Governor's race contributions - 2005 data

The Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board has finally put online the 2005 contribution data in a searchable format. (They've had PDF images of the reports online for a long time, but you can't take that data and simply throw it into a spreadsheet.)

Updated 4/18: MNCR very properly asks why I didn't include Peter Hutchinson. Um, oops. I've now included him below.

I'm looking here at the listing of itemized contributions, which only includes contributions of $125 or more. Contributions under that amount are not required to be listed separately in the reports submitted to the Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board. Here's a quick look at the totals and the percent of those totals that were itemized:

(Doran's self-funding was listed as a loan, and so does not appear here.)

It rather surprised me to find that among all the candidates, Mike Hatch raised the most money in 2005 through small contributions -- almost twice as much as Pawlenty. Has this been reported anywhere? This suggests that his campaign has a much stronger grass-roots base than he is generally credited with in the media and in the blogosphere.

Now here's the listing of all corporations whose employees contributed a total of $2500 or more to one of the Minnesota gubernatorial campaigns during 2005. It makes for interesting reading. (Note that this does not include corporate PAC contributions.)

Important methodological note: The above listings include more contributions than those actually listed for each employer. In addition to people who listed themselves as employees, I have also assigned contributions from their family members to the same employer. I only did this if all of the following were true: (1) both had the same last name, (2) both lived in the same city, (3) both contributed on the same date, and (4) the family member listed their own employment as homemaker, student, unemployed, or retired (or left it blank).

Interestingly, most Minnesota Fortune 500 companies do not appear on the above lists, though several are represented in smaller amounts. Here are the missing companies (with Fortune 500 ranking):

          UnitedHealth Group (37)
          Best Buy (76)
          Supervalu (113)
          Northwest Airlines (182)
          CHS (188)
          Medtronic (235)
          Xcel Energy (247)
          Land O'Lakes (301)
          Thrivent Financial for Lutherans (352)
          CH Robinson (379)
          Nash Finch (457)
          Mosaic (470)

posted by DK @ 2:29 PM permalink