Welcome to the latest installment of OpenSecrets.org Mailbag, where we answer your burning questions about the role of money in politics, political influence and the work we do here at OpenSecrets.org.

So without further ado, this week’s questions:

QUESTION: I heard Sarah Palin admit during a recent CNN interview that she uses her collected campaign funds form her PAC for personal use, i.e. her recent bus tour (vacation) across America including her family and friends. After reading the following Committee on Ethics mandate against such applications of her PAC contributions, I wonder is what Ms. Palin doing legal? As a taxpayer, I find this illegal.

ANSWER: The Center’s political action committee researcher, Spencer MacColl, tackles this one. MacColl writes:

Thanks, Wallace, for your question. The mandate banning the use of campaign contributions for personal use only applies to candidates’ primary campaign committee and their connected leadership political action committee. Any other political action committee can spend their donations on whatever they wish. Sarah Palin’s political action committee, Sarah PAC, is a non-connected PAC and therefore is outside the legal mandate on using funds for personal use. Her PAC is also not technically a “leadership PAC” because she is not currently a candidate for president — although that could soon change — or an individual holding elected office. Paul Ryan, a campaign finance expert at the Campaign Legal Center, reminds us that the Federal Election Commission has repeatedly recommended to Congress that it amend the Federal Election Campaign Act to extend the prohibition of the personal use of campaign funds to include all political committees.

In 2007, the Department of Justice noted “[r]ecent years have seen a dramatic rise in the number of cases in which candidates and campaign fiduciaries steal money that has been contributed to a candidate or political committee for the purpose of electing the candidate or the candidates supported by the political committee.” See U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Prosecution of Election Offenses, 194-95 (7th ed. May 2007)

If the FEC’s recommendations were implemented, then Palin would not be allowed

to use her SarahPAC for her own personal use. Until then, she’s generally free to do so.

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QUESTION: Do you know how many or the total number of U.S. individuals that contribute to any political campaign during one year? — Jim Ward

ANSWER: During the 2010 election cycle, 846,328 individuals made reportable contributions to federal-level political contributions to candidates. And together, these people made 1,198,629 reportable contributions, notes Center for Responsive Politics Research Director Jihan Andoni. Notably, only contributions that exceed $200 are publicly released in an itemized fashion by the Federal Election Commission.

The Center’s Senior Researcher Doug Weber calculates that during the 2010 cycle, 2,784 House candidates and 523 Senate candidates actually ran for office at some point. Some of these dropped out before the primaries. Other candidates who raised little or no money may not have filed with the FEC and would not show up in federal campaign contribution records.

So, generating a perfectly precise figure to answer your question is a tough. But a rough averaging would indicate that the run-of-the-mill congressional candidate would receive about 362 individual contributions.

Some successful candidates will enjoy thousands of contributions — during the 2008 presidential election, the Obama campaign boasted of raising more than $500 million from 1.4 million donors online. , And, of course, the less politically fortunate won’t collect a single one.

===== QUESTION: My neighbor is a big Democrat. Can I find out easily how much money she has donated to politicians? — Ally Brownstein, Philadelphia ANSWER: Sure can. The easiest way is using OpenSecrets.org’s donor look-up tool, which allows a user to search using a variety of categories, from name of the donor to candidate recipient to Zip code and state. Find the look-up tool here. Two things to note about the look-up tool. First, contributions of $200 or less are not included, because candidates are not required to disclose the names (or other identifying information) of such smaller-dollar donors. Secondly, the tool only covers contributions to federal-level candidates. So, if you’re looking to see if your friend is sending cash the way of, for example, a city council candidate, consult your local city clerk or city secretary office to see what disclosure resources are available. Local and state campaign contribution disclosure laws vary significantly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. =====

OpenSecrets.org Mailbag appears every other Friday on the OpenSecrets Blog. Readers are invited to submit questions about the OpenSecrets.org website or any money-in-politics topic for our team of experts to answer.



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