advise, consent, or agree to pay or use, the organization’s money or property for or in aid of or opposition to a political party, a candidate for election or nomination to public office, a political action committee including a political action committee of the corporation or labor organization, a legislative campaign fund, or any organization that supports or opposes any such candidate, or for any partisan political purpose. §3599.03
No person shall make, during the thirty days preceding a primary election or during the thirty days preceding a general election, any broadcast, cable, or satellite communication that refers to a clearly identified candidate using any contributions received from a corporation or labor organization. §3517.1011(H)
Other Useful Links
National Conference of State Legislatures- Elections and Campaigns
National Conference of State Legislatures- contributions limits with links to charts.
Campaign Finance Legislation Database. Search by states, topics related to campaign finance and year. You can search for 2010 to find current changes in state election laws, but only some of the state legislatures are in session right now. Many state elections laws will be affected by the Supreme Court opinion and will need to be brought into compliance with the ruling.
Election Law @ Moritz web site and blogs sponsored by Ohio State University.
Brookings Institute, on Campaign Finance.
