On the Trail: Follow the Money

This is part four in On the Trail, a series on my involvement in a Congressional campaign.  (Part One, Part Two, Part Three)

I’ve heard the trope and so have you: politics is about money, the two are inextricably linked.  Who  has it? Where is it going?   How much is given under the table?  How much of that is kicked back?  These are only some of the questions at hand.  But, until very recently I think I had become complacent about money and politics.  Unfortunately, I’ve gotten used to it and come to crassly accept that the two go hand in hand.  I like to think that there are some people out there somewhere who care about this issue and are working on it diligently while I lead my regular life.  However, there is a cognitive dissonance when you know that there is something that is wrong that is thriving in the world.   I have tried not to see it.  It becomes much harder when the completely screwed up system lands right in your lap, or in this case laptop.

I have spent a lot of the last two days on the website of the Federal Election Commission.   Despite the poor structure of many government websites, this one is actually pretty user friendly.  The homepage has an interactive map of the United States.  Click on a section of a state to see the report on the candidates in that race.  You can compare the financial backing of the candidates in your local congressional and senatorial districts.  But that is just the beginning.  The FEC website shows what portion of the candidate’s funds come from individual contributors and how much come from political action committees (PACs).  Then, you can even see which PACs and which individuals have contributed.

The reason I have spent so much time on the website lately is that I have been fascinated by my candidate’s competitor’s funders.  Companies with innocent sounding names turn out to be nothing like what they sound like.  My favorite so far is Service Corporation International.  What do you think it is?  Well, it turns out that it is a consortium of funeral homes and cemeteries.

The funeral homes are among the more harmless contributors, some are much more sinister.  Corruption is rampant in election money.  Companies give money to support candidates who in turn secure contracts for their companies.  Sometimes the companies even take the representatives on expensive vacations junkets.  Looking at our competitor’s money, it is striking that she received more than twice as much PAC money from defense companies after the beginning of our wars with Iraq and Afghanistan.  Are those defense contractors protecting their contracts by supporting her?  It is a pretty scary thought if they are.  The trouble with corporate money is that the corporations then become your constituents.  This will only be more true since the recent Supreme Court ruling.

Another very useful website to research money and politics is Open Secrets which tracks money for federal elections.  Open Secrets lists more data from elections farther back than 2008 than does the FEC.

I encourage you to use these websites to see where your representatives’ money originates.  It can be hard to stop caring but is that a reason not to start?