Who is Paying for the Cambridge City Council Election?
The Cambridge City Council election is almost half-funded by contributions from outside of the city, an analysis of donations reported to The Office of Campaign & Political Finance (OCPF), the independent state agency that administers the Massachusetts campaign finance law shows.
Between July 1, 2010 and September 27 2011, candidates reported receiving approximately $285,000. City Councilor Leland Cheung is the leading fundraiser, followed closely by Mayor David Maher.
Based on the address the contributor reported, 47% of contributions are coming from outside Cambridge.
The proportion of non-resident contributions varies widely among candidates.
Percentage of contributions is not the only measure, as candidates have raised widely varying amounts of money.
While contributions from neighboring communities such as Boston, Somerville, Arlington and Newton might be expected, far away cities such as Cupertino (California), Cleveland (Ohio) and Cherry Hill (New Jersey) are found in the top 20 cities for contributions.
A map of all reported contributions is below.
But what interests do these contributors represent? While some of the contributions represent personal connections to the candidates, some certainly come from individuals who have business interests in the City. Those connections may be innocuous, representing broad agreement with a candidate's platform, for example, Councilor Cheung's innovation agenda or Councilor Decker's pro-union activism. But others might be more focused, for example, developers interested in specific zoning or planning issues, or other single issue activism. However, Massachusetts campaign finance law requires disclosure of employer only for contributions of $200 or more, and then only requires that the candidate request the employer name at time of donation and make one subsequent effort to get the information if it wasn't originally provided.
The full database of campaign contributions analyzed for this article can be found here. If you see a contribution that's interesting to you, just click on the dialog balloon and enter a comment. Note: Logging into a Google account is required to comment on data.
(Image courtesy OpenSecrets via a Creative Commons License.)
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Minka,
You need to be logged into a Google account in order to comment on the data. - Saul
Saul -
I tried to annotate some of the cells in the full database you created but I wasn't allowed to make changes. For example, I wanted to clarify that there is no Cherry Hill, NJ Mafia connection behind my out of state contributions. My parents and childhood friends from across the street have contributed the maximum allowed for the past two years. Breathe a sigh of relief.
Minka
I'm Tom Stohlman and I'm running for Cambridge City Council.
I do not solicit donations, I ask my supporters to tell a friend about me and donate their money to a Cambridge charity of their choice. Imagine what good the $268,211 donated to City Council political campaigns so far would do for charities.
I have some money left over from the 2009 Campaign, which was paid for with $5100 of my own money and $425 from Cambridge-only supporters. That is why I don't appear on this list.
Voters who reject, as I do, the false equivalency between the size of donations and the quality of a Candidate (and how busy they are), have alternatives this November.