On Nov. 24, 2009, Sara Conrad, the fundraising consultant for Rep. Joseph Crowley, D-N.Y., sent an email to Michael Stein, head of government relations for financial services giant Morgan Stanley, inviting him to attend a Dec. 10 fundraising reception for Crowley’s campaign. The email was a follow-up to a prior conversation he had with Crowley’s chief of staff, Kate Winkler, about the Ways and Means Committee member's upcoming campaign events.
Around the same time, Conrad, who worked for Crowley's campaign and not his congressional office, sent several other emails, including similar notes to lobbyists for ...
Continue readingPre-State of the Union Fundraisers
This is a cross-post with Political Party Time There are some pre-State of the Union fundraisers happening on the Hill... View Article
Continue readingHouse to charge Charlie Rangel with ethics violations
Despite his oft repeated assertions to the contrary, Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., will be charged by the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct for as yet unspecified violations of congressional ethics rules.
Matching bundlers to fundraisers
Here at the Reporting Group, we’ve always wanted to tie the fundraising invitations in our Party Time database to actual donations reported to the Federal Election Commission by a politician or a political action committee--to be able to show a donor gave money to a politician at a certain event.
It’s nearly impossible, and there's a number of reasons we can't--not least of which is that dates in FEC records don't necessarily correspond to the day a contribution was given. (See here for an explanation.) Even when there's a disclosure intended to shed light ...
Financial reform fundraising: Are lobbyists for Wall St. firms hosting hundreds of events for lawmakers?
Sam Geduldig, a lobbyist for high profile financial firms, banks and credit card companies who has the ability to "kill legislative threats to his clients," is listed as a host on 18 invitations to fundraisers for Republican members of Congress and their leadership committees, a Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group review of Party Time data from January 2009 to the present has found.
Geduldig's name appears on both fundraising invitations in Party Time and the
Center for Responsive Politics' lobbying database; Sunlight is also releasing a spreadsheet listing all matches of names hosts to names of lobbyist with links to ...
Bad dates: ProPublica notes lack of accuracy in campaign finance data
ProPublica's Sebastian Jones notes what for us has been one of the most maddening features of campaign finance data: the dates don't mean very much at all. Campaigns report when they receive money, and political action committees report when they donate it. In theory, those dates should match, but as Jones points out, they don't:
The Federal Election Commission [3] requires politicians to disclose the dates and amounts of contributions they receive in periodic reports. Corporate and special interest political action committees (PACs) are also required to file reports with the FEC, disclosing the money they contribute ...Continue reading
Financial reform lobbyists host fundraisers for senators
Since the beginning of 2010 through April, at least ten senators who sit on the Banking and Agriculture Committees are listed as beneficiaries of fundraisers hosted by lobbyists who have pressed Congress on financial reform issues. Both committees have recently worked on a bill to overhaul the financial regulatory system, which will likely be debated on the Senate floor next week.
According to Sunlight Foundation’s Party Time database, the fundraisers ranged from a “pre-St.Patrick’s Day” reception for Banking Committee member Jon Tester, D-Mont., on March 16 that asked for $100 to $1,000 in contributions, to a ...
Continue readingIt Was A Very Good Year
Sunlight hasn’t been around nearly as long as that song — it was first recorded in 1961 and we opened... View Article
Continue readingKey Democrat in Health Care Talks Receives Large Health Industry Contributions in 2009
As the summer of the Democrats’ discontent winds to a close, the head count for health care reform in the... View Article
Continue readingThis Week in Transparency – August 28, 2009
Here are some of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and allies over the past week:... View Article
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