Candidate Accountability Research Training
Welcome to Sunlight Search’s Candidate Accountability Research Training in partnership with MuckRock. These five sessions will provide you with reporting tools you can use to deeply profile political candidates. We’ll start by creating a timeline of a candidate’s life using basic information about where they live and work and who their associates are.
After your first session, you’ll walk away with a timeline that will help you begin to sketch out a picture of your candidate’s life and a plan to file public records requests that will fill in the details. By the end of session five, you will have a deeply reported timeline that brings the candidate’s real history into focus, understanding their professional, personal, and political backgrounds and where those events overlap in newsworthy ways.
Training Session 1
Backgrounding Basics (with MuckRock)
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Create a Timeline:
To understand the pieces of a candidate’s life and how they fit together, we will create a chronology.
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Start with the Basics:
Let’s use the Internet and proprietary databases like LexisNexis to start filling out the candidate’s timeline with the basics, like addresses and marriage and divorce records.
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Associated People:
Keeping track of who the candidate has associated with — major donors, business associates, family members — will help you understand connections as you dig deeper into their background.
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File FOIA Requests (MuckRock):
Your timeline and list of associated people will help you understand where the candidate has intersected with public records. The FOIA experts at MuckRock will show you how to find public documents that illuminate the candidate’s past.
Training Session 2
Getting Personal with Finances
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Finding and Analyzing Personal Financial Disclosures:
Download and analyze personal financial disclosures that candidates file at the federal, state and local levels. Using a Sunlight-developed analytical tool, you’ll gain critical insights into how the candidate makes a living.
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Business Interests and Assets:
Find lawsuits involving the candidate and their businesses. Find bankruptcy proceedings and search SEC and Universal Commercial Code filings to find out more about their companies.
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Property:
Find properties the candidate owns or has owned and whether they owe any unpaid property taxes.
Training Session 3
It's All Political (with OpenSecrets)
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Political History:
Understand the candidate’s previous involvement in politics from voting history and legislation they filed to interactions with lobbyists.
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Campaign Finance:
Analyze contributions to and expenditures from a candidate’s campaign, along with independent expenditures in support of or opposition to the candidate.
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Lobbying Records:
Use public records and data to identify ties between the candidate and lobbyists.
Training Session 4
Social Media Sleuthing (with MuckRock)
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Beyond Profiles:
Identify a candidate’s social media profiles and learn how to conduct advanced searches. We’ll go beyond the usual Facebook and X to look into alternative social media sites, messaging platforms, forums and online fundraising websites.
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Tracking Changes:
Learn to use Wayback Machine, Klaxon and other tools to track how and when the candidate changes information on a website.
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Connect the Dots:
Analyze social media profiles to identify potential red flags.
Training Session 5
School and Work
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Alumni Questions:
Identify high schools, colleges and graduate schools the candidate attended — and whether their claims about attending and graduating are accurate.
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Candidate Resume:
Create a timeline of when and where the candidate has worked using public data and online resources.
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Government Loans:
Search government databases to find out if the candidate is connected with businesses that have received government loans.
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Licenses and Regulation:
Learn where to find business and professional licenses and whether the candidate is in good standing.