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.
The candidate directory is alphabetical by displayed name, with name, state, office, party and cycle filters. Each card uses the same categories. A selected reporting cycle is not necessarily the year of that candidate’s most recent election; use the cycle selector to inspect an earlier campaign.
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 totals use the FEC’s processed candidate-and-spender aggregates for the selected two-year reporting period. These include periodic Schedule E and noncommittee Form 5 spending. Support and opposition are separate signed amounts. Summed spender amounts reconcile to each candidate’s support and opposition totals from the FEC’s separate candidate-total endpoint.
The FEC excludes 24/48-hour notices from these aggregates to avoid counting spending again when it appears on a periodic report. Recent spending can therefore be missing until the periodic filing is processed. Retrieval time is not a common reporting cutoff, and a 2026 reporting cycle is 2025–2026, not a senator’s six-year election period. Rows without a candidate ID or usable support/oppose label cannot be attributed and remain in the downloadable source audit.
These amounts stay outside the campaign’s finances. We never add them to contributions or subtract opposition from support. The map shows up to four leading positive spenders per position; the full expandable table preserves signed adjustments. A missing processed match does not establish that no spending occurred. Issue ads and other activity outside these disclosures are not measured.
OpenFEC data documentation ↗ · FEC independent-expenditure reporting ↗
We search processed Schedule A and Form 5 receipts of $1 million or more per transaction in each reporting cycle, then match receiving committee IDs to every outside spender. Only affirmatively coded organization or committee records are included; individuals and memo entries are excluded. This is a uniform, limited view of large receipts, not a complete donor list. Smaller receipts and refunds paid out are not included. Contributions, transfers, loans and other receipts remain labeled separately using the filing category.
A displayed receipt belongs to the outside group. It is not assigned to a candidate, even when that group supported or opposed the candidate. Money can finance several races or other activities. Repeated appearances of a receipt across candidate profiles must not be summed. Group receipts and independent expenditures are different stages in the funding chain, not additive amounts.
Nonprofit labels require an exact normalized full-name match, the same state and ZIP code, and a unique EIN in the IRS Exempt Organizations Business Master File. Current registry status is context, not proof of status at the historical transaction date. Unmatched names stay unclassified. The source and EIN are included with each match; a nonprofit label alone does not establish that its original donors are undisclosed elsewhere.
Original donor visibility remains not determined. Some nonprofit donor identities are excluded from public tax-return disclosure, but this does not make every nonprofit receipt or Super PAC dollar dark money. We publish documented links and disclosure limits, without estimating a candidate-specific hidden-money amount.
IRS nonprofit register ↗ · IRS donor disclosure explanation ↗
The FEC individual-contribution bulk file contains a subset of itemized giving. We match principal and authorized campaign committees by FEC ID and exclude ambiguous committee links. Only confirmed individual entities with direct or earmarked receipt types 15 or 15E enter the tables. Candidate self-contributions, intermediary forwarding records, other transaction categories and refunds are excluded. Negative adjustments on included receipts remain signed. Memo rows follow the FEC’s bulk-file guidance.
We group the reported employer and occupation text after case and whitespace normalization. We do not merge corporate families or verify employment, executive status or lobbyist registration. Employer and occupation are two views of the same contributions, not amounts to add together. Company employees’ personal donations remain individual contributions, not corporate treasury giving.
The interface shows the top ten reported labels, with explicit amounts for other values and missing information; the data download retains the top twenty. Counts describe transaction records, not unique people. Unitemized giving has no affiliation breakdown here, and does not establish grassroots support. Transaction dates are dates of included records, not complete campaign coverage dates.
These tables describe the eligible published bulk subset and do not reconcile to all individual contributions or all refunds. Source hashes, inclusion rules and exclusions are saved with the datasets. Original records remain authoritative.
FEC individual contribution file definition ↗
Joint-fundraising attribution memo records (type 15J) are not present in this bulk extract. A committee’s recorded activity can span a candidate’s changes of office; affiliations describe the linked committee’s records, not a verified allocation by office.
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 ↗.