The Center for Responsive Politics is a non-partisan, non-profit research group based in Washington, D.C. that tracks money in politics, and the effect of money on elections and public policy. The Center conducts computer-based research on campaign finance issues for the news media, academics, activists, and the public at large. The Center’s work is aimed at creating a more educated voter, an involved citizenry, and a more responsive government.
Some of the data analyzed by the Center for Responsive Politics come from campaign finance disclosure documents on file with the Federal Election Commission.
The Center for Politics is an interdisciplinary, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to the proposition that government works better when politics works better and its corollary that politics works better when citizens are informed and active participants.
To the contrary, the Center views politics as human nature writ large with mankind's virtues, not just vices, larger than life, and as a system well designed by the Founders to enlarge the virtues and contain the vices.
Politics is the glue that holds together the most diverse democracy on the face of the earth, counteracting the centrifugal forces that can potentially tear the nation apart.
Massie Ritsch of the Center for ResponsivePolitics, 202-857-0044 ext.
Candidates, national political parties and outside issue advocacy groups will spend roughly $2.6 billion by the end of 2006 to influence the 472 federal contests around the United States and pad the war chests of incumbents not running this year.
Topping the Center's 2006 list of big donors are lawyers, the real estate industry, Wall Street and, as usual, contributors who list their occupation as "retired." Business interests account for about three-quarters of all contributions, with ideological, labor and other interests making up the rest.