The Center for Responsive Politics is celebrating its 25th birthday today. As its Executive Director for its first decade and a half, I couldn't be more proud of its breathtaking accomplishments over the years.
As a birthday present for all of us, their Web site -- OpenSecrets.org -- has undergone a dramatic transformation.
I've been playing around on the site for a few days and there are some fabulous improvements. According to CRP, here are some of the new features:
- The money-and-politics articles that we've published for years on CapitalEye.org are now front-and-center on OpenSecrets.org as part of our new blog. We'll continue to produce in-depth reports using our data, but we'll also be posting "quick hits" most every day in the blog. If you're an RSS user, make sure you sign up for our blog's feed.
- We've reorganized the site. You'll still navigate OpenSecrets.org using file tabs that run across the top of the page (along with more tabs on the interior pages, and options in the left navigation bars), but we've changed the site's main "buckets" to better accommodate the variety of data we track now.
- OpenSecrets.org is not just a campaign finance site, you know; in recent years we've expanded to also track federal lobbying, Washington's "revolving door," privately sponsored congressional travel and the personal finances of Congress, the president and top executive branch officials. OpenSecrets.org's old "Who Gives"/"Who Gets" tabs just didn't suit everything we do today. On the new site you'll find our data options split between "Politicians & Elections" and "Influence & Lobbying." It'll take some getting used to, even for us, but it makes much more sense given all that CRP does now. Continue reading
Corporate Access at the Democratic Convention
Monday's edition of the Rocky Mountain News, Kevin Vaughan has a detailed article about the 56 national corporations, from Allstate to Xerox, that are sponsoring/funding this summer's Democratic National Convention in Denver. And as Vaughan writes, they all either do business with the federal government or they have pending legislation in Congress or regulation issues with the federal bureaucracy. (Of course, the same situation exists for the Republican National Convention to be held in Minneapolis as well. Expect to see a story about that soon from someplace.) What the corporations get for their sponsorship of the conventions is access to party leaders, members of Congress and their staff, and to possibly the soon to be occupants of the West Wing of the White House.
Continue readingAnother Record Year for Lobbying
The Center for Responsive Politics reports (with data from their lobbying database):
$2.8 BILLION Corporations, industries, labor unions, governments and other interests spent a record $2.79 billion in 2007 to lobby for favorable policies in Washington ... this represents an increase of 7.7 percent, or $200 million, over spending in 2006. And for every day Congress was in session, industries and interests spent an average of $17 million to lobby lawmakers and the federal government at large. The drug industry spent more than any other, increasing its lobbying 25 percent last year.
Pretty soon this is going to add up to real money.
Continue readingLawmakers Have a Financial Stake in the War
Yesterday afternoon the Center for Responsive Politics posted an article that makes great use of their Sunlight-funded Personal Financial data on Congress and FedSpending.org on defense contracts.
CRP found that members of Congress had as much as $196 million invested in companies with Dept. of Defense contracts in 2006 (the most recent reports available), which seems worth noting as Congress awaits a briefing on the Iraq war from Gen. Petraeus next week. The contractors in which Congress is most invested are, for the most part, not in the defense sector, which surprised them (but makes sense given the vast size and many needs of the US military ) but are companies like Procter & Gamble, Pepsico, Microsoft and Johnson & Johnson. According to CRP, members also hold millions of dollars in defense company stock such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
Massie sez:
I think many American investors would be surprised to learn that lawmakers have a financial stake in the war.
And in other findings from their new favorite database (Personal Financial Disclosures), CRP had this item in yesterday's newsletter, pointing out that the ranking Republican on the House's global warming committee is a big investor in the oil companies that were called on the carpet by the committee's Democrats on Tuesday:
Continue readingAnother Week, Another Lobbying Update
From the Center for Responsive Politics. Year-end lobbying reports for 2007 are still trickling out from the Senate Office of Public Records. The total spent on federal lobbying last year is now up to $2.3 billion, but we know there are still reports that haven't been made available electronically yet. Based on the 2006 total, the missing data for '07 could total $300 million or more. We'll update OpenSecrets.org's Lobbying Database again next week with any new data.
Continue readingCorruption Amidst the Stacks
The fundraising for presidential libraries continues to be a blind spot when it comes to disclosure and an open and transparent government. Unlike contributions to an electoral campaign, gifts to the libraries are unlimited and undisclosed, and they can take money from corporations and foreign governments. This is worth repeating: Presidential libraries have no restrictions on the size of financial contributions they can receive, and they are not required to report who their contributors are. Plus, they can receive gifts from corporations and foreign governments! It is illegal for political campaigns to receive contributions from corporations and foreign governments. And another egregious aspect of presidential library fundraising that all of this unlimited, undisclosed fundraising involving corporations and foreign governments is going on while the nation's chief executive is still in office...The most powerful man or woman in the world. As Sheila Krumholz, director of the Center for Responsive Politics and friend, said in testimony to Congress in February 2007, "The potential (for corruption with the libraries) may be far greater than in the campaign finance system."
Continue readingPresidential Candidates Raise More than $100 million in January
From the Center for Responsive Politics data hounds:
Look up individual donors to the presidential candidates.The candidates competing to be your next president raised $3.3 million per day last month, according to reports that those still in the running and those who dropped out filed last night with the Federal Election Commission. January brought the field's total haul since fundraising began to $685 million, $586 million of it now spent. With $36 million in January -- the most any candidate has ever raised in a month while still in competitive primaries -- Sen. Barack Obama was the top fundraiser, by far. Sen. Hillary Clinton came in with about $14 million, plus $5 million from her own pocket. (Had she not lent herself that money, she would have had less to spend going into Super Tuesday than John Edwards.) Republican John McCain collected $12.6 million and reported a total of $5.5 million in loans and other debts. Summary figures for the candidates have been updated on OpenSecrets.org. The Donor Lookup, Fundraising Over Time and State/Metro data are also new. Updates to the site, including categorization of January contributors by industry and employer, will continue into next week as we analyze the data
Fundraising by state and metro area.
Fundraising over time.
Continue readingThe SuperDelegate Plot Thickens
We've been wondering ourselves about possible money connections between the SuperDelegates and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. And from the fast flying computers at the Center for Responsive Politics we learn some pretty interesting new facts about the money connections between Clinton and Obama and those SuperDelegates. Here are a few of their findings:
Elected officials who are SuperDelegates have received at least $890,000 from Obama and Clinton in campaign contributions over the last three years. Obama has given more than $694,000 to SuperDelegates from his political action committee, Hope Fund, or campaign committee since 2005. Of the 81 elected officials who had announced as of Feb. 12 that their SuperDelegate votes would go to Obama, 34 of them(40 percent) got money from from him in the 2006 or 2008 election cycles.
Clinton's PAC, HILLPAC, and campaign committee appear to have distributed $195,500 to SuperDelegates. Only 12 percent of her elected SuperDelegates -- 13 total -- have said they will back her.
Continue readingNew Ways to Look at the Money Behind the Presidentials
The Center for Responsive Politics (a Sunlight grantee) is displaying some cool new ways to view the role of money in the presidential election. Look here for the "Money Web." This shows you the links between candidates and donors, including the five top contributors and industries (including ties) to each of the candidates. Click on a bubble to start making connections among candidates, their top-giving industries and top contributors.
Here's a cool map that illustrates how much money is going to Republican and Democratic candidates from each state and which presidential candidate got the most.
If you want to see how a candidate's fundraising stacks up against another's week by week, or month by month, look here. On this map click on a state to see contributions from that state to each candidate, as well as money isolated by metropolitan area and top ZIP codes. (Note that the Web site is geteting some heavy traffic this afternoon. If you have trouble loading anything, try back later.)
More Campaign Finance Data Due Next Week
The folks at the Center for Responsive Politics (OpenSecrets.org) are eagerly awaiting the candidates' final campaign finance reports of 2007, which are due to the FEC by midnight on Thursday, Jan. 31.
Massie sez:
Check OpenSecrets.org for updated data beginning Friday, Feb. 1. We're aiming to have the presidential section fully updated by Monday, Feb. 4, in time for Super Duper Tuesday the following day.
And while you are there take their user survey.
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