Electioneering Communications and Independent Expenditures
Read investigative reports on the US Chamber of Commerce to influence congressional campaigns and they’ll tell you that the group shelled out approximately $30 million in independent spending. But if you review Federal Election Commission records on independent expenditures, you won’t find any indication that a single penny spent by the Chamber of Commerce.
How can this be? The answer is that there’s more than one kind of independent spending, and if you rely on just one sort you’ll get an incomplete picture of what’s going on.
Electioneering Communications. This is your father’s Oldsmobile, the sort of wink-and-nudge spending on elections that we’ve seen for some time. Entities that aren’t PACs, political parties or candidate committees spend money on advertising regarding a congressional candidate. They don’t actually say “Vote for Candidate X” or “Don’t Vote for Candidate X,” but they leave that clear message.
Electioneering Communications data reaching back to January 1, 2009 is available as a comma-delimited file at ftp://ftp.fec.gov/FEC/ec_exp_2010.csv. If you aren’t familiar writing scripts to process such data, try simply opening the file with your favorite spreadsheet program. The data structure extends over multiple lines, unfortunately, so you’ll need to be very careful when sorting and filtering.
Independent Expenditures. Unlike electioneering communications, independent expenditures go right ahead and call for the election or ouster of a congressional candidate. Spending on television advertisements, radio spots, mailings and billboards is regularly reported by various individuals and corporate groups, and during active parts of the election cycle the Federal Elections commission posts a daily update of expenditure data on its data products page.
