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Using this PAC Study Federal law prohibits the use of information obtained about individual contributors from the Federal Election Commission for fundraising or "any commercial purpose." But an FEC publication points out, "This restriction applies only to the use of individual contributor information, not to the use of names and addresses of political committees." Data from the FEC regarding political action committees (PACs) may be used freely by anyone, including news reporters, scholars and the general public. Among the obvious uses are: to publicize, to study, to praise, to condemn, or to solicit contributions. A candidate may use this study to identify PACs most likely to be sympathetic and then "go hunting where the ducks are." Morton C. Blackwell, President The Leadership Institute The body of this report consists of tables which provide data, including rankings by giving categories regarding the giving of the 1188 business PACs which gave $25,000 or more to congressional campaigns in 2005-2006. |
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Useful Knowledge about PACs Although business PACs seem certain to survive any current attempt to destroy them, abundant experience proves they are far more easily influenced than any other type of PACs. Labor union bosses have such tight control over their organizations that few of their decisions, about their PACs or anything else, are ever effectively challenged from within. Ideological PACs, right or left, usually have very predictable, clear, and unshakable ideas of what is in their interest. Business corporations and professional and trade associations are, shall we say, more flexible in their PAC decisions. They are responsive to any of the following possible influences on them: Stockholders, employees, customers, boards of directors, clients, members, partners, colleagues, politicians, news media and the general public. Often those who make decisions in business PACs are Washington lobbyists who have risen in life by trying to make almost everybody happy. Most tend to be non-confrontational. They love to be loved and fear to be hated. As this study and our previous studies amply demonstrate, business PACs tend to contribute to incumbents rather than to challengers or candidates for open seats. They are more interested in influencing incumbents, or at least in having access to incumbents, than they are in influencing the outcome of elections. Some knowingly help their enemies, feeding the alligator in hope of being eaten last. Prudent or not, the business PACs have every right to act as they do, as all the money they dispense is voluntarily given to them. Their very nature makes them responsive to many sources of influence on their behavior. One purpose of the FEC's legally-required public disclosure of PAC financial data is undoubtedly to give citizens knowledge they can use to influence a PAC's future decisions. Armed with information in this study, stockholders, employees, customers, boards of directors, clients, members, partners, colleagues, politicians, news media and the general public will be better able to decide for themselves what actions, if any, they should take regarding business PACs in which they are interested. In 1979, after publication of my PAC study of the 1977-78 election cycle, I was visited by two, three-piece-suited officials of the National Forest Products Association. They came to my office to explain why a forest industry PAC just had to give to the re-election campaign of a famous, very liberal congressman from Illinois. Those forestry officials were sweating because conservative members of their association had seen my PAC study and chewed them out. In subsequent election cycles they, and others, changed their behavior significantly. In another case that same year, a major stockholder in a big supermarket chain got so hot she nearly peeled the paint off the wall at the corporate headquarters because she didn't like what she learned in my study about their PAC's giving pattern. They too changed their behavior. For different reasons, journalists and candidates will find this study useful. Journalists can use this data to reveal to the public the patterns of giving of business interests. Candidates can use the same data to target their solicitations to business PACs most likely to support them. |
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About this Study The records of political fundraising and expenditures files at the Federal Election Commission (FEC) are open to the public. Staffers there do their best to help inquirers. But even the FEC's computerized database of financial data is not 100% reliable. An avalanche of regular financial reports pours into the FEC from candidates, PACs and party committees. These detailed reports sometimes contain accidental errors from the thousands of organizations required to file reports. Computer data entry of these reports is sometimes a source of error. For example, a $10.00 donation may, by a data entry error, appear on the FEC computer record as a $1000 donation. I mention the inevitable, if rare, errors to caution readers of this report. The Leadership Institute's dedicated and careful researcher Ryan Rhodes prepared and rechecked the tabulations in the body of this study. He had to depend entirely on information from the FEC, where the information may be imperfect. Nonetheless, their numbers are usually reliable. The list of PACs to be included in this study was edited and rechecked by the Leadership Institute's Nikki Cibula. Each PAC was reexamined to ensure that it met the qualifications for inclusion in this study. The Leadership Institute's Director of Internet and Database Operations, Phil Natalini, obtained from the Federal Election and processed the enormous amount of data incorporated in this study. To keep this study manageable, we focus here on the 1188 largest (contributions totaling $25,000 or more) of the "economic interest" PACs, which include the business corporation PACs and the professional and trade organization PACs. Also included were the large ($25,000 or more) PACs that we judged to have primarily economic or professional reasons for being. In some cases, inclusion was a close decision. PACs of law firms were included. PACs organized by gun owners to support the right to keep and bear arms were not included as they are primarily non-economic in their purpose. But the PAC of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, in a close decision, was included because they were deemed largely motivated by on their economic interest. All 1188 PACs studied were business-related and gave or expended $25,000 or more in the 2005-06 election cycle. The tables in the body of the study include only donations to U.S. House and Senate candidates. In sum, these 1188 largest business and association PACs gave $259,835,035 to federal candidates. They gave $88,486,449 to Democrats and gave $169,307,790 to Republicans. The business and association PACs here studied accounted for the great majority of business and association PAC giving in the 2005-2006 election cycle. The 1188 PACs studied ranged in size from the National Association of Realtors PAC, total given $7,748,678, to ASHP-PAC and Princess Cruises/Tours, Inc./Alaska Hotel Properties LLC PAC (Princess Cruises/Tours, Inc. PAC), which both gave our minimum of $25,000 apiece. |
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F.A.Q. (Frequently Asked Questions) The main body of this study lists the 1188 business and association PACs which gave or spent $25,000 or more in 2005-06. By the wonder of computers, readers of this study may view the data in alphabetical order by name of the PAC or ranked by the PACs percentage of giving in any of the categories measured in the study: How many PACs are listed per page ? We list 10 PACs per page, with the exception of the last page. There are only 8 listed on the last page, as we have 1188 PACs in this study. How many pages are there in the study ? This study contains a total of 1192 pages. What does the single red arrow in the upper left-hand corner do? Clicking on the arrow will take you to the following page of the PAC study. What does the double red arrow in the upper left-hand corner do? Clicking on the double arrow will jump you 10 pages further into the PAC study. What do the "PAC Name", "Total" and "Size Rank" titles mean? The "PAC Name" column includes an alphabetical listing of each PAC's full name as filed with the Federal Election Commission. Let's use the Abbott Laboratories Employee PAC to guide us through a brief demonstration of each column's practical applications. In alphabetical order, Abbott's PAC will be the fourth PAC listed on the first page of this study. The subsequent column is titled Total. This column lists the total amount contributed by each PAC during the 2005-06 election cycle. According to our study, the Abbott Laboratories PAC contributed a total $574,474 during this time frame. Following this column is one entitled Size Rank. This column assigns a numerical ranking to each PAC depending upon the total amount they gave. The $574,474 Abbott Laboratories PAC distributed during this time frame earned it a ranking of 102nd among the 1188 PACs in our study. Note that ranks may be misleading as more than one PAC may have given the same amount. PACs that gave the same figure will have successive ranks. For example: ranks 1, 2, and 3 would be given if three PACs gave the same amount. The PAC's name is written in red lettering on the opening page of the study. What happens if I click on the PAC name? You are transferred to a different page describing that PAC's giving patterns in more depth. This new page includes a wealth of information, such as:
What happens if I click on the white lettering at the top of a column? Clicking on a words in white lettering at the top of a column will re-organize the PACs according to the criteria of that column. Clicking on the white words "Size Rank" at the top of the column will result in all PACs being listed according to their size rather than the alphabetical listing we start with. What do the "% Rep." and "Rep. Rank" titles mean? These columns list the respective percentages of each PAC's donations to Republican candidates and its rank among the 1101 PACs in terms of the percentage of its contributions which went to Republicans. Note that Abbott gave 85% of their donations to Republican candidates. This earned them a ranking of 160th in terms of percentage of total contributions going to Republicans. What do the "% Dem" and "Dem Rank" titles mean? These columns list the percentage of donations given to Democratic candidates and each PAC's rank among the 1101 PACs in terms of percentage donated to Democratic candidates. As you can see, Abbott gave 14% of its total contributions to Democrats, earning it a rank of 931nd among the PACs included in our study. What do the "% Incum.," "% Chall.," and "% Open" titles mean? The Percentage Incumbent, Percentage Challenger and Percentage Open columns divide the PACs based upon the percentage of their total contributions which went to incumbents, challengers, and candidates for open seats respectively. Abbott, to use our example, gave 81% of it's donations to incumbents, 6% to challengers and 12% to those contesting open seats. Based upon these percentages, every PAC was then ranked. Abbott ranks 808th in terms of percentage given to incumbents, 173rd in terms of percentage given to challengers, and 343rd in terms of percentage given to candidates for open seats. How did you determine which candidates were conservative and which were liberal for the purposes of this study? The final five columns in the main portion of this study relate to each PAC's giving in liberal versus conservative contests of 2003-04, as defined by the method described below. To measure each of the 1101 biggest business and association PACs' level of giving to conservative and liberal candidates, it was necessary first to devise a method of determining which candidates could be properly be described as conservatives and which could be described as liberals. The best available way to determine which candidates were conservative was to identify the candidates who received contributions from a variety of known, philosophically conservative PACs. The following method was used:
1. Several politically knowledgeable conservatives were each asked to list all the
PACs that they believed to be the
most representative of the conservative cause, broadly considered.
2. The finances of these 19 selected, conservative PACs were not analyzed in this study. But, from FEC records, the list of all candidates supported by each conservative PAC was obtained. 3. Any candidate supported by any three of these conservative PACs was defined as a conservative candidate for the purpose of this study. 4. Any candidate who ran against one of the defined conservative candidates was defined, for the special purpose of this study, as a liberal (non-conservative), except in the very few cases where, in a primary, two or more candidates defined as conservatives were opposing each other. 5. The next step was the most difficult. Each contribution of each of the 1101 PACs was examined to see if it went to a candidate on either the conservative candidate list or the liberal candidate list. The financial support each PAC gave to all the conservative candidates was totaled, as was each PAC's support of the liberal candidates. 6. Each PAC's combined amount given to all candidates in these selected, liberal versus conservative races was totaled.
7. Each PAC's total giving to all candidates in the selected liberal
versus conservative races was then calculated as a percentage of its total giving. 8. Each PAC's percentage of giving respectively to liberals and to conservatives within the selected races was calculated. Of the 61% Abbott gave in the liberal versus conservative races, 43% went to conservatives and 56% to liberals. 9. Finally, we calculated each PAC's rank among the 1101 PACs as measured by its percentage of giving to liberal and conservative candidates in the selected races. Abbott ranked 249th highest in giving to conservatives in the selected races. 1101 NORTH HIGHLAND STREET ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA 22201 Opinions expressed in this study are not necessarily those of the Leadership Institute. Contributions to the Leadership Institute by individuals, corporations and foundations are tax deductible. Copyright © 2005 |
