DATA & METHOD

Data & method

The records our reporting is built on, published so you can check the arithmetic yourself — including the two traps that have already produced errors in print.

Provenance

The City of Santa Monica publishes every campaign finance filing submitted to it as transaction-level data through its public electronic filing portal. The files below are that bulk export for 2007 through June 2026 — every Form 460, 461, 465, 496 and 497 — cleaned only in the ways described here, and reconciled against each committee's own summary pages.

These are public records. Nothing in them was obtained confidentially, and anyone can pull the same export from the city.

Two pitfalls, before you start

Both of these have produced published errors, including in reporting about this city. If you are reproducing an analysis, you need both.

Filer IDs are stored inconsistently across years.

The same committee does not carry the same filer identifier in every year of the export. Grouping naively on Filer_ID will split one committee into several and silently understate its totals. Reconcile against the committee name and the summary file before you trust any multi-year aggregate.
Transaction IDs collide within a year.

Tran_ID is not unique. De-duplicate on the content of the transaction — filer, date, name, amount, form and period — not on the identifier. De-duplicating on Tran_ID alone drops real transactions; not de-duplicating at all double-counts amended filings. An amendment supersedes the original filing for the same period; it does not add to it.

A third, softer one: names vary. Individuals appear under multiple spellings across filings — one significant donor in our reporting appears under three. Any donor-level aggregate requires name normalisation, and the normalisation you choose is a judgement you should state.

What we removed

The city's export includes street addresses for contributors, payees and committee treasurers. We have removed those columns — *_Adr1 and *_Adr2 — from the files published here. No analysis in our reporting depends on them, and republishing tens of thousands of home addresses is a harm with no reporting benefit.

Everything the disclosure regime exists to expose is intact: names, employers, occupations, cities, amounts, dates, forms and periods. If you need the address fields for a legitimate analysis, they remain available from the city's own portal.

The files

Contributions, 2007 – June 2026

smrr_contributions_2007_2026.csv 50,796 rows 13.4 MB CSV, UTF-8

Every itemised contribution transaction disclosed to the City of Santa Monica. One row per transaction, across Forms 460, 461, 465, 496 and 497.
Expenditures, 2007 – June 2026

smrr_payments_2007_2026.csv 19,131 rows 4.7 MB CSV, UTF-8

Every itemised payment transaction disclosed to the city over the same period.
Committee summary pages, 2007 – June 2026

smrr_summary_2007_2026.csv 72,569 rows 9.2 MB CSV, UTF-8

The summary lines each committee reports for each filing period. Use these to reconcile any total you compute from the transaction files.

Figure series

Each chart in our reporting is drawn from a published series, not from a rendering. If you are reproducing a figure, use these numbers — do not trace values off the images. The series reconcile to the committee summary pages.

DV01 — The small-donor collapse

Year	Total contributions ($)	Itemised ($)	Unitemised share (%)
2,007	136,042	19,990	85.3
2,008	93,512	32,925	64.8
2,009	103,289	37,675	63.5
2,010	148,365	69,083	53.4
2,011	96,759	32,029	66.9
2,012	143793.8	67541.8	53.0
2,013	92141.1	33893.1	63.2
2,014	165212.0	94463.0	42.8
2,015	102653.5	65,377	36.3
2,016	89057.3	45,300	49.1
2,017	96156.8	43,694	54.6
2,018	112931.0	67,604	40.1
2,019	59,591	28,779	51.7
2,020	75362.0	55,810	25.9
2,021	36629.2	22864.2	37.6
2,022	92,198	69897.5	24.2
2,023	45303.1	21722.7	52.1
2,024	84536.8	63874.1	24.4
2,025	37520.4	15228.3	59.4
2,026	56330.1	44278.0	21.4

DV02 — Donor concentration

Year	Itemised contributions ($)	From Soloff & Himmelrich ($)	Share (%)
2,007	19,990	0	0
2,008	32,925	0	0
2,009	37,675	0	0
2,010	69,083	0	0
2,011	32,029	0	0
2,012	67541.8	0	0
2,013	33893.1	0	0
2,014	94463.0	11,000	11.6
2,015	65,377	10,000	15.3
2,016	45,300	13,140	29.0
2,017	43,694	5,000	11.4
2,018	67,604	10,140	15.0
2,019	28,779	100	0.3
2,020	55,810	10,000	17.9
2,021	22864.2	100	0.4
2,022	69897.5	25052.0	35.8
2,023	21722.7	0	0
2,024	63874.1	20,035	31.4
2,025	15228.3	35	0.2
2,026	44278.0	40,140	90.7

DV03 — Share of political money

Year	All committee spending ($)	SMRR spending ($)	SMRR share (%)
2,007	106818.2	93,148	87.2
2,008	1079929.5	143542.0	13.3
2,009	133667.1	78297.5	58.6
2,010	1073092.0	172319.5	16.1
2,011	119256.8	70740.0	59.3
2,012	1085416.0	165965.8	15.3
2,013	206199.7	66976.1	32.5
2,014	1505223.0	159688.8	10.6
2,015	237331.9	100331.6	42.3
2,016	3095271.6	142712.2	4.6
2,017	252964.9	75466.5	29.8
2,018	1349697.9	128941.3	9.6
2,019	148933.4	48412.8	32.5
2,020	1104986.9	94709.2	8.6
2,021	76129.4	24867.3	32.7
2,022	2880628.0	114539.7	4.0
2,023	437611.7	54830.9	12.5
2,024	2603057.2	102043.5	3.9
2,025	416835.9	28545.2	6.8
2,026	518771.1	37487.3	7.2

DV04 — 2024 spending vs outcome

No standalone series for this figure.

This chart is drawn directly from the transaction files above rather than from a derived series. The committee totals it shows can be reconstructed from the expenditure file for the cycle in question.

DV05 — Measure GS loans outstanding

Year	Period through	Outstanding balance ($)
2,022	2022-12-31	387,500
2,023	2023-05-31	386039.8

Corrections to this page

If you reproduce an analysis and get a different number, we want to know — that is the point of publishing the files. Write to oursantamonica@gmail.com with your method and we will either correct the story or explain the difference in public. See Corrections.