Campaign Finance: The Rising Cost of Winning Votes

The Public Press partnered with the TV Archive, a project of the San Francisco-based Internet Archive, to examine the facts, half-truths and misstatements that aired before November 2015’s pivotal election. Perhaps surprisingly in our tech-soaked city, political campaigns are still investing heavily in persuading voters on television, and investing in savvy national campaign consultants. At the same time, TV stations’ news programs devoted just a few seconds to independent coverage of the elections for each minute of political advertising.

Campaign Finance: The Rising costs of winning votes

Local tech and real estate interests take sides in City Hall, leading to record-breaking election spending

San Francisco last year saw a high-water mark for spending on elections, with nearly $28 million flowing into slickly produced campaigns that flooded the airwaves and filled mailboxes with questionable claims about ballot measures and candidates.

But the money was not evenly distributed. Airbnb, the short-term rental startup, crushed a proposal to regulate its industry, spending a whopping $9 million. The company’s efforts were endorsed by Mayor Ed Lee, whose allied campaigns for other issues and candidates dominated almost every race they invested in.

The ever-increasing involvement of moneyed interests worries ethics experts and has spurred reforms to rein in fundraising by lobbyists. While emblematic of the threat of corporate influence peddling in City Hall, lobbyists themselves raise comparatively little, and limiting their involvement would only scratch the surface of the spending expected in contests in 2016 and beyond.

Extra: Public Press project editor Angela Woodall spoke with KALW’s Ben Trefny about this investigation. Listen to the interview from Aug 15, 2016.).

ABOUT THIS REPORTING PROJECT

The Public Press compiled campaign finance records to show a pattern of massive spending by big businesses and allies of Mayor Ed Lee. Our reporters also logged and evaluated the claims of hours of political ads and TV news coverage from the 2015 elections in collaboration with the TV Archive, a project of the Internet Archive.

REPORTING: Angela Woodall, Michael Stoll, Sara Bloomberg, Meka Boyle, Cody Wright, Dayvon Dunaway | PROJECT EDITORS: Noah Arroyo, Michael Winter | DATA GRAPHICS: Amanda Hickman | DIRECTOR OF DESIGN: Erika Rae Lawson | PHOTOGRAPHY: Steve Rhodes, Hyunha Kim | ILLUSTRATIONS: Anna Vignet | ONLINE: John Angelico

THIS PROJECT WAS MADE POSSIBLE BY GRANTS FROM THE CRAIGSLIST CHARITABLE FUND, THE FUND FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM AND DONATIONS BY PUBLIC PRESS MEMBERS.

News

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In Bid for Dominance, Mayor’s Allies Flood S.F. Politics With Corporate Cash

08.17.2016

By Angela Woodall, Reporter and Michael Stoll, Executive director

Last year spending on local elections was the highest on record, reaching nearly $28 million. The infusion of cash demonstrates how politicians and their powerful associates wield an influence on the political process that our campaign finance laws cannot effectively or appropriately manage.

Data Privacy

What Don’t We Know About Campaign Finance?

08.17.2016

By Sara Bloomberg, Reporter

The Public Press spent six months digging and sorting, and many hours talking with staff at the Ethics Commission for clarification on the best ways to find and distill the information on the 2015 elections.

News

Election Ads Overshadowed TV News 7-to-1

08.18.2016

By Noah Arroyo, Assistant Editor , Meka Boyle, Reporter and Cody Wright, Reporting intern

Bay Area stations surveyed aired a combined 25.8 hours of paid political ads. By comparison, they aired about 3.5 hours of election news coverage.

City Hall

Slick, Misleading TV Ads Paid Off

08.18.2016

By Meka Boyle, Reporter, Cody Wright, Reporting intern and Michael Winter, Senior editor

The 2015 election united the political clout of two rich, powerful industries that will exert an enduring in uence across the city, Bay Area and nation: real estate and technology.

News

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Online TV Archive Preserves History of Politics Coverage

08.19.2016

By Noah Arroyo, Assistant Editor

This publicly accessible tool helps journalists (and anyone else who’s interested) for the first time to perform data-driven analyses of the content found on television.

News

Tracking TV News — and the Challenges Involved

08.19.2016

By Meka Boyle, Reporter

Despite numerous challenges, our findings quantified how the local election was covered: Coverage was scarce — and repetitive.

News

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Mining the Internet Archive’s TV News

08.19.2016

By Noah Arroyo, Assistant Editor and Hyunha Kim, Multimedia intern

The director of the TV News Archive sits down with us to explain how people can use the database to search for news segments and share them on social media.