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 he absolute most excellent site just showed up on
the internet. www.opensecrets.org
is "your guide to money in the American elections."
You can find charts of where the dollars are coming from - by
industry, interest and individual and going into presidential,
senate and congressional races. You can even chart how much is
given (from the universe of contributions of $200 or more) by
plugging in any ZIP code.
 For
instance, when you plug in 92037 (La Jolla), you learn that $1,681,766
has been given ("so far") in the Y2K election cycle.
Donations are tracked from the 98 ($921,979), 96 ($1,071,014
) and 94 ($717,258) federal elections.
The site is
fast and easy to use. The only potential problem in the frenzied
weeks before the election is too much traffic, slowing down access
rates.
At the click
of a mouse you get a complete list of $200+ donors, amounts,
and where the donation was directed. You can now discern your
neighbors politics online. You can see which business people
give and how much. It's really quite educational. We have never
before been able to so easily and instantly see who's money is
going where. They are also sorted by industry, labor and ideology
categories.
You can see
how ZIPs are voting with dollars in the presidential race (92037:
Bush, George W. $103,100 / Gore, Al $59,650, all others: $94,700).
"The San Diego dollars voting in the Presidential race are
voting in the main for Bush."
You can see
the list of the "ten biggest checks" from any zip code
and to which political entity they were given. The average giving-per-ZIP
code in San Diego County: $24,596.
How much political
donating is done by large donors to federal races in San Diego
County?
| Total: |
$9,624,531 |
|
| Dems: |
$3,766,366 |
45.0% |
| Reps: |
$4,504,322 |
53.8% |
You
can get lists of the top ten ZIPs in gross contributions. For
instance, in the Bilbray/Davis Congressional race here are the
latest listings:
| Susan A. Davis (D-Calif) |
| |
92037 (La Jolla,
CA) |
$74,875 |
| |
92103 (San Diego,
CA) |
$60,210 |
| |
92014 (Del Mar, CA) |
$31,147 |
| |
92116 (San Diego,
CA) |
$24,420 |
| |
92101 (San Diego,
CA) |
$23,300 |
| |
92120 (San Diego,
CA) |
$12,550 |
| |
92067 (Rancho Santa
Fe, CA) |
$11,650 |
| |
92122 (San Diego,
CA) |
$11,600 |
| |
23233 (Richmond,
VA) |
$10,000 |
| |
92130 (San Diego,
CA) |
$9,200 |
| Brian P. Bilbray (R-Calif) |
| |
92037 (La Jolla,
CA) |
$63,500 |
| |
92067 (Rancho Santa
Fe, CA) |
$39,750 |
| |
92118 (Coronado,
CA) |
$26,650 |
| |
92106 (San Diego,
CA) |
$21,800 |
| |
92064 (Poway, CA) |
$19,750 |
| |
92103 (San Diego, CA) |
$13,500 |
| |
92109 (San Diego, CA) |
$12,500 |
| |
92101 (San Diego, CA) |
$10,350 |
| |
92014 (Del Mar, CA) |
$7,950 |
| |
91902 (Bonita, CA) |
$7,500 |
Listings
by "Top Metro Area" allows you to see money coming
from inside and outside the area.
| Susan A. Davis (D-Calif) |
| |
San Diego, CA |
$376,042 |
| |
Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA |
$27,308 |
| |
San Francisco, CA |
$11,250 |
| |
New York, NY |
$11,250 |
| |
Richmond-Petersburg, VA |
$10,000 |
| Brian P. Bilbray (R-Calif) |
| |
San Diego, CA |
$370,740 |
| |
Washington, DC-MD-VA-WV |
$13,975 |
| |
Orange County, CA |
$11,550 |
| |
Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, WA |
$6,000 |
| |
San Francisco, CA |
$4,800 |
They
rate the "quality of disclosure" of the candidates
- sorting their reported information in percentages of full disclosure,
incomplete disclosure and no disclosure.
Times are
good. Donations in all the ZIPs I randomly checked were up, up,
up from even '96, the last general presidential election. Checking
into my little ZIP code, 92109 (Pacific Beach), the increase
is dramatic:
| 2000: |
$656,372 (so far) |
| 1998: |
$96,262 |
| 1996: |
$150,041 |
| 1994: |
$88,945 |
Disclosure
is getting real. What it will mean is less clear.
It certainly
allows you to see - clearer than ever before who's paying to
fund our federal political campaign process. Every consultant
in the world now has a list of everyone's higher-levels donors,
and you know exactly how much they gave. I suspect that this
will actually add momentum to campaign limits, simply because
donors will realize they are now subject to serious "treadmill"
effects. The demands for funding never end and they always go
up.
What will
be the impact on donors themselves? Will some cease financial
contributions now that their political investments are revealed
to all?
Simply by
making this information so readily available, unpredictable outcomes
will occur. Those outcomes will be more apparent in the next
cycle, rather than this one. There is so much information that
it will take some time for people to absorb and interpret the
connections between the funding sources, conduits and outcomes.
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