2008.09.16
Who is giving money to who?
Used to be if you wanted to know anything about who was financing political campaigns, you had to find paper records and peruse them yourself, or wait for some news organization to do it for you -- and then tell you the parts it thought were most interesting.
Not these days. Now you can find scads and scads of campaign finance data on the Web which you can search yourself.
In Virginia, we're lucky to the the Virginia Public Access Project, which offers campaign contribution and expenditure data from statewide races all the way down to your local city council. It's run by David Poole, a veteran political reporter who used to write for us here at The Roanoke Times.
If you want to go federal, check out the Federal Elections Commission. That's where you find stuff on contributors to the presidential campaigns, as well as U.S. Senate and House of Representatives races.
So, dig in and, if you find anything interesting, let me know. Happy searching...
