Campaign Finance 101

Running for Congress is expensive, and the cost keeps climbing. A competitive House race routinely runs $5–10 million; a Senate race in a large or contested state can exceed $100 million once outside spending is counted. Money doesn't just decide who wins — it shapes who can afford to run in the first place, whose phone calls a member returns, and which issues get a hearing. Following the money is one of the most reliable ways to understand the incentives acting on your representative.

Individual donations. Ordinary people can give a federal candidate up to a capped amount per election, adjusted for inflation each cycle (in the low-thousands-of-dollars range per election; because primaries and general elections count separately, the per-cycle total is roughly double). These limits are set and indexed by the Federal Election Commission. Direct individual giving is the cleanest form of campaign money — citizens backing candidates they believe in — and on a member's finance page you can see their largest individual donors and where those donors are based. A candidate funded mostly by small in-district donations presents a very different profile than one funded by large out-of-state checks.

PACs (Political Action Committees). Organizations — corporations, labor unions, trade associations, ideological groups — form PACs to pool contributions from their employees or members and route them to candidates. A traditional PAC can give a capped amount per candidate per election, larger than an individual's limit. PAC money is legal and disclosed, but it is organized money: it flows toward members who sit on the committees that regulate the PAC's industry, and toward leadership. When a member's profile shows "PAC Contributions," that's the footprint of organized interests, and the industry breakdown shows which ones.

Super PACs. After the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision and the related SpeechNow ruling, a new vehicle emerged: the independent-expenditure-only committee, or Super PAC. These can raise and spend unlimited sums to support or oppose candidates through ads, mailers, and digital campaigns — on the condition that they don't formally coordinate with the campaigns they help. In practice the line between "independent" and "coordinated" is thin and hard to police. Super PAC activity shows up on a member's profile as "Outside Spending," and it can dwarf what the candidate's own campaign raises.

Dark money. Some politically active nonprofits, organized under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code, can spend on elections without disclosing their donors. Money can also pass from a 501(c)(4) into a Super PAC, obscuring the original source. This is "dark money" — the public sees the spending but not who paid for it. It's the hardest category to trace, and its growth is one reason campaign-finance data never tells the complete story.

A few other vehicles shape the picture. Many members run a "leadership PAC" — a separate committee they use to donate to colleagues, building the goodwill and IOUs that win committee gavels and leadership posts; it's a window into a member's ambitions and alliances. "Bundlers" don't just give their own capped donation but solicit many others and deliver the stack, earning influence disproportionate to any single check. And "joint fundraising committees" let a candidate raise one large contribution that is then split among the campaign, the party, and other committees, which is how a donor writing a six-figure check stays within per-recipient limits. None of these are hidden — all file with the FEC — but they explain why a member's true financial network is wider than the donor list on their campaign account alone.

How to read the limits. Contribution caps apply to money given directly to a candidate's campaign. They do not cap what Super PACs or dark-money groups spend independently — which is why the headline figure for a competitive race is often outside spending, not the candidate's own war chest. Disclosure deadlines also matter: campaigns and PACs file periodic reports with the FEC, so the most recent quarter's money may not appear until the next filing lands.

Why it matters. Money is not proof of corruption, and most contributions are perfectly legal expressions of support. But money reveals relationships and incentives that belong in a voter's calculus. When a member takes millions from the pharmaceutical industry and then votes against capping drug prices, or when an oil-industry Super PAC spends heavily to elect someone who then opposes climate legislation, the pattern is worth seeing clearly. That is why we pair each member's finance data with their voting record and the industries their committees oversee — so you can judge for yourself whether the dollars and the votes line up, and decide what that means at the ballot box.