Tennessee State Capitol. . (Photo: John Partipilo)
This database was first published on July 24, 2023. It has since been updated several times. The final update took place on February 24th, 2025.
Since 2010, a group of 199 people have spent more than $1 million on Tennessee politics.
An analysis of Tennessee’s exclusive seven-figure club spending shows that funding serves as a benchmark for the power of private groups to influence public policy.
Spending is legally permitted under state campaign laws. While the amount set does not guarantee access or influence, spending over $1 million indicates a consistent effort by individual groups over time to maximize lobbying.
David Miller, a former political professor at East Tennessee State University, said organizations that are trying to influence in order to maintain their influence often pay at a minimum.
“If you have established a presence, you can get more from lobbying,” Miller said.
Cash for Clout is an ongoing series examining the impact of money on Tennessee’s politics. Other articles in the series include:
Any tips on how money is affecting Tennessee Capitol decisions? I’ll send an email to [email protected]. To encrypt messaging, use the text 615-249-8509 for the signal or call the same number.
A million-dollar club, The Lookout offers a 15-year lookback. The current database reflects campaign contributions and independent spending from January 16, 2010 to January 15, 2025, with reports from January 1, 2010 to June 30, 2024 Lobbying.
For future reference, if a new lobbying record is submitted in March, the 15-year period will cover only January 1, 2010 to December 31, 2024.
Methodology:
The data underlying this story comes from the Lobbying and Campaign Finance Reports databases maintained by the Tennessee Department of Ethics and Campaign Finance. To create a top donor list, Lookout combined spending from three categories: lobbying, campaign contributions and independent spending.
The Bureau provides range lobbying spending. For example, if the report ranged between $10,000 and $25,000, the observation deck spent $17,500 on the amount spent. When the report said it was under $10,000, $1,000 was spent.
For campaign contributions, The Lookout has tracked all candidates related to the candidates and contributions to the Political Action Committee since 2009.
The candidates and their contributions to the PAC were combined in reporting how much they raised. In many cases, these contributions were a refund for campaign costs, and thus eliminated all contributions from elected officials to the Party PAC (Tennessee Legislative Campaign Commission and Tennessee Tomorrow PAC).
They also did not self-fund as part of their million-dollar club list.
Independent spending was also reported as part of the Tennessee Ethics and Campaign Finance Campaign Database based on Expenses. I used a similar method for my donation to edit the full expenditure list.
Since 2010, several companies, associations, and families have used multiple political action committees, changed their company names, and purchased other companies in Tennessee for political activities. Lookout combined all the names you can find for a single company, family, or association. All past company campaign finance and lobbying data were combined in the name of the new company merger.
You can also download the data behind this story
A completely unedited campaign finance database is divided into folders; It includes more than 2 million data, including donations to lawmakers, lawmakers PACs, and donations to PACs operated in Tennessee (January 16, 2010 to January 15, 2025). Includes:
Compiled format for campaign finance datathis data reflects data from a thriving chart “searching for campaign funders for Tennessee state politicians.”
Lookout lobbying spending data (January 1, 2010 to June 30, 2024) You can download merged names.
Independent expenditure data (From January 16, 2010 to January 15, 2025). (58.1 MB)
Click here for links Tennessee Ethics and Campaign Finance Campaign Contributions and Costs on the website.
Click here for links on the Tennessee Ethics and Campaign Finance Lobbying website.
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