To Each Generation: A Right and a Responsibility

Mike Bready, a neighbor and fellow state delegate, shared with me his thoughts on the race between Senator Orrin Hatch and Dan Liljenquist.  He sent me the write-up  allowed me to share it on my blog. His insights have value well beyond tomorrow’s primary.. Here it is:

A Brief Review of Senator Hatch’s Votes on Unconstitutional Bills by Scott Bradley

In 2006 Scott Bradley ran as the Constitution party’s nominee against Senator Hatch for the U.S. Senator. Note, prior to joining the Constitution Party, Scott was a long-time active member of the Republican party. During his campaign is produced the following short list of votes by Senator Hatch that expand the power of the Federal government beyond its Constitutional bounds. Scott graciously gave me permission to share this with you.

Sources of Campaign Donations to Representative Jim Matheson

I’m adding Jim Matheson to the list of current Utah federal representatives who’s donations I’m analyzing. Below are charts & tables that summarize 2006-2012 campaign contribution data from MapLight (a nonprofit nonpartisan organization that seeks to show the impact of money on politics). I downloaded the data June 14, 2012. 

Individual donors are required to provide addresses to campaigns so it is easy to show the source of funds from a location perspective. For PACs it is difficult because if a PAC is set up by a company with a national or global presence then it is hard to identify a specific location. If on the other hand it is a PAC that represents an industry or cause then donors can come from anywhere in the US. For the PACs I went through the list and identified the ones that I determined had a significant presence in Utah (for corporations I looked up where they had offices or plants) then added a small fudge factor to this total to err on the side of donations from Utah. Note, similar to Hatch donations I did not take the time to research all of them but I did look for those that I thought would have a Utah presence first. Also, I generalized the industries for the PAC contributions (e.g. Pharmaceuticals, Hospitals, Doctors, and Medical Devices are categorized as Healthcare) and added a pie chart to the sources PAC donations by Industry.

Sources of Campaign Donations to Representative Jason Chaffetz

One of Senator Hatch’s campaign staff asked me to select another candidate for federal office and do an analysis of their campaign donation sources so they could be compared. I thought it was a reasonable suggestions so I decided to use Representative Chaffetz as a comparator to Senator Hatch. As I did for the Senator I tried to err on the side of contributions coming from Utah when there was subjectivity involved.

Below are charts & tables that summarize campaign contribution data I downloaded from MapLight (a nonprofit nonpartisan organization that seeks to show the impact of money on politics). The data contains all donations for election cycles 2006-2012. I downloaded the data June 13, 2012. 

Sources of Campaign Contributions to Senator Orrin Hatch

One of the items opponents of Senator Hatch point to is the % of funds to his campaign that come from out of state. As should be expected, supporters of Senator Hatch cry foul and say that the number is not accurate for a variety of reasons. The number I’ve most often seen is 91% of campaign donations to Senator Hatch come from out of state. I thought I’d do my own research this weekend and find out as best I could what the numbers really are. I’m sharing the results with you. I tried to err on the side of contributions coming from Utah when there was subjectivity involved.

Below are charts & Tables that summarize campaign contribution data I downloaded from from MapLight (a nonprofit nonpartisan organization that seeks to show the impact of money on politics). The data contains all donations for election cycles 2006-2012 as of June 8, 2012.