In the 2012 election 28 percent of all disclosed political contributions came from just 31,385 people. In a nation of 313.85 million, these donors represent the 1% of the 1%, an elite class that increasingly serves as the gatekeepers of public office in the United States.
During the 2012 election cycle, a tiny percentage of lobbyists gave a combined $34.1 million in campaign contributions, putting them in elite company with the political 1% of the 1%, individuals who have given at least $12,950 each toward identifiable federal election activities. And while lobbyists’ donations made up only a small portion of the overall contributions from the political 1% of the 1%, their contributions might net the most bang for the buck. Lobbyists more often gave directly to candidates rather than to outside groups; and it is to those candidates—when they are elected—that the lobbyists turn when they need help. Shining the brightest light on lobbying activities will expose to the public where the levels of influence are and who is pulling them. Sunlight has developed a set of eight principles that form the foundation of a comprehensive lobbying disclosure regime. Continue reading
Despite ethics pledge, Obama accepted K Street money
In the 2012 election 28 percent of all disclosed political contributions came from just 31,385 people. In a nation of 313.85 million, these donors represent the 1% of the 1%, an elite class that increasingly serves as the gatekeepers of public office in the United States.
In his two runs for the White House, President Obama pledged that he would not accept money from registered lobbyists. But his campaign received donations from people who, while not registered, walk and talk an awful lot like lobbyists, including advisors who manage lobbyists. Sunlight's investigation into the political 1 percent of the 1 percent -- the donor class whose members individually contributed at least $12,950 to political campaigns in the 2012 election -- showed that many, many big donors in the influence business have contributed to the president. At least four dozen of them -- lobbyists and employees of lobbying or public relations firms -- contributed to the president in 2011 or 2012. One officially registered lobbyist even donated and unlike the other registered lobbyists who did so, his contribution was not refunded. Continue reading
Lobbyists in the 1% of the 1%
In the 2012 election 28 percent of all disclosed political contributions came from just 31,385 people. In a nation of 313.85 million, these donors represent the 1% of the 1%, an elite class that increasingly serves as the gatekeepers of public office in the United States.
One way that Washington lobbyists build and maintain relationships is through campaign contributions. So it’s no surprise to see 894 individuals employed at lobbying and public relations firms show up among the 31,385 biggest individual donors – a group we named “the 1% of the 1%” after the share of the U.S. population that they represent. Although not all of these individuals are registered as lobbyists, they all work in the lobbying industry. For shorthand, we simply call them “lobbyists” because their profession is influencing government (for more details on how we classified them, see our methodology section at the end of this post). Though these lobbyists make up only 2.8 percent of the 1% of the 1% and only 2.0 percent of the donations (they gave a combined $34.1 million), their importance in the Washington ecosystem makes them worth a closer look. In some ways lobbyists are similar to other 1% of the 1% donors. The median donation among lobbyists was $27,540, as compared to $26,584 for all of the 1% of the 1%. Lobbyists in the 1% of the 1% are 80.3 percent male, a little more than the 71.8 percent male for the entire 1% of the 1%. These 1% of the 1% lobbyists gave a combined $34.1 million in the 2012 election cycle. Continue reading
The Political 1% of the 1% in 2012
Graphics by Amy Cesal and Ben Chartoff
In the 2012 election 28 percent of all disclosed political contributions came from just 31,385 people. In a nation of 313.85 million, these donors represent the 1% of the 1%, an elite class that increasingly serves as the gatekeepers of public office in the United States.
More than a quarter of the nearly $6 billion in contributions from identifiable sources in the last campaign cycle came from just 31,385 individuals, a number equal to one ten-thousandth of the U.S. population. In the first presidential election cycle since the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC, candidates got more money from a smaller percentage of the population than any year for which we have data, a new analysis of 2012 campaign finance giving by the Sunlight Foundation shows. These donors contributed 28.1 percent of all individual contributions in the 2012 cycle, a record high. One sign of the reach of this elite “1% of the 1%”: Not a single member of the House or Senate elected last year won without financial assistance from this group. Money from the nation’s 31,385 biggest givers found its way into the coffers of every successful congressional candidate. And 84 percent of those elected in 2012 took more money from these 1% of the 1% donors than they did from all of their small donors (individuals who gave $200 or less) combined. This elite 1% of the 1% dominated campaign giving even in a year when President Barack Obama reached new small donor frontiers (small donors are defined as individuals giving in increments of less than $200). In 2014, without a presidential race to attract small donors, all indicators are that the 1% of the 1% will occupy an even more central role in the money chase. The nation’s biggest campaign donors have little in common with average Americans. They hail predominantly from big cities, such as New York and Washington. They work for blue-chip corporations, such as Goldman Sachs and Microsoft. One in five works in the finance, insurance and real estate sector. One in 10 works in law or lobbying. The median contribution from this group of elite donors? $26,584. That’s a little more than half the median family income in the United States. Watch a video summary of The Political 1% of the 1% Continue reading
Anthony Weiner’s Transparency in All the Wrong Places
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Continue readingMeasuring Lobbyists with Raspberry Pi
A few of us in the labs dabble in hardware hacking, and we were all pretty excited by the debut of the Raspberry Pi. So when we saw that MAKE Magazine was running a contest for creative uses of the Pi, we figured we'd better enter. As it happens, I had picked up a handsome vintage voltmeter at Uncommon Objects during a recent trip to Austin, and had been toying with the idea of making it Pi-enabled. With this competition for inspiration I decided to take the plunge.
Continue readingThe Landscape of Municipal Lobbying Data
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Continue readingHow Congress Cut its Policy Expertise
In the past 20 years, Congress has effectively allowed its legislative support branches to wither and stripped away its ability to process information. It has cut back its ability to review, contextualize, and evaluate information in a way that creates informed policy. Lorelei Kelly, leader of the Smart Congress pilot project at the New America Foundation, looks into this trend in a new paper: "Congress' Wicked Problem." It explores topics we have discussed in a series of posts on the House and Senate. She explains how much of the cutting to the policymaking infrastructure of Congress came in the mid-1990s. That was also the era of cutting the shared staff who had historically built knowledge and expertise around certain topics. Some members of Congress used these shared staff to their advantage, giving relatives and friends plum positions with little real work, but for the most part shared staff were a valuable asset. A rule change in 1995 cut pooled funding for staff and essentially eviscerated the caucus system. Kelly does a fantastic job of explaining in detail what impacts that cut had, showing how the knowledge gap was filled with a new top-down system of information handed out by party leaders. The paper makes an important distinction between information and knowledge in Congress. While lawmakers might receive plenty of information from lobbyists and interest groups, they have a weakened ability to seek other views and context for the flood of spin coming from K Street. Another key change Kelly notes is the elimination of the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) in 1995. Congress created the nonpartisan agency in 1972 to look at the impacts of technology policy decisions. After OTA was cut, there were calls for lobbyists to fill the gap. Sunlight and others called for restoring funding to OTA or some other nonpartisan source of expertise. We are glad to see someone exposing how Congress has weakened its ability to understand complex policy decisions, and we hope it will spark more discussion of what can be done to stop the cutting of knowledge.
Continue readingKeeping Congress Competent: The Senate’s Brain Drain
By Daniel Schuman and Alisha Green One of the foundations of democracy is a legislature that functions well. The ability to assess whether a legislature is functioning properly depends on the public's ability to see what it is doing. Observing what the U.S. Senate is doing, unfortunately, is a difficult task, and one that is unnecessarily hard. Have special interests become increasingly powerful in the Senate because the upper chamber has diminished its capacity to legislate? To evaluate this question, we gathered data about congressional staff numbers, pay, and retention from a number of difficult-to-access (and often non-public) sources. While the U.S. Senate is often seen as the wiser and more seasoned counterpart to the House, we believe it is suffering from the same affliction that has robbed the lower chamber of some of its ability to engage in reasoned decision making, placing it at the mercy of special interests. Over the past thirty years, the Senate weakened its institutional knowledge base and diminished its capacity to understand current events through a dramatic reduction of one of its most valuable resources: experienced staff.
Continue readingKennedy heir’s bid for Congress attracts campaign contributing veterans
Joseph P. Kennedy III easily won a primary election in Massachussett's fourth district thanks in part to some Washington insiders and a high-profile family and their vast network of well-heeled donors.
Since he announced in February his bid for an open seat currently held by outgoing Rep. Barney Frank, the first-time candidate has already held at least four fundraisers, where his campaign requested contributions ranging from $250 to $5,000, according to records in Sunlight Foundation's Party Time.
Caroline Kennedy was among the first to aid her 31-year-old cousin raise cash. In March, she held a $2,500 ...
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