Money & Influence Intelligence

See the summary view → for a quick overview of all Money & Influence Intelligence capabilities.

9 capabilities covering PAC tracking, contribution analysis, lobbying disclosure, revolving door detection, funding anomaly detection, and money-to-vote correlation. Powered by FEC bulk filing data and Senate Office of Public Records (SOPR) lobbying disclosures - the two primary sources for tracking how money flows through the political system.

PAC Tracking & Search

Search and browse political action committees by name, industry, connected members, or contribution patterns. Access PAC profiles that include total disbursements, top recipients, contribution history, and affiliated organization information.

The FEC requires PACs to file regular reports disclosing their contributions to candidates, parties, and other committees. Apogee ingests these bulk filings and indexes them for search, making it easy to find PACs by the industries they represent, the members they fund, or the policy areas they care about.

Data: Federal Election Commission bulk filing data for the current election cycle. Includes PAC registrations, contribution records, and disbursement reports. Updated as new FEC filings are processed.

Find PACs associated with the pharmaceutical industry Try it → What PACs are the largest donors to the Senate Commerce Committee? Try it → Show me the profile for the National Association of Realtors PAC Try it →

PAC Contribution Analysis

Flexible contribution querying with multi-dimensional grouping and filtering. Analyze PAC contributions by donor PAC, recipient member, party, state, committee membership, or industry classification. A single query with group_by parameters replaces what previously required 20+ individual lookups - for example, "total tech PAC contributions to Senate Republicans, grouped by member" returns a complete ranked table in one call.

This is the most operationally useful tool for government affairs teams doing competitive intelligence on campaign finance. Instead of manually cross-referencing FEC filings, you can query contribution patterns across any combination of dimensions in natural language.

How it works: Contribution records are indexed with member metadata (party, state, chamber, committee assignments) enabling multi-dimensional aggregation. Group-by options include PAC, member, party, state, and committee.

Data: FEC itemized contribution records for the current election cycle, cross-referenced with member profiles from Congress.gov.

How much did tech PACs contribute to Senate Republicans this cycle? Try it → Which members received the most PAC money from the energy sector? Try it → Compare PAC contributions to members of the Finance Committee by party Try it → Show me the top PAC donors to members who voted for the infrastructure bill Try it →

Funding Anomaly Detection

Statistical outlier detection using Z-score analysis on PAC contribution patterns. Identifies members receiving unusually high or low PAC funding compared to their peers in the same chamber, party, or committee - surfacing funding patterns that deviate significantly from the norm and may warrant closer examination.

A member receiving 3 standard deviations above the mean in energy PAC contributions compared to their committee peers is a statistical anomaly worth investigating, whether you're a journalist, watchdog organization, or competing advocacy group. Filter by chamber, party, and committee to compare within relevant peer groups.

How it works: Z-score calculation comparing each member's received contributions against the distribution of contributions to their peer group. Members with Z-scores above a configurable threshold (default 2.0) are flagged as anomalous.

Data: FEC contribution records aggregated by recipient member, with peer group segmentation by chamber, party, and committee.

Which House members have received anomalous PAC funding this cycle? Try it → Flag any unusual contribution patterns to Senate Judiciary Committee members Try it → Are there funding outliers among freshmen members? Try it →

PAC Network Clustering

Community detection on PAC contribution patterns using the Louvain algorithm. PACs that fund the same set of members are grouped into clusters, revealing coordinated funding coalitions that span industries and may not be apparent from looking at individual PAC filings.

For example, a cluster might reveal that defense PACs, aerospace PACs, and certain technology PACs consistently fund the same members - suggesting an aligned funding strategy around national security policy. These clusters often correspond to industry coalitions, ideological alignments, or shared legislative priorities.

How it works: A bipartite graph of PAC → Member contribution relationships is projected and analyzed with the Louvain community detection algorithm. PACs that share similar contribution profiles are grouped into communities.

Data: FEC contribution records modeled as graph relationships between PAC and Member nodes in the knowledge graph. Graph analytics recomputed every 6 hours.

Show me PAC funding clusters in the defense sector Try it → Which PACs form a funding coalition around energy policy? Try it → Map the PAC network for members on the Appropriations Committee Try it →

Lobbying Disclosure Search

Search lobbying registrations and filings from the Senate Office of Public Records (SOPR) - the official repository of federal lobbying disclosure under the Lobbying Disclosure Act. Find registrations by issue code (using the standardized LDA issue code taxonomy), specific bill number, client organization, or lobbying firm.

Lobbying disclosure data reveals who is trying to influence legislation, which bills are attracting the most lobbying attention, how much is being spent, and which firms and lobbyists are doing the work. For any bill or policy issue, you can see the complete landscape of organizations that have registered to lobby on it.

Search across four dimensions: by issue (all lobbying on "TAX" or "HCR" issue codes), by bill (who's lobbying on HR 1?), by organization (what is Amazon lobbying on?), and by issue code taxonomy (browse the full LDA issue code hierarchy).

Data: SOPR lobbying registrations and quarterly activity reports. Includes registrant, client, issue codes, specific bills lobbied on, lobbyist names, and covered positions (former government officials).

Who is lobbying on AI regulation? Try it → What organizations have filed lobbying disclosures related to HR 1? Try it → Show me lobbying activity by Amazon in the past year Try it → Which issue codes have the most lobbying registrations this quarter? Try it →

Lobbying Spike Detection

Temporal surge detection on lobbying activity, comparing the number of distinct lobbying registrants on a bill or issue code during a recent window against a historical baseline. When the count of organizations lobbying on a bill suddenly increases, it often signals that the bill is advancing, that a regulatory trigger has raised industry attention, or that an organized lobbying campaign has launched.

The surge ratio formula matches the media surge detection methodology: current window registrant count divided by baseline period average. A ratio above 2.0 means lobbying activity has at least doubled compared to the norm. Configurable window and threshold parameters allow tuning for different monitoring needs.

Data: SOPR filing timestamps and bill-level lobbying registrant counts, computed against rolling baseline periods.

Has there been a lobbying spike on any healthcare bills? Try it → Detect unusual lobbying activity around cryptocurrency regulation Try it → Which bills have seen the biggest increase in lobbying registrations this month? Try it →

Revolving Door Tracker

Search SOPR lobbying filings to identify former government officials who are now registered lobbyists - the "revolving door" between government service and K Street. SOPR filings include a covered_position field where lobbyists are required to disclose former positions in the executive or legislative branch held within the past 20 years.

Filter by position description (e.g., "Senate Armed Services Committee"), employing organization, year range, or newly-disclosed status. Results are grouped by lobbyist with aggregated filing information showing which clients they represent and which issues they lobby on.

This capability is particularly valuable for journalists investigating influence networks, advocacy organizations tracking industry access, and government affairs teams mapping the competitive landscape of lobbyists working on their issues.

Data: SOPR covered_position disclosures. Database includes 738,000+ lobbyists with covered positions, of which 288,000+ are newly disclosed. Searchable by position text, organization, and disclosure year.

Find former congressional staffers now lobbying on defense issues Try it → Which former government officials registered as lobbyists this year? Try it → Show me revolving door lobbyists at firms working on tech policy Try it →

Money-to-Vote Correlation

Reveals the relationship between PAC funding and congressional votes. Two analysis modes: bill mode breaks down the PAC money behind a specific roll-call vote, showing total funding to YEA vs. NAY voters with top PACs on each side and a money gap ratio. Member mode calculates a PAC-vote alignment score showing whether a member consistently votes with their largest PAC donors.

This is the "follow the money" capability that journalists, watchdog organizations, and advocacy groups use to investigate whether campaign finance influences legislative behavior. While correlation does not imply causation, the patterns are often striking - and quantifying them is essential for accountability journalism and public interest research.

How it works: Live graph queries traverse vote, bill, member, and PAC relationships in the knowledge graph. Bill mode aggregates PAC contributions to each side of a vote. Member mode computes alignment between a member's vote record and their donors' lobbying positions.

Data: Roll-call vote records, PAC contribution data (FEC), and cosponsorship records combined in the knowledge graph.

Show the PAC money behind the vote on HR 1 - who funded the YEA vs NAY sides? Try it → Which members' voting patterns most closely track their top PAC donors? Try it → Is there a correlation between pharma PAC contributions and drug pricing votes? Try it →

Lobbying Effectiveness Analysis

Measures whether lobbying spending on a bill correlates with legislative outcomes. Two analysis modes: bill mode tracks total lobbying expenditure against a bill's advancement through each legislative stage, identifying where lobbying investment appears to accelerate progress. Organization mode analyzes a specific organization's lobbying portfolio - how many bills they lobbied on advanced, what their lobbying spend-to-outcome ratio looks like across policy areas, and how their effectiveness compares to peers.

For organizations allocating advocacy budgets and for researchers studying the influence of money in politics, this quantifies the relationship between lobbying investment and legislative progress at both the bill and organization level.

How it works: Graph queries traverse lobbying filing → bill relationships and combine with bill status data to compute advancement scores. Bill mode aggregates all lobbying activity on a specific bill. Organization mode aggregates an organization's lobbying portfolio across all bills, computing ROI metrics by policy area.

Data: SOPR lobbying filings cross-referenced with bill status and progression data from Congress.gov, modeled as relationships in the knowledge graph.

How effective has lobbying been on financial regulation bills this Congress? Try it → Which industries get the best legislative ROI from their lobbying spend? Try it → Analyze the lobbying effectiveness of the Chamber of Commerce this session Try it → Which bills with heavy lobbying activity are actually advancing? Try it →

Network & Relationship Intelligence - Influence rankings, PAC network clustering, entity connections
Legislative Intelligence - Track the bills that lobbying targets
Cross-Source Intelligence - Organizational stance tracking across sources

Ready to try these capabilities? Get started with Apogee or try the chat client.