Methodology:

The underlying data for this story comes from a lobbying report database and a campaign finance report database maintained by the Tennessee Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance. To create the top donor list, the Lookout combined spending from three categories — lobbying, campaign donations and independent expenditures.

The Bureau provides lobbying expenditures in ranges. For example, when the report said $10,000 to $25,000, the Lookout used $17,500 for the amount spent. When the report said less than $10,000, $1,000 was used.

For campaign donations, the Lookout has tracked contributions to every candidate and political action committee connected to a candidate since 2009.

Contributions to candidates and their PACs were combined when reporting how much they raised. We eliminated all donations from elected officials to their party PACs (Tennessee Legislative Campaign Committee and Tennessee Tomorrow PAC) because often those donations were reimbursements for campaign expenses.

Independent expenditures were also reported as part of the Tennessee Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance campaign database under expenditures. We used a similar method for donations to compile a complete spending list.

Since 2010, several companies, associations, and families have used multiple political action committees, changed their company names, or purchased other companies with political activity in Tennessee. The Lookout combined all the names it could find for a single company, family, or association. All of a past company’s campaign finance and lobbying data were combined under the new company’s name for mergers.

The data behind this story is also available to download

The completely unedited campaign finance database broken into folders, which contains over 2 million rows of data includes donations to lawmakers, lawmakers PAC and donations to any PAC that has operated in Tennessee (from Jan. 16, 2010, to Jan. 15, 2025).

An edited form of campaign finance data, this data mirrors the data in the “Search the campaign funders of Tennessee’s state politicians” flourish chart.

The Lookout’s lobbying expenditures data (from Jan. 1, 2010, to June 30, 2024) with merged name is available for download.

Data on independent expenditures (from Jan. 16. 2010 to Jan. 15, 2025). (58.1 MB)

Click here for the link to the Tennessee Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance campaign contribution and expenses website.

Click here for the link to the Tennessee Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance lobbying website.