Shining a Light on the Connection between Money and Politics

MapLight is an excellent research tool for anyone interested in triangulating our legislators' voting habits, the positions of various interest groups on those votes and their campaign contribution histories with those very legislators. A new search tool unveiled by the organization this week details corporate, industry and individual contributions to individual elected officials. From the press release:

MAPLight.org, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization that illuminates the connection between money and politics, announces the launch of a new public, web-accessible contributions search tool that provides citizens, bloggers and journalists with detailed information about special-interest contributions given to their elected officials. MAPLight.org’s contributions data is provided by the Center for Responsive Politics.

“MAPLight.org’s connections between money and votes have always relied on detailed records of who gives how much to whom,” said Daniel Newman, MAPLight.org’s executive director. “Now, with MAPLight.org’s new contributions search tool, users can see specific details about contributions from any company, industry, or individual—to any member of Congress."

MAPLight.org's contributions search tool reveals in detail each campaign contribution given to members of Congress, broken down by contributor, amount, legislator and date. Journalists, bloggers, researchers and citizens can search for campaign finance data by industry, interest group, company, individual donor and more. The search tool is located at http://maplight.org/us-congress/contributions.

The contributions search tool is linked to MAPLight.org’s unique research that shows which industries support and oppose bills in Congress, aligned with how each legislator votes.

For example, H.R. 4173 - Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, shows each senator, how they voted on the financial reform bill, and the amount each received from commercial banks and other interests opposing financial reform. Scroll to the bottom to see money given to each senator; Senator Mitch McConnell received the most. MAPLight.org’s new contributions search tool shows the 291 contributions given to Senator McConnell from the commercial banking industry, which totals $366,875 for the 2002-2010 election cycles.

Users can search by company to reveal that 397 contributions totaling $463,607 were given to members of Congress by Citigroup in the 2010 election cycle . . .

Give it a whirl.