How much money and to which candidate, did corporations donate in the last election?

The recent Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. FEC, deals with corporations, unions and other groups contributing to independent campaign advertising.  This case is discussed by others in this blog.     

Related to this case, did you know that campaign contributions are made publically available by the Federal Election Commission?  You can find out who contributed, how much to what candidate.   With a few extra steps you can trace it back to a corporation.  Instructions on how to find this information follows.

 Individuals’ Contributions

We will fist look at searching for individual contributions because it is rather easy.  Find out who contributed in the last political campaign and how much was donated to each candidate.  The Federal Election Commission web site provides this data and is easy to search.

Contributions to the 2008 Presidential Campaign are available here.  Search by donor’s name, by city or zip code.  When searching by name, enter the last name in the search box, then a comma, and then the first name.  So to search for the Ohio Governor’s contributions, the search would look like this  -  strickland, ted.  Try searching for celebrities or your own name!

Search here to find out how much an individual donated over several campaigns.

Want community wide figures?

Click on Ohio on this map, and then holding your mouse over Akron (zip code 443xx), and it will show that $493,833 was donated by individuals in the last Presidential Campaign.  Hmmmm.  It looks like Kent (zip 442xx) donated more ($691,349)!

To get data broken down for Akron, at the Presidential Campaign Finance page, click the down arrow and select to search by city.  Searching “Akron” generates a chart of people who live in Akron, how much they donated and to which candidate.  After a chart is displayed, columns can be sorted so try sorting the displayed chart by state, zip code or candidate’s name.  (There are other communities called Akron in the country so sort by state to get Akron, Ohio data grouped together.)

Corporation Contributions

Now for the fun part but not an easy search in this database!  First, you can search by Political Action Committees (PAC) or other political group/party (i.e., Green Party) by starting here.  Select the 2007-2008 election cycle.  Then search by your candidate’s last name.  At the next screen, click on your candidate’s name and then click on the Non-Party (PACs) link.   See how much money was donated by the unions, professional associations and PACs.  Some corporations form a PAC and donate that way.  So for instance, Goodyear’s PAC is called Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company Good Government Fund.

Next, in the list of Committees who gave to the candidate, click on the name of the PAC you are interested in.  I chose the National Rifle Association (NRA).  Click on the Contributions Received link.  Sometimes in the list of contributors you will see corporate donors listed.  For my NRA example we see that Microsoft Corp. Political Action Committee donated money to the NRA PAC back in 2000.  (Why would Microsoft donate to the NRA?)  So a corporate PAC can donate to an association’s PAC who eventually contributes to a candidate. 

This is one way to find corporate contributions.  It is rather difficult and requires several steps.  There is an easier way! 

Another web site that tracks Political Action Committees is  OpenSecrets.org.     It is not a government site.  Find out which PAC corporations are donating to which candidates.   Search for the corporation in the search box in the upper right corner of the OpenSecrets.org web page.  Change the campaign cycle using the drop down arrow in the middle of the page.  Let’s change it to the 2008 campaign cycle and we’ll try searching Microsoft again.  You get charts of spending and list of candidates supported (click recipients).  The list of donors shows who contributed to the corporate PAC.   So if you want to make it difficult for others to see who you contribute to, donate to a corporate PAC who in turn donates to an association PAC, who then donates to a candidate! 

 Independent Groups’ contributions

The Campaign Finance Institute  tracks campaign contributions by outside groups.  The institute is a non-partisan, non-profit institute affiliated with The George Washington University.   Independent Expenditures in 2008 General Election are found here (columns can be sorted),   click here for interests groups, and here for general financing of the campaign.

See this Wall Street Journal article which explains the effect the Supreme Court ruling will have on independent group spending on future election campaigns.  Some of the largest independent groups that contributed to the 2008 General Election are the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents businesses ($36.4 million) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Labor Union ($27 million).

Tagged as: campaign finance, Citizens United v. FEC, elections, political action committees, political contributions