Cuyamaca College Scott Tipton Congressional Representative Paper

For Congressional Representatives, you are looking for what industries are donating to their reelection funds.

• Go to www.opensecrets.org
• Click on MENU and then under POLITICIANS AND ELECTIONS click on “Congress”
• In the “Find a Member of Congress” search box, type the name of your representative.
• You can use 2016, 2018, or 2020 campaign data (use whichever data appears to be the most complete). Make sure that “Campaign Committee Only” is selected (should be the default – we want campaign committee only because that is the committee in charge of raising money solely for the Representative’s reelection).
• Scroll down and look at the Representative’s Top 5 Contributors (Political action committees (PACS) or businesses), and the Top 5 Industries that have donated to the Representative’s reelection campaign. (Note: The contribution totals for Industries include not only formal PACs representing corporations, but also individuals who have listed that industry as their profession. These individuals are giving money independently of their corporations).
• To document your participation in this tutorial and receive full credit, save a screenshot of the page with the Top 5 Industry donations to a file on your desktop. Paste the screenshot into a word processing document, and write a brief (150-250 word) description of the donations, and what they suggest about the motivations and strategies of the Congressional representative you have selected.

• Further National Challenge research on a Congressional Representative:
  • To develop a more detailed, or extensive look at a representative’s fundraising record, you can use the tabs at the top of the page to investigate the different dimensions of fundraising. If you click on the CONTRIBUTORS tab, you will be able to find the Top 20 & Top 100 contributors to your representative’s campaign. If you click on the name of a contributor, it will take you to that contributor’s page. Under the RECIPIENTS tab, you can see how much was contributed to your representative.
  • If you click on the GEOGRAPHY tab on the top, you will be able to find out which states, area codes, and metro areas are giving the most to the representative. (You can answer questions such as, does more money seem to come from within the representative’s state, or from outside the state?)
  • If you click on the tabs for PACS, you will find a breakdown of donations by business, labor, agricultural, or ideological sectors.
  • If you click the tab for INDUSTRIES, you will find the following: 1) a list of the top 20 industries that contribute to the Representative; 2) a bar graph of the total contributions by sector, with different colors representing contributions by individuals and PACS; and 3) a designation of which industry has made the Representative their top recipient.