Follow the campaign money

by David Safier

A reader sent me a link that is a campaign contribution wonk's paradise. It's part of the Follow the Money website.

In this section, you can look up any Arizona legislative committee and see who contributed to each committee member and how much of that money is related to the committee's work.

Here's an example. I decided to look up the Senate Appropriations committee. The page has all the members, how much they got in total campaign contributions and what part of that was directly related to their work on the committee. Click on each name, and you can see all the contributers. You can also find out how much each contributer gave to Democrats and Republicans.

• Arizona Chamber of Commerce: a total of $28,337 spread out over 32 Republicans (Doug Ducey got the most). Not a cent to Democrats. Oh, and $157,500 to ballot measures, mainly, interestingly, to Prop 100, the sales tax increase. Good way to guarantee the corporate tax cuts, I guess.
• Arizona Association of Realtors: $34,866 to 54 Republicans, $27,990 to 19 Democrats.
• Home Builders Association of Central Arizona: $18,094 to 47 Republicans, $2,750 to 3 Democrats.
• Arizona Medical Association: $19,554 to 41 Republicans, $8,400 to 15 Democrats. You gotta wonder if they're regretting having giving so much to Rs who are slashing health care.
• Arizona Education Association: $80,276 to 39 Democrats, $7,992 to 8 Republicans. The unions, needless to say, give heavily on the Democratic side. The AEA also gave $50,000 to the Prop 302 to save First Things First and $50,000 for Prop 100, the sales tax.

That gives some idea of what can be learned, committee by committee, legislator by legislator, political contributer by contributer. It's a one-stop campaign finance shopping center.