For a few weeks now, I have been compiling as much campaign finance information as was available to me.
Well, I finally finished. I have separated the information into three spreadsheets that I am sharing with the public: one containing candidate information, the other containing donor information, and the last containing itemized transactions from the donors to the candidates.
As I wrote before, it's difficult to find information on local elections. There is simply not a lot of money in play and the data is hard to get your hands on.
Hopefully sharing this information will shed some daylight and maybe enable other people to glean and share some insights. Most of the donations are to state legislators such as Joe Hackney, Verla Insko, Bill Faison, etc. If you see anything interesting or suspect, please let us know!
Here are the candidates, the donors, and the transactions. Let the crowd-sourcing begin!
Issues:
Comments
Great Work
Wow, very impressive, great work Ashley. We should all be so willing to investigate stuff like this.Man, Joe Hackney is really raking it in, huh?
Thanks!
Yeah, the nice thing about being Speaker of the House is that you get to rake in cash. Although, it gets funneled to other races, from what I understand.
Calling all data geeks
I'm hoping someone (like OP mapping guru Damon Seils) can take this info and whip up a quick relational database that we can use to browse and analyze this data. Anyone have suggestions?
What the Indy found
Here's what The Independent Weekly reported for the Congressional District 4 race:
Interesting Stuff
A career worth of constituent services and votes that mostly match the politics of the area in which he resides I think plays more to Congressman Price's advantage than any amount of money ever could.And on Lawson I've seen him at a debate in person, and I expect him to win the primary, but he's too socially conservative to take the 4th district. Lawson is anti-choice, anti-gay marriage, anti-federal funding for education or for research in the research triangle, which is basically the whole district he is running in, and I'd be willing to bet he's against the new train infrastructure funds NC was awarded as well. He lost Orange County last time in particular on the order of 71.57%to 28.43%. And since he recently threw his hat in with the slim majority of the Wake County school board in opposing their diversity policy, I only see that turning Orange & Durham voters off to him even more.
Wowsa
That is really interesting. I always get a little weirded-out when I see companies like Raytheon give money to liberals. Very strange. Monsantos is another one (Hackney).Even though Republicans aren't really contenders in OC, I thought this part of the article was sort of interesting:"Fellow Republican Frank Roche (view campaign finance report) has raised $102,000, including $30,000 of his own cash. Notes from Roche's report: He received $35 in February from the TEA Party PAC of USA and recently spent $5,000 for polling data and expenses through Public Opinion Strategies in Alexandria, Va."I really thought the TEA Party was rolling in cash? Haha. I guess they know this seat is a pipe dream for them.I think I am going to have to put together another spreadsheet for all these reports that just came in. :)
Orange County Voice
I think one of the more interesting donations was the head of Orange County Voice donating to BJ Lawson. This may alter OCV's image as a purely nonpartisan/apolitical protector of all things rural and apple pie. (I'm still not clear on the difference between them and Preserve Rural Orange.)
Difference between OCV and Preserve Rural Orange
Preserve Rural Orange is a small group of people in Bingham Township led by Laura Streitfeld. They don't publicize when they meet or what they plan to discuss and apparently the board, such as it is, is chosen by invitation only. They have done some good work recently on the animal research facility in Bingham.Orange County Voice is led by Bonnie Hauser, but has open meetings and many other people are involved on various issues. I and several others are involved on the ad hoc leadership committee. The scope of the organization is much larger than PRO's and we have had interesting discussions on community-based economic development in rural Orange County, solid waste issues, and the upcoming elections. We recently compiled quesstionnaires for the commissioner & school board races based on input from many members. The answers are worth reading. Obviously, rural citizens have many different viewpoints and don't always agree on every issue. But there is a lot of common ground. Interestingly, Patrick Mulkey and I headed up the quesstionnaire project. I think it benefits rural residents as a whole to understand the options represented by divergent opinions as well as the issues that unite us.