A vendor is a firm paid by campaigns or outside groups to perform certain activities, like buying or producing ads or direct mail. This OpenSecrets list shows the top vendors; bear in mind that many o [..]

Technically, these are “independent expenditure-only committees,” organizations registered with the FEC that don’t contribute to candidates but do make independent expenditures. They can take unlimite [..]

Soft money refers to cash contributed to a party, candidate or outside group without being subject to limits. Traditionally, these funds have been used for get-out-the-vote efforts, party building and [..]

These are elections within a party to determine who a candidate will be in the general election. At the presidential level, they begin as early as January of the election year. Some primary elections [..]

A Political Action Committee (PAC) is a committee organized to specifically spend money on an election. There are a lot of different types of PACs — super PACs and hybrid PACs, leadership PACs, candid [..]

This simply refers to groups or spending that isn’t done by candidates or parties, like super PACs, 527s or 501(c)(4)s. (Link)

This 2014 Supreme Court case removed aggregate limits on contributions, meaning the overall amount a donor gives per election to all candidates and committees. Before McCutcheon, donors couldn’t give [..]

Broadly defined, lobbyists are people who advocate for some kind of public policy position. If a lobbyist spends more than 20 percent of their time lobbying Congress on behalf of a certain client, the [..]

Leadership PACs were originally used by congressional leadership to raise funds for their party’s members. These days, they’re used by regular members of Congress and presidential candidates, and may [..]

An LLC is a limited liability company. Most LLCs aren’t involved in politics — a lot of businesses are LLCs — but sometimes they’re set up for murky political purposes. They don’t have to disclose don [..]