How 'DMN' Traced GOP Funds to Nader
NEW YORK Last Friday, The Dallas Morning News published an article, still provoking commentary elsewhere, that seemed to show that some Republican contributors were also giving money to third party candidate Ralph Nader (news - web sit es), perhaps to boost him at the expense of John Kerry (news - web sites), although the donors denied this motivation. How did the paper put this money trail together?
A newspaper does not have to be that big to do this type of research," said the reporter responsible, Wayne Slater. "All it needs is one reporter who has some knowledge of computers -- and an editor who gives the go ahead."
Slater, senior political writer for the Morning News, has written computer-assisted campaign finance stories for more than a decade. While some larger newspapers use computers to study political donations, the majority do not, he said.
For the March 26 story ("GOP Donors Double Dipping with Nader"), Slater first downloaded a list of individuals who have given $250 or more to the Nader campaign from the Federal Election Commission (news - web sites)'s Web site. He then used Microsoft Access to look for matches on a database of Dwight Morris, a company that gathers the data of political contributions in federal elections.
Of the FEC list of approximately 270 donors to Nader, Slater manually found that about 24 individuals had exclusively, or at least 90% of the time, supported Republican candidates in the last four years. He attempted to contact all of them, and about half responded. Of this number, all of them said they plan to vote for Bush.
None claimed any desire to harm Kerry's campaign. Instead, they cited a desire to provide a choice in November and agreement with some of the consumer advocate's issues.
Some have criticized Slater's work, pointing to a minimal amount of data. But Slater disagrees.
"I'm trying to get at a potential trend early," Slater said, noting that he would revisit the story as it gets closer to the election. "Statistically, there is some merit to the political analysts' views that there are strong Republicans helping Nader's candidacy at the expense of the Kerry campaign."
--Charles Geraci is a reporter for E&P.