Mid-term elections are coming to a neighborhood voting center near you. All 435 House of Representatives seats are up for grabs, as are over a third of Senate seats. Plus there are boatloads of governorships and state legislative races at play.

Meanwhile, everybody's favorite telecom is spending cash like there's no tomorrow. According to the Open Secrets database, AT&T easily qualifies as the top all-time donor in political campaigns. From 1990 through 2010, the carrier in its various ownership forms has forked over $45,461,879 to politicians, outspending the next two corporate contenders, the National Association of Realtors ($36,749,493) and Goldman Sachs ($32,660,452).

We thought it would be interesting to check in with Open Secrets and see where AT&T's money is flowing these days. We'll start with federal races, move on to political lobbying in Congress, and even take a peek at the corporation's huge nonprofit empire.

Just think, iPhone, U-Verse, and DSL subscribers—every time you pay your monthly bill, a piece of that scratch goes to these individuals and causes.

Top dogs

Following the money is easy when it comes to AT&T. Figuring out the corporation's politics is harder. In 2008, for example, the carrier spent $14,736,518 on federal and state office seekers. But the company spread the loot around in a fairly bipartisan manner. Open Secrets classifies the corporation as a fence sitter when it comes to politics, although during the 2008 presidential election, Barack Obama was clearly the telco's favorite.

Here's how the money flowed in that most important race.

Obama, Barack (D-IL) $264,411 McCain, John (R-AZ) $201,438 Clinton, Hillary (D-NY) $111,045 Emanuel, Rahm (D-IL) $50,650 Larson, Lyle (R-TX) $35,450 Rockefeller, Jay (D-WV) $22,000 Giuliani, Rudolph W (R) $20,500 Paul, Ron (R-TX) $17,596

Obama easily outpaced his Republican challenger John McCain in AT&T money received that year—an interesting factoid when you consider that the victor put one of AT&T's least favorite policies, net neutrality, at the top of his list of technology priorities (at least he did then).

But then note that the carrier spent roughly the same amount on solid liberal Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) as it did on no-holds-barred libertarian Ron Paul (R-TX). If you follow our link to the longer contribution list, you'll find that Republicans and Democrats share equally in AT&T's largesse.

We're betting that politics watchers will also scratch their heads after sizing up AT&T's top federal election donations for this year. Here are the leading recipients.

Reid, Harry (D-NV) $30,000 Crist, Charlie (I-FL) $22,100 Blunt, Roy (R-MO) $11,500 Guthrie, Steven Brett (R-KY) $11,500 Jenkins, Lynn (R-KS) $11,500 McNerney, Jerry (D-CA) $11,500 Carter, John (R-TX) $11,000 Hensarling, Jeb (R-TX) $11,000 Hoyer, Steny H (D-MD) $11,000 McHenry, Patrick (R-NC) $11,000 Portman, Rob (R-OH) $11,000 Sanchez, Loretta (D-CA) $11,000 Smith, Lamar (R-TX) $11,000

That $30,000 to Harry Reid (D-NV) seems like a pretty important statement. The Senate's embattled Majority Leader is in a deadlock race with his Tea Party backed challenger, Sharon Angle. Next comes Florida Senate candidate and former Republican/now independent Charlie Crist, trying to present himself as a "post-partisan unifier."

Senate contender Roy Blunt of Missouri clocks in a distant but significant third. Blunt attended a Tea Party rally over the weekend. He was permitted on stage, a Missouri newspaper notes, "but was kept away from the microphone as one of the day's more well-known speakers—political strategist turned conservative commentator Dick Morris—offered a campaign pitch on his behalf."

At the bottom of the list is Loretta Sanchez (D-CA)—she a moderate, so-called "Blue Dog" Democrat, and Lamar Smith (R-TX), who is likely to become the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee if the Republicans retake that chamber in November.

What we have here, it seems, is a company whose political donation strategy is to spread the money evenly, so that no matter what happens, AT&T has pals on Capitol Hill and in the White House. The beneficiaries, however, tend to be fairly established candidates—mostly incumbents. It's a philosophy which Verizon is also holding to, although that carrier gives a bit more green to Democrats.

Objectives

In exchange for this support, AT&T most definitely wants help from our nation's lawmakers. In the second quarter of this year, the company forked over $3,086,786.27 for lobbying activities on Capitol Hill. It looks like the telco has spent about $100 million in lobbying since 2005.

Much of this energy went to a variety of telecom related bills pending in the House or Senate. These included:

HR 1319—The Informed P2P User Act. The bill would require P2P software providers to offer "clear and conspicuous" notice about the kinds of files the program can share. And no sneaky extra installs please, and the software can't block consumers from deleting it. The proposed law has passed the House and is awaiting committee action in the Senate.

HR 3458—Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009. Edward Markey's (D-MA) legislation would write the FCC's Open Internet policy statement into the Communications Act, barring ISPs from being allowed to "block, interfere with, discriminate against, impair, or degrade" access to any lawful content from any lawful application or device. It is currently sitting in the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, where it will doubtless stay until the Federal Communications Commission gives some sign as to what it wants to do with its latest net neutrality proposals.

HR 1019—The State Video Tax Fairness Act of 2009 would prohibit states from taxing pay TV services, including IP video services like AT&T's U-Verse. We're going to go out on a limb and assume that AT&T is for this one.

S 773—The Cybersecurity Act of 2009. The scariest part of this bill would have given the president the power to shut down the Internet in the event of a major cyberattack. That provision has been removed. Now the proposed law focuses on reorganizing the balkanized mess which is the federal government's cybersecurity defense infrastructure.

Add about 45 similar laws to this list and you've got a good sense of AT&T's legislative priorities.

Charity

Last but not least is AT&T's considerable involvement in philanthropic giving. These donations are no doubt made out of public spiritedness. But as we've noted before, AT&T grantees sometimes become quite vocal on FCC-related matters of interest to the telco, such as net neutrality. And they usually see these matters the corporation's way.

In 2008, the AT&T Foundation gave no less than $56,864,091 (PDF: long download) to a wide variety of nonprofits in the form of outright and matching grants.

Major recipients included the Friends of the Dallas Public Library, $500,000; the Henrick Medical Center Foundation, $325,000; the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, $150,000; the McNay Art Museum of San Antonio, TX, $800,000; the Mississippi Center for Educational Innovation, $254,837; the Mississippi Department of Education, $125,000; the Stanford Graduate School of Business, $250,000; the Texas Tech Foundation, $1,000,000; the United Way of Greater Los Angeles, $550,500; and the United Way of Metropolitan Chicago, $538,665.

This abbreviated list doesn't include the hundreds of smaller recipients, many of whom got grants of from $5,000 to $100,000 for the construction of computer centers across the country.

Nashville's Boy Scouts of America, for example, received $21,500 to support the "development of a computer lab to facilitate an Internet safety program to train Boy Scouts on safe Internet use with emphasis on chat rooms, Internet dating, privacy, on-line shopping, and other challenges they may encounter."

And the Detroit Youth Foundation won a gift of $100,000 to support "an Internet Protocol TV-capable studio that will provide access to 'next generation' video IPTV to inner-city youth."

All told, AT&T has spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the last two decades on political races, lobbying, and philanthropic giving. And because the telco is careful to spread those resources over a broad political and social landscape, they win the carrier a degree of influence that goes way beyond the numerical figures cited in this post.