QuidQuo.org features a tool that will help you uncover how much money Iowa politicians have received, who they have received that money from, and which candidates Iowa companies and PACs have contributed to. Here's how it works:

Search for a Candidate

In this section, you simply type in the name of the candidate you want to find. A helpful link is provided if you need to figure out the name of your state legislator. Candidates will appear in the search list highlighted red if they are a Republican, blue if they are a Democrat, and neither if they are non-partisan/other. Once you select a candidate, here's what you will see:

  1. The total amount of money the candidate has received.
  2. A pie chart of that money broken down by contributions from:
    • Either State Level Political Party
    • Companies/Other Entities
    • Individual donations >$200
    • Individual Donations <$200
  3. A list of the top 10 company/other entity contributors
  4. A list of the top 5 individual contributors

Companies/entities may be selected from the top 10 company/entity list to automatically search for their information in the search provided below.

Seach for a Company or other Entity

In this section, you can type in the name of a registered company, PAC, candidate committe, or other entity to see who they have given money to. The result will list:

  1. The total amount given to Iowa political candidates.
  2. The top 10 candidate recipients of the company's contributions

As above, the recipient list will be color-coded by party, if they are currently an active, registered candidate committee. All names on the recipient list may be selected to search above. Additionally, a helpful link is provided if you want to check lobbyist declarations on a particular bill to see if the companies/entities above are lobbying for or against legislation you care about.

A note about this portion of the tool: candidate committees may also be selected in the search of this section. What will be displayed is how much that candidate has given to other committees. In order to see how much they have received from other committees, please search for them above.

Caveats

Information is reported by the candidates on certain deadlines. This information is most accurate after those reporting deadlines. This Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board (IECD) page lists reporting deadlines for various races and committees.

Candidate information provided in the candidate search above is based on active, registered candidate committee codes. That means the you will see all information tied to a candidate's current committee. It may not reflect information from previous committees or campaigns. For example if a candidate served on city council and then ran for state legislature and they started a new committee in that process, the data will only reflect the money raised for their active state legislaive committee.

Information provided in the company/entity search below is similarly tied to committee codes. If you select a recipient in the list that does not have an active, registered campaign, information will still be displayed in the candidate list above. This will be tied to that inactive campaign committee code.

All information provided is based on an aggregate of all contributions received/given as reported by the IECD's list of Iowa Campaign Contributions Received. This list includes data beginning in 2003. Their page lists additional information about the data, its completeness, and what it does and does not include. I certainly hope everything here is accurate, but I cannot guarantee the accuracy of the data reported by candidates, maintained by the IECD, or that this page is free from bugs or defects. Please check to verify information with other sources, especially as this site is new, and please report any bugs you find so I can fix them. This site is intended to provide information to the public. It is not for profit, so please be kind in reporting any errors, typos, or bugs you might find.

Also, there is a hidden game on this site. Search all...around the finance search tools page, and you might be able to find the link to click.

Enjoy!