gmane.politics.activism.bytesfree.discuss

Re: [GeekPAC-Discuss] Fwd: Drupal loader for Campaign Financetables now available

Ilan Rabinovitch — 2009-08-09T22:25:14

<snip>

Now you understand my call for help to the database community at OSCON :)

Open Secrets is a project at the Center for Responsive Politics.    
Although I imagine that at least some of the dirtiness comes from the 
original FEC data, I'm sure they'd be happy to hear suggestions on clean up.

Open Secrets has a mailing list on Google Groups that is open to 
developers using their data.   The CRP staff is active on the list as well.

http://groups.google.com/group/opensecrets-open-data?hl=en

Susi Alger is one of the more active CRP staff members on the list, and 
would probably be a good point of contact (salger-//gzAfkY56Y< at >public.gmane.org).

Re: [GeekPAC-Discuss] Fwd: Drupal loader for CampaignFinancetables now available

David Fetter — 2009-08-09T22:17:38

Well, I found something here, and the results, to put it mildly, are
worthy of a thedailywtf.com entry.  Here's a sample:

    Field:

        RecipCode

    Definition:

        A two-character code defining the type of recipient. For
        candidates, the first character is party (“D” for Democratic,
        “R” for Republican, “3” for Independent or third party, “U”
        for Unknown.) The second character is “W” for Winner, “L” for
        Loser, “I” for incumbent, “C” for Challenger, “O” for “Open
        Seat”, and “N” for Non-incumbent. “N” is reserved for
        candidates that are neither in office nor running during the
        cycle in question. For party committees, the first character
        is party and the second character is “P.” For PACs, the first
        character is “P” and the second character is “B” for Business,
        “L” for Labor”, “I” for Ideological, “O” for “Other” and “U”
        for unknow

Re: [GeekPAC-Discuss] Fwd: Drupal loader for Campaign Financetables now available

Ilan Rabinovitch — 2009-08-09T20:42:38

My guess what be that this exists in the data dumps provided by Open 
Secrets.
http://www.opensecrets.org/action/data.php

Re: [GeekPAC-Discuss] Fwd: Drupal loader for CampaignFinancetables now available

David Fetter — 2009-08-09T20:40:29

Do they have DDL scripts anywhere?  I see some wacky table-based
definitions, but no CREATE TABLE stuff.

Cheers,
David.

[GeekPAC-Discuss] Fwd: Drupal loader for Campaign Finance tablesnow available

Ilan Rabinovitch — 2009-08-09T20:27:49

While we dont currently use drupal for anything, I thought this might be 
a good point of reference for how others are using the Open Secrets data 
set.

Ilan

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Drupal loader for Campaign Finance tables now available
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:31:22 -0700 (PDT)
From: Steve Toub <opensecrets-NUP5dpFlUdZhl2p70BpVqQ< at >public.gmane.org>
Reply-To: opensecrets-open-data-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFFw< at >public.gmane.org
To: OpenSecrets Open Data <opensecrets-open-data-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFFw< at >public.gmane.org>
CC: steve-V/UePL5YhkNg9hUCZPvPmw< at >public.gmane.org



Hi all--

For those of you working in Drupal, MAPLight.org has released a loader
at:
     http://drupal.org/project/opensecrets_open_data
It currently imports the cands, cmtes, indivs, pacs, and pac_other
Campaign Finance tables into Drupal. We have plans to expand into
Lobbying tables in the future, but patches welcome for this or other
portions of OpenSecrets Open Data if you get there before us.

Many thanks to CRP for t