The Donors
For more than 30 years — ever since the adoption of the 1974 Federal Election Campaign Act, the landmark post-Watergate reform law — big political donors have, in theory, been easily identifiable. But while the best available campaign-finance data ties names and occupations to dollar amounts and candidates, it stops short of painting insightful pictures of who the donors are and why they give.
We conceived this portion of The Buying of the President 2008 website as an ongoing experiment in distributed reporting that will be launched and built out with the help of journalists — and journalism students — across the country. For more information, please contact us at donorpedia@buyingofthepresident.org.