The CL analysis of campaign financing used local, state and federal data through the reporting period that ended Oct. 13, 2006, for all contributions made during the 2006 election cycle. (These were the latest available by our reporting deadlines.) The reports are widely available online from the supervisor of elections, Florida Division of Elections and the Federal Election Commission. We used Congressional Quarterly's "Political Money Line" website (www.tray.com) to obtain federal data that could be imported into a spreadsheet for analysis.
All three databases treat their reports differently (some include address, others don't; some consolidate names into one field, others break them into first and last), making it very difficult to merge all three different types of contributions into one central database. CL, therefore, analyzed them separately using Microsoft Excel.
For our rankings, we analyzed nearly $2.5 million worth of contributions that were $100 and above and contributed to local races (judge, county commission, school board) in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties. Once the top five rankings were determined, we then additionally searched state and federal databases for more contributions made by those top fundraisers to give an idea of the full scope of political influence these companies and individuals have.
This article appears in Nov 15-21, 2006.