Web Can Lead Curious Constituents Along Political Money Trail

Want to know what lawmakers in Washington and Sacramento will do this year? You don’t need a crystal ball, Ouija board or time machine to find out, just some easy-to-find information on the Web.

Log on to https://www.opensecrets.org to find out where your elected representatives are getting their campaign money. That will tell you a lot about what issues those representatives will be supporting this year.

“A politician’s actions and decisions are determined by a lot more than the views of his or her constituents,” explained Steven Weiss, communications director for the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that runs the Web site. “They are determined in large part by the industries and interest groups that contributed to them during the campaign.”

Opensecrets.org allows visitors to track campaign contributions by industry, issue or ZIP Code. Visitors also can look up contributions made by a specific donor or to a specific candidate.

The center collects its data from the Federal Election Commission, to which candidates are required to report their contributions and expenditures. The FEC also publishes the data online at https://www.fec.gov/finance_reports.html.

The California secretary of state’s office publishes campaign contribution data for state races at https://cal-access.ss.ca.gov.

But neither the FEC site nor the California site offer many of the user-friendly search options available on Opensecrets.org, nor do they break down the data by industry as effectively.

Businesses and interest groups often “bundle” contributions from their employees and their families to get around contribution limits, Weiss explained. The center will assign those contributions to the executive’s company and industry, even though the official FEC data lists them as coming from a “homemaker” or “student.”

“You’ll see a lot of corporate executives give to a candidate; then their spouse and children will also give to that candidate,” Weiss said.

Opensecrets.org also tracks contributions for specific issues in its In the News section, found in the upper left corner of the home page.

“We try to take the issues that people are concerned about and break them down a bit and talk about who are the interests and what their campaign contributions have been and what they might be wanting in return for those contributions,” Weiss said.

A page on electricity deregulation (https://www.opensecrets.org/news/electricity.htm) explains who the big-money contributors are on this issue, and to whom they’re giving money. It’s worthy reading for Californians concerned about rolling blackouts and bigger power bills.

“What a lot of people don’t realize is that politicians have two sets of constituents,” Weiss said. “One is the voters--the people who go to the polls in November and vote them into office. The other is the cash constituents--the industries and interest groups and wealthy individuals who make the campaign possible.”

A few moments spent at Opensecrets.org can provide a bounty of information for voters.

“If giving money didn’t result in privileges, contributors wouldn’t be giving the money,” Weiss said. “So it’s worth it for voters to know.”

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Robert Niles is a producer for Latimes.com