Plumber political contributions from Pennsylvania

Why the Plumber–Pennsylvania pair stands out in the aggregates

Occupation PLUMBER plus donor state PA produces $3,447,371, 30,678 contributions, and 626 donors. The national Plumber occupation total is $5,890,623, 49,226 contributions, and 1,269 donors. Pennsylvania’s share of the dollars is about 59%; its share of contributions is about 62% (30,678 of 49,226); its share of donors is about 49% (626 of 1,269).

A state holding about three-fifths of an occupation’s itemized dollars is uncommon in these ties. The contribution share (about 62%) running ahead of the donor share (about 49%) means Pennsylvania Plumber-coded donors, as a group in this table, produced more itemized rows per person than the national mix. That is a description of the join. It is not proof of union density, wage levels, or political preference.

Six hundred twenty-six Pennsylvania donors produced 30,678 contributions, about 49 itemized rows per donor in this join—far above the national Plumber ratio of 49,226 contributions from 1,269 donors (about 39 rows per donor). Combined with Pennsylvania’s about 59% share of the $5,890,623, the state filter is doing most of the work in this occupation’s itemized file. That is a statement about how the labeled receipts are distributed, not about union strategy.

The Plumber occupation label across states

PLUMBER is the string on the receipt. It can include journeymen, shop owners, retirees who kept the title, and people who might have written PIPEFITTER or PLUMBING CONTRACTOR on another form. The national bucket is 1,269 donors, 49,226 contributions, and $5,890,623. Other trade strings are other hubs.

Forty-nine thousand two hundred twenty-six contributions from 1,269 donors is a high repeat rate. Much of that repeat volume sits in this Pennsylvania slice (30,678 of 49,226 contributions). This page still does not name locals, PACs, or committees. It locates the overlap of two FEC fields.

Pennsylvania on the state side

Six hundred twenty-six Pennsylvania donors produced 30,678 contributions totaling $3,447,371. Marketing, another Pennsylvania occupation tie, has a different shape: more dollars nationally, fewer state-side donors. Those are separate joins. The PA state hub includes every occupation, not only plumbers.

Donor state Pennsylvania does not mean the recipient is a Pennsylvania candidate. The $3,447,371 can go to any FEC-filing committee. Address on the contribution record is not a work-site address and is not a union hall.

Pennsylvania’s overall individual-contribution hub dwarfs this occupation slice. Marketing and other PA occupation ties are separate filters on the same state code. The Plumber occupation hub without PA still contains the remaining about 41% of dollars. Reading either hub as if it were this join hides the concentration that the two-key table is built to show.

What the join does not claim

This page does not say Pennsylvania politics is funded by plumbers, and it does not compare Pennsylvania with other states on safety, wages, or influence. Occupation plus state is a bookkeeping relationship. Correlation is not causation.

Unitemized contributions and independent expenditures are omitted. A donor who wrote PLUMBING or STEAMFITTER would not be in these $5,890,623 or $3,447,371 totals. FEC.gov is the source; occupation labels are filer-entered.

Trade strings fragment. PIPEFITTER, STEAMFITTER, PLUMBING CONTRACTOR, and PLUMBER RETIRED, if used, never enter the $5,890,623. The $3,447,371 Pennsylvania figure inherits that fragmentation. Committee-level plumber PACs are a different legal category from these itemized individual rows. This page does not merge them and does not infer that high contribution counts equal coordinated giving.

Reading Plumber and Pennsylvania as two keys

Subtract the Pennsylvania dollars on this page from the national Plumber occupation total and the difference is the amount still coded Plumber 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 Pennsylvania dollars, or only the Plumber 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 tables

Plumber donations holds the $5,890,623 national occupation total. Pennsylvania campaign finance holds the state’s itemized individual activity across occupations. All occupations and all FEC ties collect other occupation-state pairs built from the same two columns.

Questions

How much have Plumber donors in Pennsylvania contributed?

FEC itemized individual contributions from donors listing occupation Plumber and state Pennsylvania total $3,447,371, from 30,678 contributions and 626 donors. Nationwide, Plumber-coded receipts are $5,890,623 from 49,226 contributions and 1,269 donors. Pennsylvania is about 59% of those dollars.

Why is Pennsylvania so large a share of Plumber FEC money?

The join is $3,447,371 of $5,890,623, about 59% of dollars, about 62% of contributions (30,678 of 49,226), and about 49% of donors (626 of 1,269). Those shares describe where filers entered PLUMBER and PA together. They do not identify unions, employers, or recipients.

Are these licensed Pennsylvania plumbers?

The FEC file does not verify licenses. Occupation is the string PLUMBER and state is PA on the itemized record. The 626 Pennsylvania donors used that pair of labels. That is not a state licensing board extract.

Does this include plumber PAC money?

No. These figures are itemized individual contributions only. Committee receipts, including union PACs, are outside this occupation-state join. The $3,447,371 is the individual PLUMBER-and-PA overlap.