What am I looking at?

The dots

• Officeholders and candidates. The biggest dots, with a photo or initials.
• Campaign accounts. Teal. With accounts split, a candidate's own account sits right beside them on a short line.
• PACs and political committees. Gold. A committee an officeholder chairs is part of their money.
• Professional firms. Orange: law, lobbying and consulting practices (P.A., P.L.).
• People, and county items. Grey: officers, agents and donors who are not on the ballot, and the votes and contracts the Board took up.
• Companies. Coloured by line of business (below).
• Hubs (Web view only). A shared filing address or a shared officer name, drawn as one dot that joins every company filed under it.

By default, each officeholder's campaign accounts and the committees they chair are drawn as part of their own dot, so every line of money to them starts at the person. Turn on Split accounts & PACs in the filters to see each account on its own, beside them.

Size is money given. A company, a group of companies, a person or a committee is drawn larger the more it gave in all, net of refunds. Officeholders keep their photos and campaign accounts keep one size: they receive money, they are not donors.

Line of business

Each company carries one of the research's 27 lines of business. Related lines share a colour family, in different shades. Grey means the research could not place the business. Colour is never the only clue: every card and filter names the line.

The lines

• Money given. A campaign contribution: a company, committee or person gave money to a campaign account or a political committee, as filed.
• Money paid or spent. A campaign or committee paid someone: consultants, printers, other committees. Loans and reimbursements are drawn the same way.
• Refunds. Money a campaign or committee returned. Every dollar figure on the map is net of these.
• Family. Married, or parent and child, where a public record says so.
• Officer, manager or agent. A filed role in a company or committee: officer, manager, member, registered agent, chair, treasurer, or the candidate an account belongs to.
• Registered to lobby for. A lobbyist registered with the county to lobby for a company or group.
• Logged meeting. A meeting logged in a commissioner's lobbyist log.
• Vote or county item. A county item: a commissioner moved, seconded or voted on it, or a company applied for, contracted on or was named in it.
• Other record. Any other public record that ties two names together.

How a line is drawn says more:

• Dashed: inferred (same filing address or same officer name)
• Thicker line: more dollars, net of refunds (a gift refunded in full is a faint hairline)
• Short line: the person's own campaign account or committee
• Line colour, in Compare: whose accounts it reaches, matching each person's colour in the strip above the map
• Paler gold: a person's own gift (an officer's or staff member's personal money)

How companies, PACs and people connect

1. People run companies. The state's corporate register (Sunbiz) names each company's officers, managers and registered agent. That is the plain pale line from a person to a company.
2. Companies and people give. A contribution runs from the giver to a campaign account or a political committee, in gold, thicker for more dollars. A gift from an officer's own pocket is a paler gold, so it never reads as the company's money.
3. Committees have chairs. A PAC's filings name its chair and treasurer. When an officeholder chairs a committee, it sits beside them with their campaign accounts: money given to it is money given to them.
4. Lobbyists register, and meet. Lavender: who is registered to lobby the county for which company. Pink: a meeting a commissioner logged with a lobbyist.
5. The Board votes. Blue: who moved, seconded and voted on a county item, and which companies applied for it, contracted on it or were named in it.
6. Some ties are inferred. Two companies filed from the same address, or with an officer of the same name, are joined by a dashed line. A dashed line is a lead, never a record that names the link.

The views

The Arrange menu at the top of the map lays the same records out different ways.

Network

Everything on screen, pulled together by its ties.

Gravity

The heaviest names by money and ties are centres of gravity; everything else orbits what it is tied to most.

Web

Shared filing addresses and officers, drawn as hubs.

Officeholders

County officeholders and candidates with the companies and PACs they hold a role in.

Officeholders & donors

Officeholders, plus the companies that gave to their campaigns and PACs.

Shared PAC officers

People who hold a filed role on several PACs tied to county officials, with those officials and the money between them.

PACs by filing address

PACs that share a filing address, with the officeholders, their campaigns and the money between them.

Compare

People side by side; shared donors and payees in the middle.

Focus

One node, with rings one, two and three steps out.

By role

Grouped by why each node is on the map.

By line of business

Broad lines of business on one line, developers and builders first; the elected officials by office below.

Timeline

Every dated record, left to right by year.

By money

Ranked by money given and received.

By address

Each filing address as one donor: the organisations filing there, their gifts added together.

Florida map

Where the money comes from: each giver at its ZIP, the people it gave to off the coast.

Org chart

Lee County's elected government and its money.

Committees by chair or treasurer

One cluster per chair or treasurer.

Filters and groups

• Connections turn each kind of line on or off. None clears them all, so you can add back only the ones you want.
• Smaller players hides companies, people and PACs with little money through them and few ties, so the big players read. It starts on in most views; Everyone brings them back. Officeholders, their accounts and the companies they hold a role in always stay.
• Donors keeps only those who gave at least a set amount in all, net of refunds, or to at least a set number of recipients. Gifts to an officeholder's several accounts count as one recipient.
• Officials & candidates turns each county official and 2026 candidate, and every other official or candidate on the map, off or on, with their own accounts, grouped by body: one box turns off the whole School Board. Their donors stay if they gave to anyone else on the map.
• Labels (over the map) turns the names off; hover a dot to see its name. A group of companies is named only while you hover one of its companies or select it; the titles of a view's rows and clusters stay.
• Line of business hides donors and companies by what they do. An officeholder's own accounts always stay.
• Group draws companies that share officers together under one name, and folds committees into the person who chairs them. Both are on to start; turn either off to see each company or committee on its own. Drag a group by its name. Right-click it, or use Spread out on the map on its card, to set its companies apart, each named with what it gave, so each one's own gifts can be followed.
• The map's address keeps your view, filters and selection, so a link you copy opens exactly what you see.

What a line does not say

A line is a public record that two names appear together, and nothing more. A contribution is not a vote bought, and a shared address is not a shared owner. Dollar figures are at least what was filed, net of refunds. A treasurer, registered agent or officer shared by several committees is a filed role, and often a hired compliance service: it shows who keeps the committees' filings, not who decides what they do. Where the records are thin, the map says so rather than fill the gap.