Candidate Contribution Totals

Thank you to all who wrote to me as I wrestled with whether to post PDF versions of the candidates’ finance reports. I got a >lot of email, from candidates and from ordinary folks. While the information is all public record, I have decided not to post the documents.

I heard from a number of private people who would really rather not have their addresses and donation amounts posted on the Internet for any just any old yahoo to pull down and exploit. As it stands now, at least people who want the data have to expend a bit of effort.

One emailer was a recent victim of identity theft. Others mounted very convincing and sensitive arguments. Only a couple spoke out for publication.

Still, part of me wants to answer back like this: “In today’s age of the Internet, and in the post-Watergate financing era, it is not reasonable for an individual to believe their political contributions are private. While they might not be very comfortable with the details being easily available, that’s the world we live in. I can plug my address into a database and instantly get a list of my neighbors who have given to national candidates — names, addresses and amounts. When a city adopts a campaign finance ordinance, that’s what they are getting into. Public means public.”

That makes sense for a news outlet to say, or even a blogger. But Rockville Central, while a news source, and while it exists in blog form, is more than that. It is a neighborhood hub, and I feel a strong obligation to behave in a neighborly way. Here is roughly how I explained it to a candidate:

• If I were just a “journalist” I would just go for it and post…this is news and other outlets don’t have the infrastructure to do this, so it is a niche for us.
• If I were just a “blogger” I would also just post…information should be free!
• BUT…I am also a “neighbor”…I respect my fellow neighbors and have compassion for their own reactions to their contributions being made public.

So, I am not going to post the reports this time around. In the next city election, if I am still at this, I may go ahead and post — this is fair warning folks!

All that said, I did go ahead and do some more analysis on the reports. I put together a simple spreadsheet of total number of donors, total amount of donations, and average donation per person for each candidate. I think this covers some of the most important overall information that people would like to have to make their decisions. The spreadsheet has inherent limitations, which are detailed in the notes, but it shows basic trends.

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