Politics

• Issues Background. Public Agenda Online provides detailed background on a wide variety of election-year public policy issues.

• Federal Campaign Finances. FECInfo and the Center for Responsive Politics are non-profit organizations that use Federal Election Commission data to generate tailored reports on a federal candidate's spending, a PAC's activities, a particular fat cat's contribution habits, the political spending patterns of a specific community and a variety of other potential stories. The Federal Election Commission now has an in-depth search abilities, but only for the recent election cycles.

• State Campaign Finances. The National Institute on Money in State Politics has available a database of state campaign finance records for selected states, searchable by candidate, individual donor or one of 115 special-interest groups. The institute plans to have data from all 50 states. Meanwhile, the Campaign Finance Information Center, run by Investigative Reporters & Editors, links to currently available campaign finance databases on the state level.

• Campaign Story Ideas. IRE's Campaign Finance Information Center provides a database of campaign finance story ideas and tip sheets contributed by political journalists nationwide.

• Campaign Finance Experts. The Columbia Journalism Review provides a list of campaign finance experts.

• Washington Lobbyists. The Center for Responsive Politics provides a searchable database of registered congressional lobbyists. It is searchable by lobbyist, company or industry and provides annual expenditures. The center also provides its categories for various special-interest groups

• Daily Political and Campaign News. The Washington Post's On Politics, Congressional Quarterly's Campaigns and Elections, CNN and Time's allpolitics.com and The New York Times politics section are among the best general sources for up-to-the-minute U.S. political coverage.

• Political Wire. Political Wire provides links to the day's top political stories from around the nation.

• Political Magazines, Newsletters and Journals. MediaFinder links to hundreds of domestic and international magazines, newsletters and academic journals devoted to politics.

• Polls. PollingReport.com provides synopses of recent polls, by issue. Other polls available online include Gallup and the Pew Research Center for People and the Press.

• Political Parties. The Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee each has its own web sites. The national parties also provide links to state and county party Web sites as well as other party arms such as the committees for House, Senate and gubernatorial campaigns.

• Individual Candidates. Candidates for national, statewide and often county offices have their own Web sites, which can provide easy access to biographical information, position papers, schedules and other useful information. They often can be found at www.candidate'sname.com (or .org), or www.candidate'sname2000.com.

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