Donor flags: “Progressive causes”

• The badge describes giving, not people. It appears when public Federal Election Commission records show the donor also contributed, in the 2025–2026 cycle, to one of the political committees listed below, or when the row itself is a contribution from one of them to the candidate.
• Each committee is included only because its own published mission clearly supports one of these causes: abortion rights, racial justice / Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ advocacy, or identity-based (DEI) candidate recruitment and advocacy. No 1619 Project-affiliated committee is registered with the FEC or the Texas Ethics Commission, so none is listed.
• Matching (re-verified Oct 18, 2026): a candidate's donor is matched to a cause-group donor only when the normalized name (last and first name) and the 5-digit ZIP code agree and a second detail confirms it: the same employer, or the same occupation, or both records say retired / not employed. For retirees, common names (a top-50 U.S. surname, or a name seen at more than one ZIP) also need the same middle initial. Records whose middle initials differ never match. Texas Ethics Commission filings have no ZIP, so Texas state candidates' donors must match on name, city and state and the same named employer. Once a person is confirmed at a ZIP, all of their itemized gifts to listed groups at that ZIP are counted. In a hand check of 112 randomly sampled flags against the raw FEC and Texas Ethics Commission records, every one was the same person with the stated amounts; the rules are deliberately strict, so some real donors are not flagged.
• Only itemized contributions are covered (generally over $200 per cycle). Memo entries and money passed through a group to a candidate (earmarked “see below” entries) are excluded, refunds are subtracted, and only the latest amendment of each filed transaction is used. Every listed gift links to the FEC record so you can check it.

The “% from progressive-cause donors” badge

• Percent = dollars from flagged donors (people matched to a gift to a listed group) plus dollars given directly by a listed group, divided by the candidate's total itemized contributions in the same filing data (FEC 2025–2026 cycle; Texas Ethics Commission filings since Jan 1, 2025). The Donors page also shows the share by number of gifts.
• Shown only when the candidate has at least 20 itemized gifts or $5,000 in itemized contributions; below that the percentage would be too noisy, so no badge appears.
• Tiers: grey under 10%; amber 10–24%; amber with a dark outline 25% or more. These are display tiers only, not ratings.
• Caveats: unitemized small gifts are not included on either side. FEC bulk files lag new filings (the October 15, 2026 quarterly reports are not yet included), so the percentage reflects the reports in the bulk data. Strict matching means the share can be understated, not overstated, in most cases. For candidates with more than 20,000 donors, only the listed top donors are checked. The badge describes where money came from, not the candidate's views.
• Stances: we do not assign ideological labels. Faith & Freedom Coalition scorecards and candidates' own sourced statements are shown on each race page.

Abortion rights

Racial justice / BLM

LGBTQ advocacy

Identity-based / DEI advocacy

Texas Ethics Commission committees (contributions made directly to Texas state candidates)

← Methodology