6:00
News Story
Cash for Clout: Tennessee’s million dollar club
A select group of companies, families and corporate associations make it into Tennessee’s seven-figure club
6:00
News Story
Cash for Clout: Tennessee’s million dollar club
A select group of companies, families and corporate associations make it into Tennessee’s seven-figure club
Cash for Clout is a Tennessee Lookout series examining the influence of money on state politics. (Photo: John Partipilo)
Cash for Clout is a Tennessee Lookout series examining the influence of money on state politics. (Photo: John Partipilo)
Since 2009, 168 groups have spent more than $1 million in Tennessee politics.
An analysis of the spending of Tennessee’s exclusive seven-figure club shows the money serves as a benchmark of the power of private groups to influence public policy.
The expenditures are legally allowed under the state’s campaign laws. While no set amount of money guarantees access and influence, expenditures of more than $1 million show a consistent effort over time by private groups to maximize their lobbying efforts.
David Miller, a politics professor at East Tennessee State University, said organizations looking to influence often pay a minimum to maintain relationships.
“If you’ve established a presence, you’re able to get more out of lobbying,” Miller said.
This story was last updated on Aug. 8, 2023
- Who’s funding Tennessee’s politics?
- What happens when a cash-poor billionaire wants a new sports stadium? Lobbying.
Have a tip on how money is influencing decisions at the Tennessee Capitol? Send an email to [email protected]. For encrypting messaging, text 615-249-8509 on Signal, or call the same number.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include the Tennessee Broadband Association.
Methodology:
The latest campaign finance reports were due July 17, 2023. A vast majority, but not every candidate and PAC has filed a report. Those will be updated as they are filed. The next filing deadline for lobbying reports is Aug. 14, which covers the first half of 2023.
The underlying data for this story comes from a lobbying report database and a campaign finance report database maintained by the Tennessee Registry of Election Finance. To create the top donor list, the Lookout combined spending from three categories — lobbying, campaign donations and independent expenditures.
Lobbying expenditures are provided in ranges. For example, when the report said $10,000 to $25,000, the Lookout used $17,500 for the amount spent. When the report said less than $10,000, $1,000 was used.
For campaign donations, the Lookout has tracked contributions to every candidate and political action committee connected to a candidate since 2009.
Contributions to candidates and their PACs were combined when reporting how much they raised. At times candidates and their PACs would give to other candidates. We removed all donations between elected officials to avoid counting various spending twice.
We also removed all self-donations involved in the 2018 gubernatorial race because Gov. Bill Lee and candidates Randy Boyd, Diana Black and Karl Dean donated a significant amount of personal money to each of their campaigns.
Independent expenditures were also reported as part of the Tennessee Registry of Election Finance campaign database under expenditures. We used a similar method for donations to compile a complete spending list.
Several companies, associations and families used multiple political action committees or changed their company name since 2009. The Lookout combined all the names it could find for a single company, family or association.
The data behind this story is also available to download:
This is the link to the completely unedited campaign finance database, which contains over 1.9 million rows of data (from Jan. 1, 2009 to June 30, 2023). (369 MB)
This is the link to an edited form of campaign finance data, which includes merged company names and tracks donations directly to lawmakers or those who ran for office from Jan. 1, 2009 to June 30, 2023. (24.8 MB)
The Lookout’s lobbying expenditures data (from Jan. 1, 2009 to Dec. 31, 2022) is available for download by clicking here. (3.3 MB)
Click here for the data on independent expenditures (from Jan. 1. 2009 to June 30, 2023). (0.3 MB)
Click here for the link to the Tennessee Registry of Election Finance campaign finance website.
Click here for the link to the Tennessee Registry of Election Finance lobbying website.
Our stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. We ask that you edit only for style or to shorten, provide proper attribution and link to our web site.
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