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Nebraska Politics

Show Me the Money- How to Look Up Campaign Donors

Perhaps you’ve been following the parade of damaging bills in the state legislature this year and wondering where this assault on democracy is coming from. Maybe you want to know who funded the local school board, your mayor, or the university regents elections. You may have real concerns over where their allegiance may lie, or maybe you just like to geek out on data. Today’s civics lesson is, “How to look up campaign donors”

In the spirit of the state capital’s inscription “The salvation of the state is watchfulness of the citizen”, we encourage you to do two things:

  1. Find out who represents you in the legislature
  2. Find out who/what funded their campaign
    *Extra Credit – Look up ALL your districts and research who represents you!

Now that you know who your state senator is, step two is where it gets interesting. You can see who/what paid for your senator’s campaign. The easiest way is using dataomaha.com, created by the Omaha World Herald. (Note – data will be for state and local candidates, not federal elected offices.)

This site can give you a wealth of statewide information available to the public, however we will focus on the “Campaign Finance” tool, described as “The first publicly accessible database of Nebraska campaign donations and spending, powered by data from the Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission.” The data here is updated weekly by the NADC, but this site goes above and beyond what the state agency site will show you, and lets you easily search by donor or campaign name. This means that you can see how much and to whom these donations went. (For more information about the site read here)

Look up your senator’s name in the search bar. You’ll see a campaign committee name like “Friends of Unicorn Senator” or “PPBITS for Legislature”. This is where you’ll want to click to see who funded the campaign of a senator. Generally, if someone donated $250 or more to a candidate, you’ll be able to find the record here.

It’s also recommended to look at a senator’s campaign when they sponsor a particularly egregious bill. This year, you simply need to pick any bill from someone that received Ricketts funding for a good example of terrible policy. Often, you’ll see certain influential folks who will benefit from the egregious bill.

 

Unfortunately, we also have a billionaire governor, able to buy influence and legislative seats by offering loads of cash to candidates. If you want to see just how Ol’ Petey is spending his dollars (and his dad and his wife too), you can easily look up his name and click to see the personal donations he’s made. This screenshot below shows some- as you’d suspect, it’s basically a Facebook friends list of all his legislative buddies.

 

This screenshot shows just one page of the various officials funded by the governor.

Pete Ricketts and his parents also each donated over $200,000 to the Nebraska Republican Party, which of course, turns around and gives more money to candidates too.  It quickly becomes obvious that a billionaire family can easily have a deep impact on local and state elections.

Now if we want to see which people and companies are funding Ricketts’ own election campaign, you can search  “Pete Ricketts for Governor” on this site. He also had a sizeable campaign donation from his own baseball team company. He’s basically found another way to funnel more of his own money to his own campaign.


Small selection of donors to Pete Ricketts’ campaign

Note that anything in blue on the screen is a link- so you can click on that name or company and instantly see more about their contributions. Beware- you may find yourself hooked, going down the rabbit hole for hours, full of righteous indignation and shock at the tangled web of donors.

Some other names connected to the governor you might keep tabs on are “Suzanne Shore” (governor’s wife), “Joe and Marlene Ricketts” (governor’s parents), “Chicago Cubs”, and “TD Ameritrade”. Other frequent GOP donors of note include, but are not limited to, former NE Attorney General Jon Bruning or his Bruning Law Group, former Omaha mayor and current university regent Hal Daub, the National Rifle Association, Koch Industries (yes, THOSE Koch brothers), Kansas city agribusinessman Charles Herbster, NE Firearms Owners Association, and Transcanada Keystone.

For more information about how Koch Industries and TD Ameritrade are connected in their corporate, social and political networks, read this publication from the UNL Economics Department.

To learn more about how billionaires around the country are influencing national politics, we recommend reading the book “Dark Money” by Jane Mayer.

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