Consultant political money in the 2014 election cycle

Joining a vague label to a specific cycle

Few FEC strings are broader than Consultant. Management consultants, political consultants, IT contractors, and people who left the field blank-adjacent all land here after grouping. The 2014 cut still has a precise dollar cell: $3,982,817. Precision on the year does not create precision on the job. The join’s job is to keep those two facts honest at the same time.

One thousand fifty-five donors is a wide base. 3,499 lines imply about 3.3 contributions per donor. Average receipt size is about $1,138 ($3,982,817 ÷ 3,499). Average per donor is about $3,775. Those figures describe itemized federal activity among people who typed a consulting-related employer, not the consulting industry’s revenue or its lobbying payroll.

Consulting is a word that covers strategy shops, campaign vendors, freelance IT, and people who left a company name off the form. The FEC field does not encode which of those the 1,055 donors meant. The join still has a hard dollar cell: $3,982,817 in 2014, on 3,499 lines. That hardness is why a year cut is useful. Soft labels still produce countable receipts. The 4.3% share of $91,820,178 locates the midterm inside a very large occupation roll without pretending the label is a license.

Why 2014 is a thin slice of $91.8 million

Ninety-one million eight hundred twenty thousand one hundred seventy-eight dollars is the Consultant grouping across every cycle in the table. $3,982,817 is 4.3% of that. Midterms often show fewer itemized lines than presidential years for occupation-style keys, but this page does not contain other years’ dollars, so it cannot prove that pattern here. It can only locate 2014 inside the all-cycle stack.

Because the label is broad, year-over-year swings can reflect filing fashions—more people writing “consultant” instead of a company name—as much as they reflect real giving. That is a caveat on the industry hub as well. The tie page’s contribution is narrower: here is the 2014 cell, here is the donor count, here is the share.

Midterm calendar, not a consulting-sector election

2014 elected a Congress, not a president. Itemized gifts still went to presidential leftover committees, Senate and House campaigns, parties, and PACs that filed in the window. The $3,982,817 sum does not tell which of those buckets dominated. The overlay is the place for recipient lists. This page names both sides of the join and stops.

Political consultants who donate are in the same string as management consultants who donate. The FEC field does not separate them. Speculating that the 1,055 donors are “K Street” or “McKinsey” would add names the facts do not contain.

What sits outside the Consultant × 2014 cell

Firm-named keys (a consultancy’s legal name) are other rows. PAC filings by consulting firms are committee schedules. Independent expenditures by Super PACs that hire consultants are still Super PAC activity, not this individual-receipt total. Unitemized gifts are absent. State-level consulting-related donations are absent.

Federal contracts for professional services live in USAspending, not FEC.gov. This join does not fund, explain, or offset those awards. Shared words like “consultant” across datasets are not a payment chain.

Related LobbyVault views

Use the Consultant 2014 overlay for the same $3,982,817 intersection in tables. Use the Consultant industry hub for the $91,820,178 all-cycle figure. Use the 2014 election-cycle hub to place this occupation string among other 2014 employer keys. Use the ties index for other industry–cycle pages built on the same contract.

Citing a catch-all occupation in a midterm

A complete citation is Consultant, 2014, $3,982,817, 3,499 contributions, 1,055 donors, from FEC individual-contribution aggregates, amounting to 4.3% of the grouping’s $91,820,178 all-cycle total. Do not upgrade Consultant to “K Street.” Do not downgrade 1,055 people into a single firm. Do not add named-consultancy keys into the $3,982,817. Each named shop has its own industry–cycle page when it appears in the catalog.

The overlay holds recipient committees for this intersection. The Consultant industry hub holds the $91,820,178 stack. The 2014 election-cycle hub places this label among other employer strings that year, including banks and one-donor property keys that look nothing like 3,499 lines. The ties index lists those other joins. Professional-services awards in USAspending remain a different dataset. Shared use of the word consultant is not a trail from these receipts to those awards.

Questions

How much FEC money is tagged Consultant in 2014?

The industry–cycle join shows $3,982,817 in itemized individual contributions for Consultant in 2014, from 3,499 contributions and 1,055 donors. The grouping’s all-cycle total is $91,820,178.

Are these political consultants?

Unknown. The FEC employer/occupation field is a self-report. Management, IT, campaign, and other consultants can share the same grouped string. The facts give dollars, lines, and donor keys—not a job census.

Why is 2014 only 4.3% of the Consultant total?

Because $3,982,817 divided by $91,820,178 is 4.3%. Other cycles hold the rest of the occupation string’s itemized individual money. This page does not list those other years’ amounts.

Does this include consulting-firm PAC spending?

No. The $3,982,817 cell is individual receipts with a Consultant grouping. Committee disbursements and independent expenditures are separate FEC files and are not in these facts.