Explaining the Lookout’s Cash for Clout Database 2024 update

Last July, the Tennessee Lookout launched its Cash for Clout project to provide the public with easy-to-understand information about campaign finance and lobbying. 

In the 10 months since, the Lookout detailed how the Tennessee Titans hired an unprecedented number of lobbyists to convince state and Nashville lawmakers to spend $1.26 billion in taxpayer funds on a new NFL stadium; connected the dots between a bill to deregulate the state’s wetlands and a mysterious new political action committee; and showed how timely donations to Gov. Bill Lee sparked the rise of a charter school operator with dubious links. 

Along with these stories, the Lookout maintains two databases available to the public: “Who’s funding Tennessee politics?” and “Tennessee’s million-dollar club” for political spending.

The databases and stories are based on publicly available information maintained by the Tennessee Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance. But data for these stories is often kept on various websites. Adding to the confusion, some companies use different names for lobbying, campaign contributions and independent expenditures, making it harder for the public to link all their spending.

This year, the Lookout will continue to update its two database pages and write more stories using this data. We’ve published several during the 2024 legislative session. 

The database has been updated periodically as new lobbying and campaign finance reports are filed, but the April 10 update is the most comprehensive since the launch. 

Several information cards on the Who’s Funding database were updated to reflect political spending as of Jan. 15, 2024, the last campaign finance deadline before the legislative session started.

For the $1 million club, the Lookout provides a 15-year lookback. As of the April 10 update, that database reflects campaign contributions, independent expenditures, and lobbying reports from Jan. 16, 2009, to Jan. 15, 2024. 

For future reference, when new campaign finance records are filed on June 30, the 15-year period will only cover July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2024. The Lookout will not update the database after the April campaign finance deadline, since current lawmakers will not have raised any money because of restrictions around campaign contributions during the legislative session. 

Over time, this could could affect, who’s in the $1 million club, but for now there are 202 companies, associations and families in this group. 

Changes to payday lenders

The payday lenders were the most difficult political spenders to track because of company mergers and the use of a political action committee called Tennessee First, which could mask some of the industry’s political contributions. 

Community Choice Financial merged with Check Into Cash and bought TitleMax last year, meaning all political spending now flows from one company. 

The Tennessee First PAC is funded by multiple payday lenders. To fairly attribute contributions to the right company, the Lookout used the percent of a company’s donation to estimate its spending. 

For example, Advance Financial donated 23% of the $790,000 the PAC has raised. Tennessee First has spent $690,000, so $158,700 was contributed to Advance Financial.