Money & Influence · A Namaqua data report
Who pays for Colorado?
For the first time, the state's campaign-finance and lobbying records are linked, revealing the interests that fund the campaigns and work the bills.
Colorado keeps two separate ledgers of political money. One, the Secretary of State's TRACER system, records every dollar given to candidates, parties and ballot-measure campaigns. The other, the state's lobby disclosure system, records what organizations pay lobbyists to shape legislation. Neither references the other, and no shared identifier links them. This report joins the two, matching the interests that appear in both, to ask a simple question: who is paying to influence Colorado, and where does the money land?
Finding 01
Healthcare leads a concentrated field
Rolling every interest up to its industry, and combining what each sector pays lobbyists with the campaign money we could link to it, one bloc stands above the rest.
Finding 02
The biggest checks ride on ballot measures
Finding 03
A third of the money comes from outside Colorado
Finding 04
The bills the whole Capitol shows up for, and how they ended
| Bill | Title | Interests | Support | Oppose | Outcome |
|---|
Position is the lobbyist's reported stance, not the bill's outcome. Outcomes come from the Colorado General Assembly's final bill status. Support/oppose bar length is relative to the most-opposed bill.
Explore
The influence explorer
Every interest linked across both systems, ranked by total influence spending. Search a company, union or association; filter by sector; sort any column. Rows tagged firm are lobbying or public-affairs firms whose income aggregates many clients.
| Interest | Sector | Lobbying | Contributions | Total influence ▼ | Bills |
|---|
Method
How this was built, and its limits
Where the data comes from
Campaign finance is the Colorado Secretary of State's TRACER bulk files for filing years 2019-2026. Lobbying is the Secretary of State's Lobby Disclosure tables on the state open-data portal, refreshed daily. Bill outcomes are parsed from the Colorado General Assembly's published final bill status. Everything here is regenerated by code from those sources.
How the two systems are linked
The systems share no identifier. Interests are linked by normalizing entity names and matching lobbying clients to organization-type campaign donors, first on exact name, then on a conservative fuzzy match that requires a shared distinctive word. This is deliberately strict, so linked totals are a floor: an interest that lobbies under its legal name but donates through a separately named PAC will not always match.
Caveats and next steps
Sector labels are self-reported by lobbying clients, so the industry taxonomy is uneven. Several top entries are lobbying firms whose reported income aggregates many clients rather than one interest's own agenda. The bill outcomes shown cover the most-lobbied bills; extending outcomes to every position record for per-sector and per-interest win rates, plus a party breakdown, are the next steps.
Sources: Colorado Secretary of State TRACER bulk files; Colorado Lobby Disclosure tables on data.colorado.gov; Colorado General Assembly bill status. Figures computed from public records · 2026-06-19.