Investigate Money in State Politics
Money in state politics plays a pivotal role in shaping public policy in individual states and across the nation. We track political donations in all 50 states. Take a look.
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What's New at Follow The Money?
New Politics of Judicial Elections, 2000-2009
State judicial elections have been transformed during the past decade. The story of America's 2000–2009 high court contests—tens of millions of dollars raised by candidates from parties who may appear before them, millions more poured in by interest groups, nasty and misleading ads, and pressure on judges to signal courtroom rulings on the campaign trail—has become the new normal. For more than a decade, partisans and special interests of all stripes have been growing more organized in their efforts to use elections to tilt the scales of justice their way. Many Americans have come to fear that justice is for sale.
Elections & Public Financing
Fundraising to run for elected office continues to capture increasing amounts of a candidate's time, even at the state level. Our research indicates that public financing systems can help to reduce the amount of time legislators must devote to fundraising and, thus, spend more time addressing policy issues. Our data also indicates that as these races become closer in terms of money, they also become closer in terms of competitiveness. We find that public financing has a moderate but significant effect on improving the number of races that are competitive in both the state House and the state Senate. We also find that public financing has a strong effect on decreasing the disparity between incumbents and challengers in campaign contributions.
Gun Rights Advocates Outgun Opposition Contributions
Second Amendment advocates won several important victories in the past year, crowned with the Supreme Court's decision in late June that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual's right to keep arms in the home. As well, several states recently passed gun-friendly legislation.
Names in the News: Gov. Joe Manchin
Hours after signing legislation that set up a special election to fill the remaining two years of the late U.S. Senator Robert Byrd's term, West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, III announced on July 20 that he would run in the race. Manchin, a Democrat, has dominated campaign fundraising in the past and handily won elections in 2000, 2004, and 2008. If these trends from his state races continue into his U.S. Senate campaign, he will certainly be a powerful contender.
The Efficacy of Self-Funding a Political Campaign
Whitman and Fiorina take note: while candidates with big war chests hold a significant advantage over their opponents, the advantage is diffused when most of the money comes from a candidate's own pockets. The traditional advantages of being the top fundraiser in a race, or being an incumbent, don't confer the same level of success to self-financiers. That trend holds true for candidates from all parties. In fact, in the last nine years, only 11 percent of self-financed candidates won their races. Early primary results in 2010 show this trend may be continuing.
If political donations and lobbying efforts serve as a gauge of influence and commitment, oil plays a significant role in Gulf state politics. Oil companies advocated strongly for themselves long before the Deepwater tragedy and likely will continue to do so--and to drill.
ARRA Contracts and State Political Contributions
A diverse "Who's Who" of American organizations and corporations received billions of dollars in contracts from the federal government under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The National Institute on Money in State Politics examined possible relationships between these contracts, and campaign contributions to state-level candidates and committees.
Institute staff are busy collecting 2010 campaign finance reports filed by candidates seeking state office this November. Learn more about how this data is collected, when it will be available, and how you can be notified when it is on our website.
Third-Party Candidates Face Long Odds
Voters in the 2010 elections can again expect to see few third-party candidates who seek to provide alternatives to politics as usual. Those few candidates face long odds. Of the 6,181 third-party candidates registered in the last nine years, only 2 percent won their races. Moreover, the traditional advantages of money and incumbency don't confer success onto third-party candidates to the same extent as they do mainstream party candidates.
The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into securities fraud at Goldman Sachs, one of the nation's largest investment banks. Much of the scrutiny over Goldman Sachs has focused on Washington, D.C., where Goldman Sachs' PAC and its employees gave $24.5 million to federal political campaigns in the period 1999-2009. Most of that money went to Democrats, and a quarter of this year's donations went to members of the committees most responsible for banking regulation.
The dual advantages of incumbency and fundraising dominance produced a success rate of 96 percent in the 2007-2008 state legislative elections. Candidates possessing just the incumbency advantage had a 94 percent success rate, and frequently did not even face a contested general election.
Health Insurance Companies Give Healthy Donations to Political Campaigns
Executives of health insurance titans WellPoint, UnitedHealth Group, Humana, and Aetna were called before Congress in March to explain stiff rate increases and claims denials. Despite the publicized wrangling at the federal level, state governments actually bear primary responsibility for health insurance regulation--and that has not escaped the notice of health insurers. These four companies were major players in state politics, giving a total of $8.7 million to candidates and committees in 42 states from 2005 through 2008.
More than 15,000 candidates who sought offices ranging from the state legislature to the governor's seat raised nearly $1.5 billion during state elections held in 2007 and 2008. State office-holders who were not up for election raised an additional $172 million.
Revised: March 2, 2010: The "Citizens United v FEC" ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court has no effect on campaign limits in place at the state and federal levels but may effectively overturn laws in 24 states that ban or restrict corporations from funding advocation for or against state candidates. In the 22 states that prohibit corporations from giving to candidates, individuals contributed about half of the money raised by candidates and non-individuals provided less than one-fourth. The reverse is true in the 28 states that allow corporate giving.
The Money Behind the 2008 Same-Sex Partnership Ballot Measures
(UPDATED 2/9/2010) The struggle between gay and lesbian rights interests and conservative and religious interests continues: in 2008, voters in Arizona, Arkansas, California and Florida passed measures opposing same-sex marriage or benefits. Underscoring the intensity of the conflict, these two interest groups were among the top contributors overall in each of the four states.
2008 Party Control Map
In the report, Advantage, Incumbent, that was conducted in 2008, we showed that the key to victory in a legislative election is to already be in office. Our new Party Control Map gives you a state-level district-by-district visualization that shows party representations after the 2006 and 2008 elections. It also allows you to compare the two maps to see how/if party control has changed.
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