The Openness Project

Did you know Gov. Susana Martinez has raised $16,845,147.61 in campaign contributions since 2010?

That outpaces her two Democratic gubernatorial opponents in 2010 and 2014 and the top three political action committees, combined.

Add in the money Susana PAC — which ranks second in fundraising totals among political action committees since 2010 — and the governor has raised almost $20 million.

If you know how to navigate the Secretary of State’s website, what you need to search for and are good with Excel spreadsheets — not to mention, have a few hours on your hands — you could find this out.

Or you could take a few seconds on The Openness Project, click on Top Earners and select the Since 2010 option, and voila, there it all is. How much the Governor raised, from whom, and how she spent it.

The Openness Project is based on a simple concept–the often unspoken notion underpinning our democracy that each of us should have the same access to information as those who wield power.

Openness is the opposite of secrecy. It gives New Mexicans the information needed to ask deeper, more informed questions that hold the powerful accountable.

The Openness Project was produced for us by Datamade. We’d like to thank staff of the Secretary of State, too — for providing the data we needed to create it.

The Openness Project makes it easy for you to search for candidates or political action committees, for those giving the big bucks or getting the big bucks. It gets down to the nitty-gritty of every single transaction. Plus, you can download the data and do your own analysis.

The new site also offers great graphics that illustrate when candidates and PACs raise and spend their money. And it links to NMID’s campaign finance and politics reporting.

And we created an embeddable table showing Top Earners that you can use on your own website. Just grab the code from the About page.

Knowing who is contributing to campaign funds of elected officials or political committees is an ongoing challenge for New Mexicans. Our laws don’t require data we need to create a complete picture and, while there have been big improvements on the Secretary of State’s website, it’s still not super easy to look at or work with the data.

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This is just the beginning of The Openness Project. There is more that we can do to bring greater transparency to our political process: more reporting requirements, greater access to government data, more public data at your fingertips on sites like The Openness Project.

Become a transparency champion with us by donating to our efforts. All of your contributions are tax deductible and we’ll publicly acknowledge your sponsorship on The Openness Project website.