Employer Data for Campaign Contributors

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Aaron

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Dec 1, 2009, 11:52:47 AM12/1/09
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I am trying to find the rate of compliance (for disclosing employer
data) for campaign contributors for the 6 candidates for US Senate in
Massachusetts.

What's the quickest, easiest way to do this?

Thanks

Aaron Lester

Susi Alger

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Dec 1, 2009, 1:20:46 PM12/1/09
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Hello Aaron,

We calculate disclosure rates using just the type 15 and 15J records from the individual itemized contributions.  We use the raw FECOccEmp field to do it as this field is what is reported by the member and is not standardized or changed by CRP.  We then calculate the total for each member where the information is blank or incomplete and compare to the total.  We define blank to include things such as "No information", "Info Req", "Best Effort", "XXXX" and a whole host of other things we find in that field.  "Incomplete" includes things so generic as to be meaningless -- "business", "self", "chairman" and such.

I would recommend that you group the data on FECOccEmp and sort by the amount of money descending to look for cases that fall into a Blank or Incomplete category to develop your queries appropriately.

Good luck in your project, Aaron.

Susi


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Aaron Lester

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Dec 1, 2009, 8:44:12 PM12/1/09
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Hi, thanks for the response. You'll have to excuse me, I'm a little slow. I've done a lot of slicing and dicing of candidate contributions on the state level here in Mass--especially looking at disclosure. It sounds like I used many of  your same methods to find "info req., letter sent" etc. 

In this case, though, I'm having trouble retrieving the data to begin with. For example, I don't know what type 15 or 15j records are.

Would you  be able to walk me through, click by click, how to retrieve the contributions for a candidate (not sitting member) for US Senate in Mass. All the candidates actually.

Michael Capuano
Martha Coakley
Alan Kazai
Stephen Pagliuca
Scott P. Brown
Jack E. Robinson

Thanks so much,
Aaron

Susi Alger

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Dec 1, 2009, 9:47:31 PM12/1/09
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It's late, so this is just a quick idea -- why not just use our web site to look up exactly that information:
http://www.opensecrets.org/races/otherdata.php?cycle=2010&id=MAS1

If you are determined to calculate this yourself, I'll write some instructions tomorrow.

Susi

Aaron Lester

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Dec 1, 2009, 9:51:11 PM12/1/09
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Voila! how recent is this data? is october data entered? November?

Susi Alger

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Dec 1, 2009, 10:02:40 PM12/1/09
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Hi Aaron,

This information was calculated using data that we downloaded on 11/8/09 from the FEC.  We expect that most all of the 3rd quarter data is included here.  We'll be downloading data again on Sunday, 12/6 and will probably update his information about a week later on the web site.

Susi.

Aaron Lester

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Dec 1, 2009, 11:52:14 PM12/1/09
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Thank you.

I have another question. Are you tired of me yet?

How can a candidate have more money on hand than he or she has raised. This may fall under the category of Campaign Finance Law "101", sorry to bother you.

Aaron

Susi Alger

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Dec 2, 2009, 8:49:54 AM12/2/09
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Hey Aaron,

No, not tired of you -- it's always rewarding to get a question for which I have an answer.  Basically, a candidate has more money on hand than they have raised because they have carried over money from previous election cycles or transferred in money from other candidate committees they have had (presidential campaigns, for example).

The summary data provided is reported by 2 year election cycle.  For Senators, who generally have an election only every 6 years, their fundraising actually takes place over 3 election cycles.  The fundraising in the cycle of their election race is generally the cycle in which they raise the most money.  Much of the money they raise in previous cycles for which they have no election race is kept on hand to use during the election year.  The summary reports that the candidates file list beginning cash, amount raised, amount spent and cash on hand.  Simplistically, cash on hand  = beginning cash + amount raised - amount spent.

We're happy to help, Aaron, so don't hesitate to send them along.

Susi

Aaron Lester

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Dec 2, 2009, 6:56:32 PM12/2/09
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Hi there,
 
Thanks!  I'm wondering again how recent the data is i'm looking at for these Mass senate candidates. You said you downloaded data on Nov. 8. So what is the latest date of contributions reflected in this data?
 
Also, when looking at the website (back over on the summary section for these candidates) it says that it was last updated Nov 18th. I guess what I want is to make sure I have or can get the most recent possible data.

Susi

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Dec 4, 2009, 6:30:39 PM12/4/09
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Hi Aaron,

There are two different data sets that you are talking about. One is
the summary data -- that is a report filed by the candidate and
provided by the FEC in a data file available every morning, 365 days a
year. The file has 1 line for each committee (a single candidate can
have more than one candidate committee), and lists total raised, total
spent, cash on hand, debts, etc. The total raised includes both
itemized (over $200) and unitemized contributions (<= $200).

The itemized contributions are those that you use to calculate things
like disclosure rates. These records are filed by the committees
every month or quarter and are made available by the FEC on a weekly
basis. The last time that we downloaded the itemized records was Nov.
8th. We will be doing so again on Sunday night.

Does that answer your question? There was some discussion of the
difference between the itemized and summary data earlier on this Group
- and Steve provided a link to a valuable post on the FEC blog about
this:
http://www.fec.gov/blog/disclosure/entry/reconciling_summaries_and_details

Susi


On Dec 2, 5:56 pm, Aaron Lester <aarongles...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> Thanks!  I'm wondering again how recent the data is i'm looking at for these
> Mass senate candidates. You said you downloaded data on Nov. 8. So what is
> the latest date of contributions reflected in this data?
>
> Also, when looking at the website (back over on the summary section for
> these candidates) it says that it was last updated Nov 18th. I guess what I
> want is to make sure I have or can get the most recent possible data.
>
> On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 8:49 AM, Susi Alger <susi.al...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hey Aaron,
>
> > No, not tired of you -- it's always rewarding to get a question for which I
> > have an answer.  Basically, a candidate has more money on hand than they
> > have raised because they have carried over money from previous election
> > cycles or transferred in money from other candidate committees they have had
> > (presidential campaigns, for example).
>
> > The summary data provided is reported by 2 year election cycle.  For
> > Senators, who generally have an election only every 6 years, their
> > fundraising actually takes place over 3 election cycles.  The fundraising in
> > the cycle of their election race is generally the cycle in which they raise
> > the most money.  Much of the money they raise in previous cycles for which
> > they have no election race is kept on hand to use during the election year.
> > The summary reports that the candidates file list beginning cash, amount
> > raised, amount spent and cash on hand.  Simplistically, cash on hand  =
> > beginning cash + amount raised - amount spent.
>
> > We're happy to help, Aaron, so don't hesitate to send them along.
>
> > Susi
>
> > On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 10:52 PM, Aaron Lester <aarongles...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> >> Thank you.
>
> >> I have another question. Are you tired of me yet?
>
> >> How can a candidate have more money on hand than he or she has raised.
> >> This may fall under the category of Campaign Finance Law "101", sorry to
> >> bother you.
>
> >> Aaron
>
> >> On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 10:02 PM, Susi Alger <susi.al...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >>> Hi Aaron,
>
> >>> This information was calculated using data that we downloaded on 11/8/09
> >>> from the FEC.  We expect that most all of the 3rd quarter data is included
> >>> here.  We'll be downloading data again on Sunday, 12/6 and will probably
> >>> update his information about a week later on the web site.
>
> >>> Susi.
>
> >>> On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 8:51 PM, Aaron Lester <aarongles...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> >>>> Voila! how recent is this data? is october data entered? November?
>
> >>>> On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 9:47 PM, Susi Alger <susi.al...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> >>>>> It's late, so this is just a quick idea -- why not just use our web
> >>>>> site to look up exactly that information:
> >>>>>http://www.opensecrets.org/races/otherdata.php?cycle=2010&id=MAS1
>
> >>>>> If you are determined to calculate this yourself, I'll write some
> >>>>> instructions tomorrow.
>
> >>>>> Susi
>
> >>>>> On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 7:44 PM, Aaron Lester <aarongles...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> >>>>>> Hi, thanks for the response. You'll have to excuse me, I'm a little
> >>>>>> slow. I've done a lot of slicing and dicing of candidate contributions on
> >>>>>> the state level here in Mass--especially looking at disclosure. It sounds
> >>>>>> like I used many of  your same methods to find "info req., letter sent"
> >>>>>> etc.
>
> >>>>>> In this case, though, I'm having trouble retrieving the data to begin
> >>>>>> with. For example, I don't know what type 15 or 15j records are.
>
> >>>>>> Would you  be able to walk me through, click by click, how to retrieve
> >>>>>> the contributions for a candidate (not sitting member) for US Senate in
> >>>>>> Mass. All the candidates actually.
>
> >>>>>> Michael Capuano
> >>>>>> Martha Coakley
> >>>>>> Alan Kazai
> >>>>>> Stephen Pagliuca
> >>>>>> Scott P. Brown
> >>>>>> Jack E. Robinson
>
> >>>>>> Thanks so much,
> >>>>>> Aaron
>
> >>>>>> On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 1:20 PM, Susi Alger <susi.al...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> >>>>>>> Hello Aaron,
>
> >>>>>>> We calculate disclosure rates using just the type 15 and 15J records
> >>>>>>> from the individual itemized contributions.  We use the raw FECOccEmp field
> >>>>>>> to do it as this field is what is reported by the member and is not
> >>>>>>> standardized or changed by CRP.  We then calculate the total for each member
> >>>>>>> where the information is blank or incomplete and compare to the total.  We
> >>>>>>> define blank to include things such as "No information", "Info Req", "Best
> >>>>>>> Effort", "XXXX" and a whole host of other things we find in that field.
> >>>>>>> "Incomplete" includes things so generic as to be meaningless -- "business",
> >>>>>>> "self", "chairman" and such.
>
> >>>>>>> I would recommend that you group the data on FECOccEmp and sort by
> >>>>>>> the amount of money descending to look for cases that fall into a Blank or
> >>>>>>> Incomplete category to develop your queries appropriately.
>
> >>>>>>> Good luck in your project, Aaron.
>
> >>>>>>> Susi
>
> >>>>>>> On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 10:52 AM, Aaron <aarongles...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> >>>>>>>> I am trying to find the rate of compliance (for disclosing employer
> >>>>>>>> data) for campaign contributors for the 6 candidates for US Senate
> >>>>>>>> in
> >>>>>>>> Massachusetts.
>
> >>>>>>>> What's the quickest, easiest way to do this?
>
> >>>>>>>> Thanks
>
> >>>>>>>> Aaron Lester
>
> >>>>>>>> --
>
> >>>>>>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> >>>>>>>> Groups "OpenSecrets Open Data" group.
> >>>>>>>> To post to this group, send email to
> >>>>>>>> opensecret...@googlegroups.com.
> >>>>>>>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> >>>>>>>> opensecrets-open...@googlegroups.com<opensecrets-open-data%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com>
> >>>>>>>> .
> >>>>>>>> For more options, visit this group at
> >>>>>>>>http://groups.google.com/group/opensecrets-open-data?hl=en.
>
> >>>>>>>  --
> >>>>>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
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> >>>>>>> .
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Aaron Lester

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Dec 5, 2009, 9:02:54 AM12/5/09
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Thank you!

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