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OpenSecrets is the brainchild of the Center for Responsive Politics, the campaign-finance-reform advocacy group that maintains probably the best private database of campaign contributions by companies, political-action committees, and individuals. It covers the Presidential race and every House and Senate seat, as well as aggregate congressional fund-raising totals by party. It lets you track donations by industry and search for individual donors, even by Zip Code. (I live in a fairly politically active Zip Code, I found: It's full of Bill Bradley Democrats and home to a very prominent Business Week competitor who gave money to Al Gore and a Democratic National Committee soft-money account). The name OpenSecrets says it all: This information has been on the public record for years, but until CRP came along, it was rarely in a place where a citizen could get it easily, much less in a form that lets you choose what questions to ask the database. And it tells you, arguably, pretty darn important things about what to expect from different candidates if they win. You can track what parts of the country their money comes from, which ideological groups and industries they're courting, and who's raising how much of the "soft money" at the heart of complaints about the campaign-finance system. It's a good indicator of which way the candidates are leaning -- and who is likely to be leaning on them. MORE INFO, PLEASE. Sure, there are things I'd like to see improved at OpenSecrets. The most glaring deficiency is that the site has little information about specific proposals the candidates support that might please one interest group and anger another. Users can match the contribution data with what they've read or seen on TV or infer their candidate's position from some general information about which party favors what position on prescription-drug regulation, for example. But CRP would render an important service if it did more to connect the dots for us. I'd like to see it pointed out in the profile of the New York Senate race, say, what position the GOP candidate, Representative Rick Lazio, has taken on how much drug coverage Medicare should provide, what form he thinks the coverage should take, and where his money has come from. To stop short of doing so is to invite people to consider campaign finance in a vacuum. But of course it doesn't exist in a vacuum. The whole impetus for reform grows out of the suspicion that people expect custom-tailored policies, or at least greater access, as their campaign dollars add up. CPR's whole reason for being is naming names, and that seems to be a logical place to take OpenSecrets.org, too. There are lots of different ways to do this: One easy example would be to post the ubiquitous ratings issued by interest groups on different sides of the issues of abortion, taxation, and the like alongside the contributions data, and to point out specific votes or measures that were favored by specific donors. Instead, about all the site offers on specific candidates' positions are links to the Library of Congress' lists of bills that each incumbent member of Congress has sponsored. Incomplete information like that is a poor substitute for a couple of reasons. In Senate races in New York and New Jersey, for example, lists of legislation sponsored by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan or Senator Frank Lautenberg aren't terribly on point: Both are retiring. To get a profile of Republican Bob Franks, who's running for Lautenberg's seat, you'd have to look in the file covering the candidates for the House seat Franks is giving up. I only found that information because I happen to live in his district and stumbled on it while looking up my local House race. WALL STREET'S PICKS. And I couldn't find anything that might tell me what positions Hillary Rodham Clinton has taken that might reflect her heavy financial backing by lawyers, investment professionals, and people in the entertainment industries in her New York race. Why, for example, are people who work at Goldman Sachs among Clinton's biggest boosters, while archrival Morgan Stanley Dean Witter's executives are big backers of Rick Lazio? Can't find that out from a thumbnail profile of Moynihan, that's for sure. Also, the bills a particular representative sponsors are only a fraction of the votes he casts or the positions she takes at various points in the legislative process. Those count, too. OpenSecrets should find a better way to let us know about them. All this sounds like harsh criticism, but take it in context: This is a site that already does important work others should have done long ago. We've all read the charges and countercharges during campaigns about who is supposedly trying to buy whom, and this is the first resource I've found that lets me evaluate such criticism in an intellectually disciplined way. With superior information, bogus charges will fade away, odd coincidences of policy and politics will be highlighted, and citizens will have better tools to decide what manner of men and women seek to lead them. It's a noble job, and OpenSecrets is a worthy effort. Its task just isn't done yet. Mullaney covers e-business for Business Week in New York |
