How to Get Details of Political Contributions

No politician gets elected without fundraising and most spend a great deal of time asking for contributions for their next campaign. You can often learn a great deal by tracking who gives how much money to which candidate in political contributions. The trick is to follow the money.

Suggestions

1. Know the legal requirements. You don't have to be a campaign finance expert, but it helps to understand that most candidates for political office must file reports on contributors. State reports are handled by the agency that oversees elections (the Secretary of State in most states), while the Federal Elections Commission gets the information for federal candidates (including the President and members of Congress).
2. Decide what you want to track. You can get details of political contributions to a particular candidate, or you can see how certain organizations or individuals spend their money. Contributions are recorded by election cycle, so you can see current donations or those from an earlier campaign.
3. Do your homework. Although political donations are public record, not all contributors want public attention to their spending. It may take an intensive search to find out where the real money is coming from in any race. A group named "Citizens for a Better Future" is likely to be the political action committee for a business or industry with a specific lobbying goal. Start with their website for clues.
4. Download information from the Federal Elections Commission. Their website lets you look at the actual financial disclosure reports by federal candidates, political action committees and parties. The database goes back to 1993. And you can download files that include the names of contributors, candidates, PACs and summary information.
5. Get help from a watchdog group. Candidate and political action committee donation reports can be hard to find and understand but there are a number of organizations that track political contributions and can help sort through the blur of numbers. Among the best known are the Center for Responsive Politics and for state races, The Institute on Money in State Politics. Their websites offer tracking tools that let you search for specific information.

Tips

• Candidates follow deadlines throughout the election cycle for reporting campaign contributions. Don't expect to see up to the minute information from any source.
• Watch for frequent references to members of the same family. With limits on individual donations, contributions from several relatives can skirt the letter of the law.

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