Bringing Political Cash Into Focus Sunlight Tools Help Voters Maneuver the Money Maze By Nancy Watzman Election day may be several months off, but in the famously purple state of Colorado, the political money is already flowing. That’s because our swing state yet again is the site of fiercely competitive congressional races. Which means, yes, we’ll all be barraged with endless television, radio, you tube ads; political billboards; mailings; flyers – we know them when we see them. Many of these will say the ad is paid for by some group with an innocuous title like “Making a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow,” to borrow the name of comedian Stephen Colbert’s now defunct super PAC. But that doesn’t tell anybody who is really paying for them. The Sunlight Foundation (www.sunlightfoundation.com), a Washington, DC based nonprofit organization dedicated to government transparency, creates free Internet tools that help curious Coloradans and everyone else follow the money. Providing a trail is crucial as newsrooms shrink at the same time that the Supreme Court, via decisions such as Citizens United, has allowed more political money to flow underground. Thanks to such legal decisions, we can’t follow all of it to its source, but Sunlight gets you at least part of the way. For the tech neophytes, there are easyto-use websites where it’s possible to find information on everything from campaign contributions to political ad buys to political fundraisers. More advanced data mavens can download information on to spreadsheets; the highly gifted and talented (to borrow a Denver Public School term) can access APIs to fuel their own programming. Sunlight also offers several free apps for IOS and Android phones.
Colorado’s high-profile races For example: Sunlight’s Realtime Federal
Campaign Finance Tracker (http://realtime. influenceexplorer.com/) lets the user search for up-to-the-minute data on funding for federal political races. The faceoff between former state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, a Democrat, and Republican Congressman Michael Coffman in Colorado’s sixth district is one of the most watched in the nation. At the time of this report, the two candidates are neck-toneck in fundraising, having collected about $2 million apiece for their campaign coffers so far. The tracker shows Romanoff has a slight edge on cash on hand. Romanoff has also gotten some help from a Democratic super PAC, the House Majority PAC, which has already spent some $150,000 opposing Coffman. Meanwhile, incumbent Democrat Sen. Mark Udall will be facing some real competition now that U.S. House Rep. Cory Gardner has entered the race. Udall has raised more than $5 million, but Tea Party groups are already starting to spend money opposing him. Gardner’s first Senate campaign finance reports will be due at the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on April 15. However, by the close of 2013 he already had nearly $877,000 on hand in his congressional coffers, which he
can transfer over to his Senate campaign. Sometimes not all the money supporting a candidate is reported to the FEC, however. In mid-March, Americans for Prosperity launched an ad campaign criticizing Udall for supporting Obamacare. The ad was identical to one used in Louisiana, where Sen. Mary Landrieu is considered one of the more vulnerable Democratic incumbents this election cycle. The Denver Post reported that the group was spending some $1 million to air the ad in Denver and Colorado Springs. Backed by the billionaire Koch Brothers, Americans for Prosperity is organized as a nonprofit “social welfare” group, and therefore is not required to disclose its donors. Nor in this case has it reported these ad buys to the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Instead, the group calls them “non-candidate issue ads” on the contracts filed with Denver stations – which are possible to view using Sunlight’s Political Ad Sleuth (politicaladsleuth.com) tool. Sunlight gathers documents reported by television broadcast stations to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) detailing who is buying public airwaves for political advertisements. The forms are searchable and viewable by metro area. Volunteers help us fill in some of the gaps in the data. For example, last summer, when two Colorado state senators faced recall races inspired by their votes for gun control, Colorado Springs residents helped collect documents on ad buys filed at local broadcast stations. The FCC does not post Colorado Springs ad buy data because it is not considered a major media market. We also welcome help from people who can enter data from the ad buy documents into our online database – the instructions are on the website. The Ad Sleuth data show that Americans for Prosperity was active snatching up TV time in Denver last fall, when it opposed the education referendum, Amendment 66 as well as supporting a slate of conservative school board candidates. Of course not all the money flowing into the Amendment 66 battle came from those opposed to the amendment. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg contributed about $1 million to the official “Yes on 66” campaign, as did Bill and Melinda Gates. Despite this help, the amendment failed. To find this information, it’s necessary to search for it on Colorado’s campaign finance website. (http://www.sos.state.co.us/)
Party time in Park Hill If you’re curious where the Colorado delegation parties down to raise money for their campaigns and from whom, Sunlight’s Party Time website (www.politicalpartytime.org) can provide some clues. Sunlight collects fundraiser invitations from anonymous sources, posts them on the website, and also enters information from the invitations into a database so it is searchable. For example, last March, Colorado Rep.
Ed Perlmutter was feted by Ali Wolpert, a lobbyist for the Depository Trust and Clearing Company, at the Washington restaurant Cava Mezze. Perlmutter, a Democrat, sits on the House Financial Services Committee, clearly an important one for the group, which reported lobbying on legislation related to cybersecurity and swap regulation. The website Open Congress (www.opencongress.org) enables researchers to track legislation, including its sponsors, and other details. Open States (www.openstates.org) provides similar features for monitoring state legislation. Scout (scout.sunlightfoundation.com) allows anyone to set up email alerts to search for phrases that appear in federal or state legislation, federal regulations, or Congressional speeches. It’s also possible to set up an alert when a certain political committee files a report, such as the National Rifle Association or the AFL-CIO. Think Google alerts, but for politics. If you’re nosy about your neighbors, Open Secrets (www.opensecrets.org/indivs/) is the place to look up campaign contributions by people living in the Park Hill neighborhood. Simply plug in a zip code – say 80207 – and you’ll see a list of all the contributions from individual of more than $200. Note: this is not a Sunlight Foundation website, but comes from an organization we work with closely. In the 2012 elections, the 80207 zip code was the source of $204,000 in contributions from individuals, about double the amount of average contributions by zip code nationwide.
The best disinfectant Sunlight’s team of developers and journalists are always working together to come up with new ways to offer easy-todigest political data to the public. Follow the organization on Facebook, twitter (@ SunFoundation), or visit the website, www. sunlightfoundation.com, to keep up with the latest developments. As a nonprofit organization devoted to transparency, Sunlight is straightforward about its donors. To check the current list of funders, a mix of foundations and individuals, visit Sunlight’s web page. It’s going to be a long election season. In the Greater Park Hill News last month, local open government advocate Jeff Roberts wrote that “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.” This saying from Justice Louis Brandeis is the inspiration for the Sunlight Foundation’s name. We strive to provide the tools for anybody and everybody to start scrubbing away. Park Hill resident Nancy Watzman is a consultant to the Sunlight Foundation, where she does investigative reporting on money and politics. She is the co-author of “Is That a Politician in Your Pocket? Washington on $2 million a Day,” (Wiley Books, 2004), and has written for such publications as the Washington Monthly, the New Republic, and Harper’s Magazine.
Shazam! And Other Tools to Use For a complete list of Sunlight’s internet tools, visit sunlightfoundation.com/tools/ Influence Explorer. (www.influenceexplorer.com) This one-stop shop website lets users look up federal and state campaign contributions, federal lobbying data, and some contract and regulatory information. AdHawk. This free mobile app works like Shazam for political ads: hold your phone up to the TV when a political ad is playing, and the app will recognize the ad and give you information about what groups are behind it. Docket Wrench. (http://docketwrench.sunlightfoundation.com/) Investigate who is commenting on the federal rulemaking process. The website groups comments with similar language so it’s possible to figure out what groups are running letter writing campaigns. Recently, for example, Docket Wrench helped show that some 100,000 comments filed in favor of the controversial Keystone pipeline came via a public relations firm run by Mary Cheney, daughter of Dick Cheney. Follow Congress. Sunlight’s congress mobile apps let users take a pocket guide to members of congress on their phones. Follow their bills, explore votes, contact congressional offices and more. Politwoops. (http://politwoops.sunlightfoundation.com/) collects deleted tweets by U.S. politicians, often revealing gaffes. For example, a number of politicians deleted tweets they posted that made derogatory jokes about Attorney General Eric Holder when he recently fell ill. Page 4
The Greater Park Hill News
April 2014