Member political contributions from New Jersey

The Member–New Jersey intersection

Occupation MEMBER and donor state NJ sum to $2,629,546, 1,897 contributions, and 76 donors. The occupation hub is $7,536,549, 10,480 contributions, and 851 donors. New Jersey’s dollar share is about 35%; contribution share about 18% (1,897 of 10,480); donor share about 9% (76 of 851).

About 35% of the dollars from about 9% of the donors is a sharp concentration: a small New Jersey-coded group carrying more than a third of the labeled money. Seventy-six people and 1,897 rows produced $2,629,546. That arithmetic is the join. It is not a finding about partnership structures or union density.

Seventy-six New Jersey donors produced 1,897 contributions, about 25 itemized rows per donor in this join, versus about 12 rows per donor nationally (10,480 contributions from 851 donors). Combined with New Jersey’s about 35% share of the $7,536,549, the NJ filter is both dollar-heavy and repeat-heavy inside a short, ambiguous occupation string. That is a reason to be more cautious, not less, about what the join means.

Why MEMBER is a weak occupation label

MEMBER is one of the least specific strings in the FEC occupation file. It can appear after a law-firm or PE-firm name on some receipts, as a union status, as an LLC role, or as a leftover from a longer title that was truncated. The national bucket—851 donors, 10,480 contributions, $7,536,549—is the labeled set, not a defined job.

GENERAL PARTNER is a separate occupation hub with its own New Jersey tie. Do not add Member and General Partner New Jersey totals and call the sum partnership giving. The strings are different; filers chose them.

New Jersey as donor state

Seventy-six New Jersey donors produced 1,897 contributions totaling $2,629,546. Donor state NJ is the address on the record, not proof of a New Jersey partnership interest, and not a limit to New Jersey candidates.

The New Jersey campaign-finance hub includes every occupation coded to NJ. Marketing, Investment Banker, and Financial Consultant are other New Jersey occupation ties in this packet slice. Their dollars are not inside this $2,629,546.

New Jersey’s campaign-finance hub includes Marketing, Investment Banker, General Partner, and Financial Consultant ties. MEMBER is only this filter. The Member occupation hub without NJ still holds about 65% of the $7,536,549. Because the label is thin, treating the remainder as “everyone else in the same job” over-reads the file.

What the join cannot tell you

This page does not identify firms, unions, or LLCs, and it does not claim that Member-coded money caused any electoral result. Occupation plus state is a bookkeeping match. Correlation is not causation. Because the occupation string is so thin, treating the $2,629,546 as a single industry would over-read the data.

Itemized individual contributions only. Unitemized receipts and independent expenditures are omitted. FEC.gov is the source. Occupation labels are filer-entered.

MEMBER does not decode as union, LLC, or law-firm status. GENERAL PARTNER and PARTNER are other strings. Itemized individual contributions only. Unitemized gifts, independent expenditures, and committee receipts are omitted. The $2,629,546 is not a partnership capital account. Correlation is not causation.

Using the Member and New Jersey hubs without mixing them

Subtract the New Jersey dollars on this page from the national Member occupation total and the difference is the amount still coded Member in every other state combined. That remainder has no row-by-row breakdown here because those states are other ties. The occupation internal link holds the unlabeled-by-state total; the state internal link holds every occupation with this state code; the occupations index and the ties index place this pair among other joins built the same way.

A unique-donor count is not a person-level audit. The FEC aggregate can merge similar names or split one person who filed under variants. A contribution count can be many small itemized rows. A dollar total can hide that skew. Keeping all three figures on the same page is the point of the join: quoting only the New Jersey dollars, or only the Member national total, drops a key.

This relationship is not a forecast and not a ranking of influence. Occupation does not cause contributions, and donor state does not cause recipient geography. Public records, two fields, one intersection. FEC.gov individual contribution aggregates; occupation labels are filer-entered.

Related hubs

Member donations holds the $7,536,549 national occupation total. New Jersey campaign finance holds the state’s itemized individual activity across occupations. All occupations and all FEC ties collect other occupation-state pairs from the same two fields.

Questions

How much have Member donors in New Jersey given?

FEC itemized individual contributions from donors listing occupation Member and state New Jersey total $2,629,546, from 1,897 contributions and 76 donors. Nationwide, Member-coded receipts are $7,536,549 from 10,480 contributions and 851 donors. New Jersey is about 35% of those dollars.

What does occupation Member mean on an FEC form?

The file does not define it. MEMBER is the string the filer typed. It is not standardized as union member, LLC member, or law-firm member. This join reports 76 New Jersey donors and $2,629,546 for that label plus NJ. It does not classify the 76 people.

Why does New Jersey hold about 35% of Member FEC dollars?

The join is $2,629,546 of $7,536,549. New Jersey also holds about 18% of contributions (1,897 of 10,480) and about 9% of donors (76 of 851). Those shares describe where filers entered MEMBER and NJ together. They do not explain employer or motive.

Is this money for New Jersey candidates?

Not necessarily. Donor state is New Jersey. Recipients can be any FEC-filing committee. This page does not allocate the $2,629,546 by office or by in-state versus out-of-state campaigns.