Campaign finance data for the 2022 Chatham County School Board and Recorder’s Court Judges races is now available online. You’ll find a searchable Google Spreadsheet with multiple worksheets at the Searchable Data tab. The Original Reports tab hosts the original PDF campaign finance filings that we downloaded from the Georgia Campaign Finance Commission’s website.
Background:
TransparentSavannah.Info was started in 2019 to provide citizens with easy access to campaign finance data for local elections. It proved so popular that we decided to keep it going. In 2020 we did the data entry for the two largest countywide races – District Attorney and County Commission Chair. So far in 2022, we have entered the data for all of the School Board and Recorder’s Court Judge candidates. We plan to work on the candidates for Board of Elections next. Given limited volunteer hours, we prioritize countywide races with high dollar contributions.
Data entry this year is being done by volunteers/concerned citizens Carmen Evans, Jennifer Lawver, Jenny McCord, Michelle Pompei, Michelle Solomon, Cuffy Sullivan, and Jennifer West with technical support provided by Tracy Brisson. There may be errors as it was done by hand – you can check the original PDFs for accuracy. While data entry errors are possible, where information is missing it is almost always because forms were incomplete.
We have chosen to highlight combined donations to any candidate of $1,000 and higher and have added some information from the Georgia Secretary of State’s Corporations Division website about businesses whose names we did not recognize. You can search that website yourself for the officers and registered agents of any Georgia business. On the Notable Donations tab we have noted combined donations from the same business interest as determined by shared employer, shared address, or controlling information found on the Dept. of Corporations website. Though we have tried to be careful, this is necessarily somewhat subjective and may have errors so we recommend doing your own research.
Spreadsheets and raw data for prior years can be found under the Data menu in the top right corner. Many of the largest donors to local campaigns this year were also among the largest donors to campaigns in previous years. The spreadsheets for 2019 and 2020 were compiled by our team. We also host a spreadsheet of 2015 data that was provided to us anonymously. We cannot vouch for it. It is for three candidates only and highlights major donors.
Candidates’ campaign finance filings are legally required to be made public. Though municipalities don’t have to host the data online or in searchable format, we believe that is best practice.
IN 2022, THE MAXIMUM LEGAL DONATION FROM ANY INDIVIDUAL OR BUSINESS TO ANY CANDIDATE IS NOW $3,000 PER ELECTION CYCLE. NOT PER YEAR. THE PRIMARY AND THE GENERAL ARE CONSIDERED DIFFERENT ELECTION CYCLES.