Local donors give to range of political causes

While there are no local political polls that predict which national candidates Wayne County voters might choose in the upcoming election, there’s one set of data that might shed some light on how your neighbors are thinking about it: campaign contributions.

The Federal Election Commission collects and publishes information about political donations as shared by campaigns and online donation platforms like ActBlue and WinRed, and recently made donor data through Sept. 30, 2024, available on its website at fec.gov.

Western Wayne News reviewed that information for the two-year period from Nov. 15, 2022, through Sept. 30, 2024, for residents of Cambridge City, Centerville, Fountain City, Hagerstown and Richmond.

Over that time, there were more than 20,000 donation transactions totaling over $550K to candidates for president, Congress and other offices where support was being funneled through political action committees.

Some donors gave less than a dollar, while others wrote checks for five or six thousand dollars at a time. There were over 70 donations of $1,000 or more. For some of the larger repeat donors in the records reviewed, the total amount given during the time period added up to as much as over $13,000.

Some times the donations were directly to a candidate’s campaign, such as “Donald J. Trump for President 2024 Inc.” or “Harris for President” but other times it was to organizations with more cloudy goals, such as “Independent Community Bankers of America Political Action Committee” or “National Tooling & Machining Association (NTMA) Committee for a Strong Economy.” One could likely spend a lifetime tracking down what each recipient advocates for and which candidates they make donations to in turn.

Some donors are quite prolific. There’s the Centerville resident who has made over 2,000 individual donations to Republican and conservative candidates and causes, a few dollars here, a few cents there. Then there’s the Richmond resident who has made a similar number of donations to Democratic and liberal candidates and causes, also just a few dollars at a time. A majority of donors gave to more than one candidate or organization, though this can often happen by making out a single check or credit card payment and letting an online donation platform split it up among tens or hundreds of destinations for you.

Donors with occupations listed described themselves as small business owners, health care providers, Realtors, attorneys, educators and no occupation or being retired. And some are companies and organizations.

So which way is the political wind blowing for the presidential election, at least when it comes to donations?

According to an analysis of the same data set by the Washington Post published Oct. 23, it depends on where you live. In Richmond there were 455 donors to President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris, around $60K, and only 147 donors to former President Donald Trump, around $30K. In Cambridge City, it’s a little closer, with 24 Biden/Harris donors and 17 Trump donors, each group giving around $2K respectively. And if you head to Centerville, the giving is more even in number of donors, with 28 Biden/Harris donors and 29 Trump donors, but less so in dollars, $3K to Biden/Harris and $5K to Trump.

These amounts may seem large, but in the context of nationwide donations from individuals, they’re a drop in the bucket. According to the nonpartisan nonprofit OpenSecrets, in the presidential race alone, nationally individuals have given over $910 million to Democratic candidates and over $486 million to Republican candidates in 2023-2024.

Can local political giving predict local vote counts in a national election?

Probably not. While it’s interesting to see area residents engaged with “political speech” using their dollars, based on the data reviewed, most Wayne County residents have not given any money to a national political cause, and — if they show up on Election Day — their votes will matter just as much as someone who has opened their checkbook for a candidate or campaign.