Earlier this year, The Nevada Independent asked for Sunlight Research Center’s help identifying Paycheck Protection Program loans to 17 Nevada congressional candidates.
During the Covid-19 crisis, from April 2020 to May 2021, the U.S. Small Business Administration backed and distributed PPP loans to help businesses keep their workforce employed. We searched for loans to the candidates, their businesses and spouses to see how much the 17 candidates received from government financial assistance programs. The Independent used our research for a story comparing the candidates’ loans to their public statements on government spending.
Here is a step-by-step guide you can follow to identify PPP loans to political candidates, their businesses and their spouses.
Try it out now
Step 1: First, we needed to gather basic background information about each of the candidates. We started by running LexisNexis reports on each candidate and their spouse.
If LexisNexis isn’t in your organization’s tool chest, here is a list of sites, such as beenverified.com, that aggregate information about people from public records and other sources. These sites may cost less than LexisNexis and other proprietary databases.
For each candidate we wanted to know:
- their full name and any other names they have used, such as nicknames or maiden names;
- their spouse’s name and their spouse’s name variations;
- companies and business sectors associated with the candidate and their spouse; and
- addresses associated with the candidate and their spouse to determine the states in which to search for their businesses.
Here are some other strategies for finding background information:
- To find a candidate’s full name and name variations as well as those of their spouse, check the following places:
- Marriage indexes: Depending on the jurisdiction, there may be a publicly available index of marriage licenses, either at the county or the municipal level. For example, the Miami-Dade County marriage license search and New York City marriage index.
- Internet search: Google the candidate and include information you already know, such as their age, home state, previous professional experience and associated people.
- Campaign sites: If the candidate has previously run for or held elected office, their campaign website is a great place to find biographical information such as names of family members. If the candidate no longer has an active campaign site, use the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to search for snapshots of their past campaign site.
- To find businesses associated with candidates and their spouses:
- Secretary of state business searches: Search for names and addresses in all states where the candidate has a footprint, and always search in the states where many out-of-staters register businesses: Delaware, Florida, Nevada and Texas.
- State occupational licensing boards: Search for individuals’ and businesses’ names.
- Federal- and state-level personal financial disclosures: For candidates or their spouses who have run for or held elected office, see Step 2 below for detailed instructions on searching for personal financial disclosures.
- To find addresses associated with candidates and their spouses:
- Local property records: Depending on the jurisdiction, the recorder of deeds, county clerk or assessor’s office may offer online access to documents relating to real property and other official documents. In most jurisdictions, counties maintain these records, but in some states, towns do.
- Business addresses: Check secretary of state websites and Open Corporates.
Step 2: Next, we wanted to find other companies associated with the candidates and their spouses that may not have turned up on the LexisNexis report.
We analyzed the candidates’ personal financial disclosures. PFDs are available for federal and state candidates and are published on different schedules depending on the jurisdiction. Check out our helpful state-by-state list for where to find state-level personal financial disclosures.
To find federal PFDs, use the following websites:
Step 3: To put all the information in one place and make it easier to analyze, we created a spreadsheet for each candidate and their spouse that included the following fields:
- Candidate first and last names
- Candidate’s spouse’s first and last names
- Business names
- Associated business address(es)
- Role of candidate or spouse in the business
- Loan number
- Type of loan
- Original subsidy cost
- Face value of direct loan
- Loan distribution date
- Loan forgiveness date
Here is an example of the formatting we used:
Step 4: We searched for the names of candidates, their spouses and their companies on PPP Borrower Search, in Google searches [names and company names + PPP], on USASpending.gov and on ProPublica PPP Search.
- Through the process of searching for PPP loans, we identified other types of loans, such as disaster assistance loans and economic injury disaster loans, that the candidates received. The Nevada Independent also referenced these loans in its article.
Step 5: Finally, we entered all the loan data we found from the searches into the spreadsheet we created in Step 3.
The Nevada Independent used our findings to take an in-depth look at the candidates’ loans and their public statements about government assistance. Below is an image of the interactive chart The Independent created to help their audience visualize the PPP data.
With our help, The Independent found that nine candidates running in Nevada’s federal races were connected to businesses that received more than $10.1 million in federal government loans from 2007 to 2021. Many of those candidates had criticized excessive federal spending. You can use a similar approach to shed light on elected officials’ finances and how they align with their campaign promises and policy stances.
