WHO PAID WHO
Opening the public record…
Preparing the campaign financials.
Preparing the campaign financials.
Who Paid Who makes public campaign filings easier to explore. Every financial figure comes from the Federal Election Commission. We do not infer a politician’s motives from their funding.
The explorer uses the FEC’s all-candidates financial summary files. It enriches individual itemization from the candidate-summary CSV only when both the reporting date and individual contribution total agree. Download timestamps describe when we retrieved a file; each candidate’s coverage date describes the end of their reported financial period.
These are saved records, not a live feed. The FEC may revise or amend filings after our download. Coverage dates after the retrieval date are flagged as source anomalies; they do not establish a completed reporting period. Follow the candidate’s FEC link for current disclosures.
We include House and Senate candidates present in the FEC all-candidates file for the selected two-year period. This can include former candidates and candidates not standing for election during that cycle. It does not establish whether someone currently holds office. We exclude presidential, state, and local campaigns.
FEC candidate IDs identify candidates across reporting periods. Party, state, and district are as recorded in the source snapshot. An absent record is not evidence of zero fundraising.
Committee records come from the FEC’s committee-to-candidate bulk files. We retain transaction types 24K (contributions) and 24Z (in-kind contributions), require the recipient’s committee registry designation to be principal or authorized, and require its candidate ID to match the transaction’s candidate ID.
We restrict transaction dates to the selected cycle, resolve reporting committee names from the FEC committee registry, and remove only exact duplicate source rows (excluding the database import identifier). Memo entries, amended filings, and signed adjustments remain visible.
For each candidate, we select the latest matching record from each of up to 12 reporting committees, ordered by transaction date, then filing number and source row ID. Amounts are single records. They are neither cumulative donor totals nor an exhaustive, amendment-resolved ledger. The “Filing” link opens the relevant FEC filing search.
These are contributor-side reports. They may differ from amounts reported by the receiving campaign. They exclude independent expenditures and should not be added to the financial summary.
Current Races uses the FEC candidate master file: election year must equal the chosen election cycle, the office must be House or Senate, and statutory candidate status must be C. This is a registry of filings, not a certified ballot, nominee list, or confirmation a campaign remains active. Senate groups can combine separate contests in one state; missing House districts cannot be grouped.
Each funding map follows one FEC candidate ID across cycles. It does not merge people by name. Candidates without a financial summary are shown as unavailable, never as zero.
Solid lines show complete candidate-reported contribution categories. The line width is proportional to its share of total contributions when every category is nonnegative. Individual contributions are compared with all other-political-committee contributions, not an inferred total for companies. Signed adjustments remain numeric and are not represented as positive proportions.
Dotted lines show single committee-reported transaction examples, not aggregate donor totals. We select the latest record per committee from up to eight corporate connected committees, then show up to six on the map. A latest nonpositive or explicitly voided record is omitted without falling back to an earlier positive record. The official committee registry must report organization type C and a connected organization. Brand names and local logo assets are matched by committee ID; other organizations use text and a lettermark.
A company-connected PAC is a separate fund. Its contribution is not a corporate treasury contribution to a candidate, and an employee’s personal donation is not attributed to the employer. Brand visuals identify the registered affiliation and do not imply endorsement of this site. FEC explanation of connected organizations ↗
Outside-spending examples use the same FEC committee-to-candidate bulk file, with types 24E (support) and 24A (oppose). The filer committee is the spender, and the candidate ID identifies the target, not a recipient of campaign funds. We keep the latest dated example per spender and support/oppose position, bounded to eight records; the race page shows up to six, excluding latest nonpositive or explicitly voided records without falling back to older positive records. Date filters, exact-duplicate removal, memo flags, and amendments follow the same approach as committee examples.
These records are not summed. They are not complete spending totals or an amendment-resolved ledger. Support and opposition remain separate; outside spending is never added to campaign contributions.
“Dark money” generally concerns spending whose original funders are not disclosed or readily identifiable. We show original-donor visibility as not determined. A Super PAC, nonprofit, or missing donor match alone is not enough to label funding dark. These snapshots do not trace every upstream contribution, nonprofit transfer, electioneering communication, or beneficial owner, so we do not publish a dark-money dollar estimate.
Some nonprofit contributor identities are not part of public tax-return disclosure. IRS disclosure explanation ↗ Outside-spending source records and dated original filings remain available through the links in each race.
The FEC index applies the same matching procedure to all 5,759 candidate IDs in the imported snapshots. On Sep 15, 2026, we retrieved 7,670 index entries covering 7,669 distinct published MUR case numbers. Current and archived versions of the same number are counted once. 304 case numbers matched 247 candidates’ campaigns.
Candidate–committee linkage and committee-master files for the imported cycles supply principal and authorized committee IDs and names. Case titles must match a complete committee name after case, punctuation, and spacing normalization. We exclude names shared by multiple committee IDs and committees linked to multiple candidate IDs. The matched name must also be a respondent with a disposition in the case page. There is no fuzzy matching or name-based inference about individual candidates. The legal index itself supplies names, not IDs.
This title-based lookup can miss secondary respondents, historical or changed committee names, and archived cases without structured respondents. 5,754 of 5,759 candidates have committee names available for matching. It excludes administrative fines, alternative dispute resolution, unpublished matters, and non-FEC proceedings. A zero result is a coverage-limited search, not clearance.
The index reproduces respondent-level FEC disposition labels and source document links without turning procedural steps into findings of guilt. Only outcome groups containing the matched campaign respondent are displayed. A penalty may be shared with the listed treasurer or other respondents. Identical amounts for the same respondent group across procedural stages are displayed once; amounts across MUR numbers are never added. Joint Commission action references are linked where identifiable. Multiple MUR numbers can describe one proceeding, so counts do not measure separate offenses or severity.
The supplementary reviewed collection is a small, manually reviewed selection of public FEC enforcement files, congressional ethics records, and criminal case records published by courts or the Department of Justice. It covers campaign finance and broader public-integrity matters. Selection reflects available source review, not a representative sample or a completed background check. Most candidates have not been reviewed; a missing entry provides no conclusion about their conduct.
Each reviewed narrative is matched to an exact FEC candidate ID. It identifies the person or committee actually involved, the conduct period, authority, action date, current disposition in the sources reviewed, and primary documents. A campaign’s penalty is not automatically a penalty against the candidate personally. Consolidated matters are one record; we do not multiply penalties by complaint count.
Allegations and announced investigations are attributed and labeled separately from charges, findings, civil settlements, and convictions. Charges carry a presumption of innocence. Dismissals, mitigating findings, and later changes such as sentence commutations accompany the underlying conduct. A settlement’s terms determine what was admitted; its label alone does not establish a criminal offense.
Case records span years independently of the funding cycle. Badge labels describe selected records, not scores. Funding shares, case counts, and incomplete coverage cannot rank honesty or establish corruption. The same source and labeling standards apply to every candidate regardless of party.
“Sources reviewed” is the UTC review date, not a promise that the record is complete or continuously monitored. Updates require a new source review and publication. For corrections or a later disposition, submit the candidate ID, case number, and primary-source link ↗. Previous published versions remain in the repository history.
Browse investigations, findings & status definitions ↗Campaigns file on different schedules, reports can be amended, and classification errors can occur. Comparing two candidates does not make their coverage dates identical. The product does not estimate corruption, policy influence, personal wealth, or the completeness of a donor’s giving.
If a number looks unexpected, check the reporting date and the linked FEC filing. Source records remain authoritative. To report an application issue, open an issue in the project repository ↗.