Findings

Where senators' own money meets the money around them: who pays for their campaigns, the stock they own in companies lobbying them, and PAC and employee money from companies they own. Then how they file: late, on paper, or with dates that can't be right. From the FEC, the lobbying reports and every report on the Senate's disclosure site since January 2016. Each is a fact on the record; where chance alone would give as much, the page says so.

Who pays for their campaigns

Serving senators' campaigns, every two-year period loaded (FEC). Outside spending is money groups spent on ads for or against them without coordinating with the campaign; for a challenger it can dwarf what the campaign raised.

Outside spending for and against them

• Against them
• For them

Their own money

What candidates put into their own campaigns, as contributions or loans.

Money from outside their state

The share of their itemized individual contributions (over $200 from one person) from donors outside the state they represent, in their latest period; senators who raised at least $1M then.

Money from PACs

The share of everything they raised that came from political action committees, all periods; senators who raised at least $1M.

Former staff now lobbying

Lobbyists who list a job with the senator on their lobbying reports (LD-2), and what registered lobbyists report giving or raising for the senator (LD-203).

Stock in companies lobbying their committees

Stock on a serving senator's latest annual report in a company that, this Congress, lobbied the Senate on a bill sent to a committee they sit on: 415 holdings by 29 senators. Theirs, a spouse's or a dependent child's; matched by ticker and the company's name on its lobbying reports.

Against chance: the same holdings, scored against every other senator's committees instead, match about 431 (95% of the time 374–479): 415 is about what chance gives. Big companies lobby most committees, so owning them means owning companies that lobby yours.

PAC money from companies they own

What a company's political action committee gave a senator's campaigns, when that senator holds or traded the company's stock: $2,525,850 to 45 senators from 141 companies' PACs, all periods loaded. The FEC names the company behind each PAC. The largest companies have both the most widely held stock and the most active PACs, so some overlap is expected.