The Strib on out-of-state money

The Star Tribune devoted their lead article on Sunday to the money being contributed in the Senate campaign, with the "hook" being that lots of money is coming in from out-of-state, and more is on the way: (Senate race lures distant dollars). As far as I can make out, the story was based entirely on the year-end financial reports submitted to the FEC, as analyzed for the Strib by Dwight L. Morris and Associates and the Center for Responsive Politics. Now, I have a ton of respect for the CRP, but they missed a couple of things here -- and the Strib ought to know better, too.

First of all, the article briefly discusses contributors to the three major Senate campaigns, and there is a big chart on p. A10 (I can't seem to find it online -- I've scanned it below), listing the "Top donors in Minnesota's Senate race," with sections for Kennedy, Klobuchar, and Bell. Remember, this is year-end data. Think about it.

Where's Patty Wetterling?

It makes sense that the Strib wouldn't exactly play up her now-discontinued Senate candidacy, but it is odd that there is no mention of it at all. I'll forgive leaving out Kelly Doran, who was only in for three months and who was mostly self-financed. But it seems they didn't even bother to look at Wetterling's major contributors (one of whom, incidentally, is the completely fascinating Hank Asher).

Secondly, in an article that's all about the influx of out-of-state money into the campaign, wouldn't you expect to see, maybe, a statistic? Like what percent of the money contributed to the four three campaigns came from out-of-state? The article is full of examples of outside contributions, but there's nothing to give the reader any indication of how representative these examples are.

Campaigns only itemize individual contributions of $200 or more in the FEC reports, so any description has to be clear about what is being omitted. But Strib reporters are smart, they could have handled that (and the "Top donors" chart used the same information and gives the appropriate cautions). Fortunately, The Analyst is on the job. All info below is calculated directly from the online FEC filing data.

Update: Corrected Wetterling numbers 3/10/05.

Kennedy through 12/31/05
   Unitemized contributions: 322,696
   Itemized contributions: 2,227,613
   Percent of itemized contributions from out-of-state: 19%

Klobuchar through 12/31/05
   Unitemized contributions: 537,867
   Itemized contributions: 1,872,041
   Percent of itemized contributions from out-of-state: 19%

Bell through 12/31/05
   Unitemized contributions: 25,570
   Itemized contributions: 423,338
   Percent of itemized contributions from out-of-state: 26%

Wetterling through 12/31/05
   Unitemized contributions: 455,576 641,138
   Itemized contributions: 641,138 455,576
   Percent of itemized contributions from out-of-state: 26%

Notice how putting Wetterling into the picture changes the interpretation of these results quite significantly. Patty held her own in the area of small individual contributions (she outraised Kennedy!), but she was not as competitive for the contributions of $200 or more -- particularly in Minnesota. From these numbers, one could make the case that it was the large in-state contributors who made the biggest difference in the Klobuchar-Wetterling matchup (PAC funding only gave Amy a small edge through the end of 2005). That's not exactly the impression one gets from the Strib article.

My third beef with the Strib article is once again related to the chart of top donors. For each candidate, the Strib and its partners combined the contributions of PACs affiliated with a firm with the contributions of the firm's employees. For Kennedy, this produces a top 3 of Target, Cargill, and US Bancorp. For Klobuchar, we get Petters Group, Dorsey & Whitney (chart has typo), and Faegre & Benson. Good enough.

But then we get to Ford Bell, whose top contributor is listed as "Veterinarians, animal care." Now, it's no big deal that Bell solicited funds from his network of professional contacts. But from a statistical standpoint, this entry is comparing apples to oranges -- or to be more accurate metaphorically, apples to orchards. You can't take all of the veterinarians who contributed to Bell and stick them into the same category as if they were members of one giant firm. If you want to do that, then you have to combine the other professions too -- which would probably make "Attorneys" the top category for both Klobuchar and Kennedy, with "Doctors" most likely appearing in the top ten for both as well.

I suspect they did this because the money from veterinarians is a significant percentage of the money Bell has raised overall, and an even more significant percentage of the money he has raised from out of state. But it's intellectually sloppy.

I'm still playing around a bit with the FEC Senate numbers; I'll have more on them later.

posted by DK @ 2:08 AM permalink