State Money Analysis: Florida in 2008
Over the last month, I’ve been working with Edwin Bender and The National Institute on Money in State Politics (NIMST), which operates FollowTheMoney.org. This not-for-profit organization provides a database similar to the Sunlight Foundation’s database of political donations, but NIMST focuses exclusively on state elections.
Their data has been featured prominently in many publications. Most recently, I came across it in the New York Times article “Health Lobby Takes Fight to the States,” which cites the NIMST report “Take $2 Million…and Call Me in the Session Health Care Interests Gave Healthy Doses of Contributions.”
This is an excellent use of this type of data. I encourage you to read the article and the report.
For a test run, NIMST gave me a sample set of data to process in Jute. Admittedly, I have not perfected the analytic techniques here and there is a lot more work to do to make the data relevant. Edwin Bender said to me in a prescient email
“Clay Johnson of Sunlight Foundation said recently that data visualizations are a dime a dozen, but meaningful visualizations are priceless.”
These are the top 5 donors to state candidates in FL in 2008. The largest donations went to the FL Republican Party. These donors give a large number of $500 donations (shown in orange).
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So this is my first attempt at meaningful visualization. I give myself a “B-” on it. I took the data from FL, a state where I’m familiar with state politics after playing a prominent volunteering role with my mother’s unsuccessful run at the state house in 2008.* In the following visualizations, there is a very simple visual index: REPUBLICAN = RED; DEMOCRAT = BLUE; $500 DONATION = ORANGE.
The interesting about this is:
1) The top donors in the state are largely bi-partisan in their giving. Why? Do their recipients sit on influential committees? Is there a specific piece of legislation they wanted to support? A specific fundraising volunteer who brokered these donations?
2) There are a surprising number of $500 donations. Why so many?! What is the significance of a $500 donation to a state official? UPDATED: ”$500 is the legal limit for a campaign contribution to an individual candidate. That amount can be given once during the primary and once during the general election.” according to Linda McDonald, my mother.
Why? I’m not sure. I hope this blog post will help me find out.
FYI: you can access this data set in a network document called “state money FL v1″ by using the Jute guest account. Or, request your own account and I’ll share the data set with you.
Top 2 Donors in FL State Politics in 2008
These are the top 2 donors in FL state politics. What is their political bias?
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Paul Tudor Jones, II
Mr. Jones supports candidates from both parties and both parties' state offices. Why?
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Guy M. Spearman, III
Guy M. Spearman, III also supports candidates from both parties and both parties' state offices. Why?
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Whole Network Analysis: Top 5 FL Donors
Whole Network Analysis shows a surprising number of $500 donations among the top 5 donors in FL state politics in 2008. $500 is the maximum donation permitted.
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Assumed Industry Affiliation
By extrapolating industry affiliations from the companies where donors self-report that they work, we can look at trends of how industries' money flows to parties. This is not really a factually valid analysis--just an exercise in using Jute to crunch NIMST data.
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Finding meaning in this data…
This data set is just a trial, and this blog post is just to get some initial feedback. My hope is that we can elevate this into a funded research project, analyzing trends in the NIMST data, and finding specific, relevant examples that we can publish. Also, I’d like to work with a campaign to help them in their fundraising and strategy development.
There is a lot more than needs to be done to “take this to the next level.” That includes:
Cross-referencing this data with other data sets, like: which campaigns actually won seats in the State Legislature; which committees the elected officials sit on and chair; which federal candidates these donors supported; and, ideally, which candidates I know (or my clients know) and how they can leverage existing relationships to get value out of this analysis. (That last one comes from existing, internal databases.)
But for now, I hope you’ll help me find meaning in this data. If you’d like access to more analysis from other states, or you are interested in publishing this material, please contact me via email or via phone at 828/545.9539.
Sean McDonald
co-founder, Jute Networks
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*A little editorial here: Linda McDonald ran a hell of a campaign against a competitor with an exponentially larger war chest. In a district where a Dem hadn’t had a chance in a generation, she lost by a razor thin margin. And the people of the state of Florida are worse-off because she doesn’t represent them.
Independent Sector: a quick case study
Independent Sector is the leadership forum for charities, foundations, and corporate giving programs committed to advancing the common good in America and around the world. Their nonpartisan coalition of approximately 600 organizations leads, strengthens and mobilizes the charitable community in order to fulfill their mission. Their constituents include some of the world’s leading non-profit organizations like the Gates Foundation and the Kellogg Foundation.
They rely on high-quality information about elected officials and their relationships to those officials. The first step–figuring out “who knows whom and how”–takes months and sometimes even years. With the help of JUTE, it takes just a few minutes to find a “pathway” from Independent Sector (IS) to key members of Congress. (Please note: the names have been changed, out of respect for the privacy of IS and their constituents.)
Jute found strong relationship pathways from Independent Sector to an Elected Official. This saves IS months of time in the “information discovery process.”
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Details
IS became our client in Summer 2009. In the fall, our Nexus team rolled into Washington DC for an on-site project to help the IS executive team convert their slow, social process of discovering people in their networks who hold established relationships with elected officials into an efficient business process. This allows them to spend their time actually building relationships, not just figuring out what the most beneficial ones are.
This conversion, when complete, will lead to a massive improvement in efficiency for IS and help to uncover the wealth of “relationship capital” that the IS team, board members & member organizations maintain. After just one week, the results were impressive.
Elizabeth Kohm, Vice President of Resource Development, described the change as, “being able to go from 0-60 in five seconds, instead of five months.”
When we arrived on site, we had a few concrete goals:
- Start with 6 data sets with over 200k records & mash them up into “database nirvana”*
- Find “pathways” of established relationships from the IS team to a specific elected official
- Generate reports that can be used by the executive team and board at IS
- Get to work, accessing the information and requesting introductions along those relationship pathways
In the end, the IS project was a success. This was a “prototype” project where we focused on a single elected official. We found 18 “pathways” from the IS team to that member of Congress. Our expectation is that among those 18 pathways, there will be many individuals who can, at the least, provide IS information about that elected official, and hopefully, one or two who have some influence with that official and can help IS educate and advocate for the non-profit and philanthropic community.
Can JUTE do the same thing for my organization?
Yep. That’s what we do. Contact Sean McDonald to learn how we can help you.
*A term coined by Patricia Read, Sr. VP of Public Policy and Gov’t Affairs at IS.