Campaign finance has been big news of late, whether it's the gushing generosity of Enron executives, the major parties' insatiable appetite for soft money or the rise of millionaire candidates funding $100 million campaigns.
And this fall comes the main event: On Nov. 6, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act - the first major overhaul of the federal campaign finance system in a quarter century - will kick in.
Although the new law only applies to federal candidates and committees, it will affect all levels - county, state and local. For example, many observers predict that state and local committees will be the new conduits for the hundreds of millions in soft money the national parties will be prohibited from raising under the new law.
But first things first. Election 2002 is an especially crucial midterm election, with a closely divided electorate and a Congress reflecting that divide. Both parties believe they can win a majority in the House and Senate, and the national party committees are raising record amounts of hard and soft money.
In short, there will not be a dearth of storylines heading into the fall campaign season. And with that in mind, this issue of Uplink is intended to help add depth to your reporting on campaign finance.
David Gulliver of The Virginian-Pilot covers the trend of independently wealthy candidates. David Herzog of IRE/NICAR shows how some journalists have used GIS software in their reporting to show visually, for example, the pockets of power. Hank Shaw, formerly of The (Fredericksburg, Va.) Free Lance-Star writes about ways campaign finance data can be used to understand more about the interests backing a particular candidate, including the little used expenditure data. Griff Palmer of the San Jose Mercury News demonstrates how to use FoxPro's scripting capabilities to automate some of the more laborious tasks, such as downloading and importing campaign finance data. And I discuss the wealth of data to be found at the Federal Election Commission's new electronic filing Web site, and how easy it is to download, import and analyze it.
This is just a fraction of what's available through IRE, the Campaign Finance Information Center and other organizations.
For data, tipsheets and other information, visit the CFIC Web site at www.campaignfinance.org. Our Resource Center includes tipsheets written by some of the best in the business.
Tracker, our quarterly newsletter, is chock full of practical information and advice from reporters who know the issue inside and out. And of course, the NICAR Database Library has up-to-date data for every election cycle since 1991-92 in an easy-to-import format.
The FEC (www.fec.gov) has posted a number of easy-to-understand documents and reports on its Web site that will help reporters understand the complexities of the system. Links to your state elections offices can be found on the CFIC site (www.campaignfinance.org/states/index.html).
For data on the Web, Center for Responsive Politics (www.opensecrets.org) has one of the best searchable databases of federal data. The National Institute on Money in State Politics (www.followthemoney.org) offers the same sorts of lookups, but for state candidates and committees.
To learn more about how the law will change when the reform law takes effect, visit the Campaign Finance Institute (www.cfinst.org), which has done an outstanding synopsis and analysis of the new law. Common Cause (www.commoncause.org) and Public Citizen (www.publiccitizen.org) also have written extensively on the subject.
Lastly, there is one trend that reporters at all levels should be aware of: the rise of political nonprofits, sometimes called Section 527 organizations. The groups, along with state and local party committees, are expected to be the loophole allowing soft money back into the federal system. They also are becoming more common in local and state elections. For an extensive history, download the Common Cause report "Under the Radar," available on its Web site. Public Citizen also has done three studies examining the problems of disclosure and policing of 527s, which ranges from poor to nonexistent. Those reports also are available on Public Citizen Web site.
The campaign finance issue will be big news for some time to come, and covering elections and the issues surrounding them is only going to get more complex as the parties and candidates must get more creative in finding ways to fund their elections. The resources above are a good start.