DC
Power Players is a
website that highlights the people and money having impact on the current Mayor,
Attorney General, and City Council of the District of Columbia. It is meant to
serve as a tool for reporters and the public who wish to discover who are the
political power players and their interests.
The
database and financial breakdowns focus on the individuals, organizations,
companies, LLCs, unions, non-profits and others, which gave donations to the
current Mayor, Attorney General and members of the City Council from 2003 until
the present. These include donations to their campaign committees, exploratory
committees, political actions committees, constituent service funds, inaugural
committees, and legal defense funds, if any.
DC
Power Players also
arranges certain donors together who share common interests as a team of
players. For example, a team would bring together those individuals who gave,
along with their spouses, their companies, their LLCs, their employees, and
those with other connections.
In
addition, DC Power Players provides breakdowns of some donors by an area
of their interest, such as Development/Construction/Real Estate/Housing, or
Lawyers/Law, or Communications/Electronics, or Health, or Finance/Insurance, or
Transportation, or Natural Resources/Energy.
Our
knowledge about the power players is constantly improving. With new filings and
more research on donors the database continues to improve disclosure. We have
put up some lobbying data and some contracting data to seek comment on its
usefulness in understanding money in DC politics.
DC
Power Players also
provides links to news articles relating to each interest group category and
public official. We will continue to add new ones as they become available.
The DC
Power Players database was developed and built by Kent Cooper and Tony
Raymond. Over the last four decades they have primarily focused on political
money involved with federal elections. They have worked at the Federal Election
Commission, at non-profit organizations, and co-founded private companies that
provided research and data to media organizations which sought to inform the
public about money in politics.
2019